Huawei South Pacific Summit 2014, Malaysia

Operations transformation: key for a consistent

customer experience in next-generation networks
6 November 2014
Shanthi Ravindran, Glen Ragoonanan and Anil Rao
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Abstract

 This session will focus on the trends towards network operations consolidation that can
enable communications service providers (CSPs) to provide a consistent user
experience, as they advance with LTE deployments and data services. The session will
begin with a quick assessment of the market today, with focus on Malaysia and the
challenges that CSPs face in delivering voice, video, and data services. It will evaluate
CSP case studies from leading CSPs operating in a highly competitive market and the
solutions that are delivered to improve efficiency, that also improve customer
experience at the same time.
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Key considerations for transformation - must be business-led

and must be focused on desired business outcomes

1 What service and/or operations will it benefit most?

2 How important is the transformation to the business?

How can it impact cost, revenues and customer

3 experience?
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LTE Adoption : Malaysia has high growth potential among the

EMAP countries
Telecoms retail revenue by service type, emerging Asia–Pacific [Source: Analysys Mason, 2014]
LTE adoption in APAC, by country [Source: Analysys Mason, 2014]

LTE adoption starts to

grow significantly

Mobile voice Fixed voice and narrowband

Mobile messaging Fixed broadband and IPTV
Mobile handset data Business network services
Mobile broadband
Mobile M2M Fixed voice ASPU
Mobile ARPU Fixed broadband ASPU
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EMAP will have the highest growth rate in the world for
cellular data traffic, but still lag behind DVAP in usage
5-year growth multiples for cellular data traffic, by region, 2013–2018 [Source: Analysys Mason, 2013] Average monthly cellular data usage, 2013, and 5-year growth multiple for mobile data traffic, 2013–2018, Asia–Pacific [Source: Analysys Mason, 2013]
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Scenario: Complex services are driving network complexity

and Customers’ expectations are becoming more demanding

Illustrative Customers expect secure, high-quality access to network

Anytime,  End-to-end performance management across devices, applications and
anywhere, CUSTOMER
network (not just network availability)
any device
 Secure and quality access to network-based data, applications from any
device and access medium

Digital services Voice/VoLTE Operators offer diverse services relying on shared network
Streaming video/content  Diverse services and applications, often relying on shared network
Multiple
SERVICE
Social media infrastructure
services
Enterprise  Increased exposure to security threats and unplanned events
services  Device- and access-agnostic services

Mobile access There are issues in handling such a complex network

IPTV voice/data
RESOURCE  Multiple, disparate (but converging), geographically dispersed networks
 Converged TDM/IP networks carrying large quantities of data
Multiple IP/MPLS Core
VoIP  Virtualised infrastructure with more logical connections than physical
networks
 Multi-vendor infrastructure with interoperability challenges

Network IMS PSTN

infrastructure
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Networks and Services: Now and the future: Customer

experience is PRIME and service quality is a key contributor
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CSPs’ evolving business objectives will trigger network

changes that will indirectly drive operations automation
Reduce Reduce
costs churn Increase
revenue
Business Increase efficiency Provide superior Provide high-value
objectives of networks customer experience data services
 CSPs will need to  CSPs will need to  CSPs will need to
maximise resource provide differentiated, deploy and maintain
What do CSPs utilisation across personalised services to high-capacity, rapidly
need to change? multiple network layers customers growing networks with
 CSPs need to  CSPs need to ensure a LTE macros and small
rationalise and automate high level of customer cells, deployed in many
operations satisfaction layers

Desired  Reduce capex and opex  Decreasing churn rates  Increasing data ARPU
Outcomes?
 Automated service  Making customer  Automated configuration
How OSS management provides analytics & geolocation and optimisation can
evolution can better quality networks data available to OSS enable CSPs to build
enable CSPs to and services at a lower enables personalised capacity faster and still
achieve this? total cost of ownership service optimisation and maintain a high-quality
support network all the time

CSP – Communications service provider: a generic name for operators (network and virtual (MVNOs)
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Service assurance functions will need to upgrade for more

features and functions to support LTE and beyond
▪ Customer experience management (CEM) on the Customer
Predictive Trending
support stage of the customer lifecycle: Service Experience
applications Operations
Customer
problems need to be solved before they impact Customer
records
records
customers. 56% of CSPs believe QoS influences Service management
customers willingness to recommend a CSP.1 Analytics SLA KPI/KQI Capacity
planning
Impact
analysis

▪ Real-time data network monitoring, IP traffic

management and network analytics – for customer
centric view to cater to LTE data monetisation
strategies. Probe systems Fault and event Performance Workforce
management monitoring automation
▪ LTE brings more RAN layers. Unified assurance
systems are needed for cross domain correlation for Active Passive
Root cause
analysis
IP / Ethernet Home network
management
fast root-cause analysis of network / service issues
Network Counter Dispatch
▪ Performance monitoring data becomes critical for
Remote
test
DPI topology analysis

Network benchmarking, Trending and Predictive Discovery Polling ACS

operations across the network

▪ Network provisioning / Service activation /
Network Optimisation needs to be efficient and
automated enough to drive changes faster End NMS – SON, Configuration management IT network
user
▪ Information sharing between functional areas like Mobile Access Aggregation Core Virtualised
CPE
Operations, Customer Care, NPO etc is essential phone network network network services
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VoLTE will start testing all aspects of service management

and its impact on customer experience in a CSP network
▪ VoLTE is a QoS enabled application, that will test the
coverage and capacity in the RAN and automated • Accessibility
optimisation techniques will enable a better customer • Retainability
experience • Integrity
• Availability
▪ End to End Service management becomes • Mobility
imperative. Probe solutions that are capable of VoLTE application
KQIs • QoS – POLQA,
PESQ
correlating control-plane and user-plane data for
effective troubleshooting will be needed.
▪ Service management - Service KQI reporting Service management
application for VoLTE; per-subscriber reporting with
likely cause of service quality disruption
Real-time mediation/analytics
▪ End-to-end call trace data can be very valuable for
troubleshooting QoS issues. This information can be Fault/Event Performance Probe
enriched with real-time network data obtained from management monitoring systems
passive probes and performance monitoring systems to
develop a more comprehensive QoS monitoring
approach. Backhaul and
IMS, app and
Mobile access Mobile packet content domains
▪ Voice QoS measurement techniques - Perceptual
aggregation core

evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) / Perceptual

objective listening quality assessment (POLQA) will be
needed
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CSPs should evolve towards customer centric operations

models with ICT transformation
Leap of faith

10% 90% 99%

Network Service Customer
operations Fix the operations Customer Experience
centre basics Centre connection Center
(NOC) (SOC) (CXC)

Network-centric Service-centric Customer-centric

operations operations operations

 Focused on network  SOC require new  Bharti Airtel, Vodafone

elements and OSS service management and Telefónica are a
 Starting point for all systems and more in- few CSPs deploying
CSPs depth systems advanced CEM
 CSPS will retain their integration to monitor systems on top of their
NOC and outsource and manage services SOC tools.
functions
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If you don’t know where you are going any road will take you
there, but …

IT and
IT, BSS and SDP
SDP IT,ITBSS and
and SDP
SDP
architecture technologies
architecture technologies

… in a competitive
Customer and Service
Service
layer layer environment CSPs must
Operations
Operations choose the right
approaches and
Network approaches transformation path to
Network practices
architecture & practices
architecture navigate
Transformation
Analytics
ICT
Transformation
(is for cost
(Data
Transformation
Roadmap
optimisation)
transformation)
Ne

s
nsOSS

on
tw
Ne

o Operations
i

ati
or t architecture
tw

k ra architecture

er
ork

e
Op

Op
Key  Stabilising the organisation from volatile changes.
transformation  Building realisticNetwork
and achievable ICT transformation
Operationsprogrammes, as more ambitious
challenges for Network
South Asia initiatives have higher risks an will be
technologies
technologies harder to justify the business case.
Technologies
OSS technologies
CSPs?  Establishing a sound Project management office (PMO)

eircom Group achieved 20% cost savings by consolidating service
assurance systems in the service management centre
Business drivers
eircom Group’s service management team wanted to move
from a segmented view of its various network and infrastructure
assets to a unified view.
It wanted to migrate from separate IT, mobile and fixed
network monitoring to a single consolidated ITIL based service
management system that could provide a view of service
impacts.
Implementation approach
Each of the three domains had a number of performance
monitoring and telemetry systems that gave just a segmented
view of performance of that domain.
eircom’ s existing OSS estate included a number of COTS,
such as IBM Tivoli Netcool, InfoVista and EMC Smarts, as well
as numerous home-grown tools, resulting in disparate business
processes, high ongoing costs from new development to
support services, and a lack of an end-to-end service view.
After a CTO driven architectural review and an RFI process,
eircom chose a single COTS solution developed on the basis of
unified service assurance solution.
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 As a first step in that strategy, eircom is deploying the
solution to monitor new services such as fibre to the cabinet,
LTE and IPTV, with a plan to eventually migrate all existing
services onto a single platform, replacing approximately 60%
of the legacy monitoring tools within three years.
Benefits
 Reduced operational costs by 20% overall by moving to a
unified ITIL based incident and event management system.
 Key factor that led to cost savings was the reduction in
operations staff headcount, but with continued 24x7x365
support.
 It is now in a position to retire over 100 separate legacy
systems including Netcool, InfoVista, NNM, Smarts, to name
a few.
 Reduced time to market for new services such as LTE, IPTV
and NGA because of the streamlined service management
and business processes.
 Achieved green tax breaks as a result of the restructuring of
the service management centre.

Telecom Italia’s NOC–SOC transformation, improving customer
experience and reducing network opex
Problem statement
Telecom Italia was facing competitive pressures that were
causing negative revenue trends, market share reduction and a
slowdown in the number of new services that it was launching.
Network-based surveillance (alarms and performance
monitoring network elements) was mainly reactive.
Implementation approach
 Telecom Italia’s OSS estate included silo-based tools to
monitor specific network or service domains, which did not
provide an end-to-end service view and therefore hindered
the CSP’s ability to perform proactive customer-oriented
surveillance.
 The CSP implemented a service operations centre (SOC),
with near real-time service monitoring.
 The SQM platform provides direct evidence of service alarms
and related causes (such as threshold violations and
equipment faults) and a visual representation of
geographical regions affected by problems.
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 The SQM platform generates service alarms with related
severities by executing correlation rules on various
operational data. It also supports and executes propagation
rules on service alarms over the hierarchical network/service
tree based on configured service models.
 The unified assurance platform gathers information from
multiple data sources including probes, and analysed call
detail records (CDRs) in order to provide service alarm
troubleshooting and customised, user-oriented, service and
region-based views.
 The CSP has implemented 700 monitoring rules and 300
service alarms, 11 service models and 100 KPIs for service
quality monitoring
Benefits
 The SOC implementation enabled Telecom Italia to optimise
its network maintenance processes to monitor the end-to-
end QoS and identify the right priority of corrective actions.
 The unified service assurance platform enabled Telecom
Italia to use network event correlation and geo-referenced
real-time service monitoring to identify service and customer
impacts, and proactively manage QoS issues.
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Executive summary: PCCW-HKT, the smallest of five CSPs in Hong Kong,

transforms the customer experience in its operations and customer care
 Hong Kong has 7.1 million mobile subscribers, and its mobile Figure 1: Key metrics before and after implementation of PCCW-HKT’s CEM transformation plan [Source: Analysys Mason and PCCW-HKT, 2013]

penetration rate exceeds 200% (based on 3 months active

SIMs).
2012 2013
 About 28 million roaming users were on Hong Kong’s mobile Pre-implementation Post-implementation
networks in 2013, most of which are from mainland China
 PCCW-HKT is the smallest of the five mobile operators in
Hong Kong. It had 1.654 million mobile users by the end of Postpaid ARPU
Postpaid ARPU
2013. HKD210
HKD185
(USD27.05)
 The operator launched a customer experience management (USD23.85)
(13% increase)
(CEM) transformation programme in 2009 to improve customer
loyalty, starting with corporate/premium customers.
 Corporate customers account for 20% of PCCW-HKT’s Mean time to Mean time to
subscriber base, but generate 70% of its service revenue. identify faults was identify faults now
 PCCW-HKT’s CEM strategy focused on the following goals: 3 hours 30 minutes

 providing a unified view of the customer experience

 improving customer satisfaction among corporate and high- Drive test and
value, VIP customers in order to reduce churn 67% reduction in
on-site visits by
cost to assess
 reducing the mean time to resolve problems related to billing technicians to
corporate users’
inquiries and service disruptions assess network
network coverage
coverage
 reducing the cost of acquiring new corporate customers.
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Successful transformation need a pragmatic, long-term

organisational approach, where the customer is king
 Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is
 Systems design, implementation and
only a process guideline
Merging and each
/ mapping of CSP needs
configuration are most effective
Rationalisation when they follow
of tools
tailored operational
eToM and processes to align with the
ITIL processes
the businessandandsystems
operational processes.

Processes
are aimed at
Systems

eTOM framework. is key in an ICT

consolidating and linking
 Existing BSS/OSS must be evolve to take on
information sources  Processes musttransformation
meet strategic business
new features to support new services.
needs as well as tactical technical and
 Network virtualisation, analytics of Big Data and operational requirements.
flexible API-enabled service layer software
 Processes re-engineering is more complex
oriented ICT architecture are needed
than greenfield process development.
Re-skilling of staff is Customer-centric
essential for any
 Process transformation.
implementation Thisis more objectives
enables Business led programs are
dependent on achieving more
the organisation and people  Resistance to change
tasks with the same essential for can leadthe
leading to issues
than systems.
Organisation

people assessing the existing environment can be

change
 Skilled staff need to be utilized optimally by: disruptive to CSP’s business and customer

 increasing business and operations process
transparency
 centralising and coordinating operations
 making actions proactive
 increasing knowledge and skill sharing
Change
experience / satisfaction
 Change must be incremental, not drastic
 Poor change management can lead to loss of
expert resources
 Personal attachments can lower team spirit
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About the Presenter

Shanthi is a member of Analysys Mason’s Telecoms Software Research

team, focusing on OSS, BSS and SDP for Asia Pacific customers.

Shanthi has over 20 years of experience at Tier 1 Infrastructure vendors in

Singapore, working on design, deployment and operations of Wireless and
Broadband Networks for operators across the Asia Pacific, starting with the
first GSM and CDMA networks in APAC and continuing on through to 3G and
4G networks.
Shanthi Ravindran
Senior Analyst She is an expert in designing optimized, End to End solutions across Access
Network, Circuit and Packet Core, IMS, Subscriber Databases and Policy,
Shanthi.Ravindran OSS and BSS with a strong understanding of the applicable telecoms and
@analysysmason.
network evolution standards.
com

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