Uploaded byMuhammad Imran Awan
E2E Service Quality Management for Mobile Broadband
This document discusses the need for mobile service providers to shift from traditional network management to end-to-end service quality management (SQM) in order to manage quality of experience for customers using mobile broadband services. It outlines SQM functions like monitoring key performance indicators, dashboards for service performance status, and historical reporting. The document also explains how SQM data can provide business-centric views on service usage trends and enable the evolution from SQM to formal service level management with service level agreements.
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E2E Service Quality Management for Mobile Broadband
- 1. Capitalizing on MobileBroadband's Growth with‘End-to-End Service Quality Management’Muhammad Imran AwanSr. OSS Consultant
- 2. Agenda What isSQM?
- 3. A need formajor shift in the mobile service management paradigm
- 4. Managing Customer’s QoEis Vital
- 5. Integrating E2E SQMacross ‘All-IP Transport’, ‘Ethernet Backhaul’ & ‘Wireless’ networks
- 6. Performance Monitoring ofMobile Applications & Subscriber Services
- 7. SQM Architecture &Functions
- 8. Business & Customercentric views into SQM
- 9. Evolving from SQMto SLMService Quality management (SQM)?SQM as defined by eTOM / TMF:“Managing, tracking, monitoring, analyzing, improving and reporting on the performance of specific services”Service Level Management (SLM)ITIL: “SLM is the process responsible for negotiating Service Level Agreements and ensuring that these are met”eTOM: “Monitoring, managing and reporting of delivered vs. contractual Quality of Service (QoS)”eTOM Level 3
- 10. a need formajor shift in the mobile service management paradigm!The advent of Mobile Broadband Services demands a major shift in the mobile service management paradigm…Users are today doing much more with their mobile devices; Browsing/Chatting, Video Streaming, VOIP, Social Media/FB, Online games, File Sharing etc.Mobile network technologies have changed and continuously evolving, 3G, 4G/WiMAX, LTE; Data traffic (mainly video*) is rapidly surpassing Voice; so is the need to evolve mobile networks’ service management approach. Fixed Mobile Convergence*!Focus of Service Assurance must change from mere Network Management to the Management of Quality Of Services and the Applications delivered over the network in a more end2end fashion!
- 11. Managing Customer’s QoE& Increasing Loyalty is Vital to Mobile Broadband service value chainWith increasing saturation & rising competition, CEM is becoming indispensible for Telecom SPsDespite the highest Growth/Revenue Potential in Broadband & Data services area, it’s increasingly difficult and expensive to establish clear competitive advantage merely with new offers & packages. Need to refocus on CE!Customers, who have signed up for expensive data service packages, expect a quality user experience. When they don’t get it, they become a strong candidate for churnMobile Operators increasingly need the solutions that can measure & timely report the impacts of each Network behavior on the service quality delivered to their subscribersDon’t wait for the customers to complain. Most of them never will – they just leave. You have to be proactive!
- 12. Managing Customer’s QoE& Increasing Loyalty is Vital to Mobile Broadband service value chainPROFITABLE GROWTH
- 13. Key Factors driving‘Pro-Active Service Assurance’ for MBB SPsMBB growth is driving investments in Ethernet Backhaul where proactive monitoring solutions are needed to guarantee SLAs between wholesale and mobile CSPsThere’s an increasing focus to guarantee Quality of Experience for customers, which has to leverage from Quality of Service management. E.g. Mobile TV*SPs are looking for a unified view of their network with ability to expedite troubleshooting from the service & application layer right down to the underpinning infrastructure componentsProactive Capacity Planning to avoid fallouts; this requires a continuously proactive view into the resource & service performance
- 14. Integrating E2E SQMacross ‘All-IP Transport’, ‘Ethernet Backhaul’ & ‘Wireless’ networksData CenterSGSNIP/MPLS TransportEthernetBackhaulOSS INTEGRATION FRAMEWORKVLRHLRRNCPLMNMSC / Call ServerNode BMGWGGSNBTSLeased LineBackhaulPSTN/ISDN
- 15. Integrating E2E SQMacross ‘All-IP Transport’, ‘Ethernet Backhaul’ & ‘Wireless’ networksChallenges!There’s a Need to reconcile & consolidate output of multiple (sometime) overlapping management toolsNeed to have a quicker cross-domain troubleshooting for each Service problemNeed to have holistic views into end-to-end services & network infrastructureThere’s a Need to provide infrastructure availability & quality guarantees for Partners (MVNOs)Need to provide service performance visibility of mobility solutions to high-value customersUsers expect the same E2E Quality as traditional TDMSolution!
- 16. Establish Ownership* ofService Quality / Subscriber QoE
- 17. Consolidate SQ databy integrating relevant data sources
- 18. Design & implementE2E Service Quality Indicators; take actions, continue to learn & improve information accuracy!Performance Monitoring of Mobile Applications & Subscriber ServicesThis should help us answerCan subscribers connect to our services and their applications ?Are there any quality issues with the connected services for specific subscribers ?Which applications are being accessed, have they all been well defined and discovered?What is the responsiveness and performance of the applications being accessed through our services ?MBB Infrastructure PerformanceMobile Applications & Services PerformanceMBB E2E Service Performance
- 19. Building blocks ofSQMService Quality Management(Tech) Services CatalogTrouble Tickets & Change MgmtNetwork & Service InventoryResource & Service Provisioning / OMResource & Service Performance Mgmt*Resource & ServiceFault MgmtHostedEmailBusiness AppsDevicesRANIP Core3G CoreBackhaulSDPsMobile TV
- 20. SQM Functions &ComponentsKPIs -< KQIs/Aggregated KQIsService Models: Relationship of Services with underlying Resources & KQI formulas - SMAReal-time Service Performance Status views/ Dashboards – tailored for usergrops
- 21. QOE – Serviceperformance views per subscriber type/group*, e.g. Enterprise subscriber/MVNO
- 22. Notifications of criticalService impacting events and Escalations for unresolved Service issues
- 23. Historical Reporting ofService Quality data
- 24. Internal & CustomerPortalEstablishing intelligent Business & Customer centric views into ‘Service Performance’ and ‘Usage Trends’E2E SQM data can be enriched with key business service information for presenting within business-oriented views and dashboardsThis can empower BUs such as Marketing & Product Mgmt to look at usage trends as well as predictive forecasts for each consumer data service –helping them better plan their product offerings and pricing strategies, etc.Customized Reporting and Dashboards views of SQM solution can potentially be extended as a VAS to Enterprise Data Services customers (private APNs) and Partners like MVNOs
- 25. Establishing intelligent Business& Customer centric views into ‘Service Performance’ and ‘Usage Trends’
- 26. Offering & ManagingService Levels – Evolving from SQM to SLMSQM data/ KQIs can be further analyzed to evaluate SLA compliance and breaches, by setting thresholds for warnings & violationsService Models publishing from SQM into SLMSLA Catalog drives the key SLM configurationsManaging & Reporting SLAs, OLA & UCsSLA Performance status dashboardsPenalties and Rebates ManagementSLA Lifecycle management / SCMCustomer Portal for SLA Performance
- 27. RECAP!Service Providers benefits–E2E SQM/SLMMore empowered network operations with focus on QoS rather than mere network availability!
- 28. More Customer &Service centric approach / High-quality services for high-value customers
- 29. Less manual intervention/Enhanced Troubleshooting
- 30. Enables Predictive analysis-better Capacity Planning
- 31. Visibility & Controlof entire Service Value Chain
- 32. Should help tolower operations costs: Optimized expansions - Prioritized customer problem resolution
- 33. Capability to Commit& Charge for Service Level Guarantees (Enterprise & MVNO customers)Thanks for your Attention!Any Questions?I’m reachable at: imran.awan@msn.com
Editor's Notes
- #2 Assalamu Alaikum & Hello Everybody! my name is Muhammad Imran Awan and I would like to warmly welcome all of you for this ½ an hour session where we’ll try to speak about the management & monitoring aspects of MBB service so that our customers can receive a sustained & superior quality of various MBB related services & applications. While I understand you had been listening a lot since yesterday about the business and commercial aspects of Mobile Broadband from various experts , so probably this session would be a bit of change as we’ll be talking a bit technical here, but I can assure you that it wont be that much technically deep to bore you-:) And before we jump into the content, let me mention that you should please feel free to ask any questions during the course of my presentation or at the end of this session, or even later you can approach me at my email address which should be available at the conference website….
- #4 SQM is one of the Assurance processes under Operations domain, and this how eTOM defines it: “” and that specific service under our discussion today as you know is MBB, so we’ll try to understand during the course of this presentation how we can effectively monitor, analyze and improve the quality of MBB & related services.Another related term which I would like to quickly mention is the Service Level Management, the so-called SLM, which primarily comes from ITIL domain and is usually defined as “” so probably by the end of this presentation we’ll also try to see how the service providers can leverage their SQM capabilities to externally commit & contractually manage a set of differentiated Service Levels for their customers, potentially as a value-added sellable service.Backup:eTOM defines “Customer QoS/SLA Management” as:Monitoring, managing and reporting of delivered vs. contractual Quality of Service (QoS), as defined in the enterprise’s service descriptions, customer contracts or product catalogue.We might be using the terms of SQM, Service Assurance, QoS Monitoring quite interchangeably
- #5 Data services are the fastest growing revenue stream for mobile service providers. Its expected that almost 66 percent of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2014. Handset Video calling, Video Media sharing across enabled handsets, and use of mobile broadband on notebooks/netbooks for video streaming will drive its adoption, And as a result Mobile providers need to focus on a strategy for real-time QoE!Introduction of Convergent Network services (e.g. spanning across Fixed & Mobile technologies) also mandates the need for End2End SA/SQM practices & mindsetto be adopted, along with better automation and least human intervention
- #6 Due to the increasing saturationand rising competition in Telecommunications market, CEM is becoming much more relevant & indispensible for Telecom Service Providers in general. Service Providers today find themselves confronted with the growing challenge of setting themselves apart from competitors and securing the sustained loyalty of their customers at the same time. Despite freeoffers to attract and retain customers, eye-catching promotions for advanced smart phones, SMS “for life”, and unlimited data packages,tariffs and service plans across mobile markets are broadly similar. Consequently, it’s increasingly difficult – and expensive – to establishclear competitive advantage. With this in mind, service providers are refocusing attention on the subscriber experience!
- #7 Due to the increasing saturationand rising competition in Telecommunications market, CEM is becoming much more relevant & indispensible for Telecom Service Providers in general. Service Providers today find themselves confronted with the growing challenge of setting themselves apart from competitors and securing the sustained loyalty of their customers at the same time; however since the maximum growth potential lies in the broadband services domain so this is where we have the utmost need of maintaining the customer experience to prevent revenue leakage through churn!
- #8 If we look at the key factors and areas which are mandating the need to have a Proactive Service Assurance approach & toolset for MBB Service providers, these include “”. With service providers increasingly providing streaming and real-time mobile data services (e.g. Mobile TV), it is imperative to report on end-to-end service quality parameters – namely latency, packet loss and jitter/delay-variation.High growth rates for mobile Internet imply diligent capacity planning not only for the packet core elements (GGSNs and SGSNs) but also for the supporting switching and routing devices down to the interface levels. Capacity and Design improvement decisions like this have to be made proactively:“My West Region GGSN seems to be getting the most Internet traffic. Are the supporting switches and routers well equipped for the next year?”
- #9 The lack of linkages and cross visibility between mobile packet core and IP core networks The lack of integration between the different organizations and toolsets assigned to manage various parts of the networksThe problem is that there are times when systems report that everything is working as it should while customers contact call centerswith problems. At the heart of the limitations of network-centric monitoring are two interrelated issues: service diversity, and diagnosing and resolving problems
- #10 In many Service Provider organizations, no-one actually owns the subscriber service experience as neither have a view into neighbouring domains... Segmented operations and tools!
- #11 SP are asking today How do I manage new content-based services that span NETWORK & IT OPERATIONS/Datacenters?Once we have setup the right practices and tools to proactively monitor the end2end Mobile Infrastructure performance, it is equally & increasingly more important to thoroughly monitor the performance of Mobile Applications & Services (hosted internally or outside) in order to measure & report on the E2E Service Performance for Mobile Broadband service value chain. Now there could be multiple options to actually monitor the performance of Application services; it could include PDP Context Analysis, Deep Packet Inspection, Gathering GTP data from user & control planes etc. all this could be handled by a suitable APM application software which can then provide processed KPIs data to an E2E SQM application. In case of internally hosted business Apps, we could perform Application availability & response monitoring thru simulation/software probes and the results could be exported as KPIs again.
- #12 Service Quality management is an overlay function/system which requires a well defined, integrated and optimized Resource Provisioning, Fault & Performance management practice and toolset to be in first put in place as depicted in this block diagram; Performance Management has a special role to play here as this where we get the proactive view of how the resources and services could be behaving in near future, by using predictive trending on performance & capacity issues. And the good news is that all of these underlying functions & systems are usually present at most service providers, though in silos; however the evolution towards and E2E Service Quality Management approach & toolset is something not always there and hence this is on the agenda of our discussion today.The purpose of a TSC is for the SQM solution to be dynamically catalog driven for creation of service models and service definitions, as to be used for service impact calculations resulting from network/technical events. CRM integration could be included to provide the customer impact information when certain network resources or services are under a problem condition. And as I had just mentioned on the first slide that having an E2E SQM capability is one of the prime requirements for further being able to offer Service Levels and manage the SLAs & Customer Experience effectively….
- #13 KPI: “A measure of quality performance of network resources, e.g. a GPRS PDP context Activation Success Rate in areas where subscribers don’t have direct visibility.”KQI: “The measure of a specific aspect of the performance of a product, product components or service elements and is drawn from data from a number of resources.”QoE views could be created per subscriber types e.g. quality of email service for Blackberry subscribers, or quality of browsing for USB Data SIM customers etc. etc.
- #14 Currently in most service providers there is a lack of business-centric metrics available for consumer/broadband services that would help product management and marketing better plan these services and reduce customer churn; a rightly integrated and optimized SQM solution could help in this regard with necessary business service information enrichment. Also the solution could include dashboards for corporations that purchase enterprise data services (private APNs), enabling these corporations to view the performance of the respective private data service they have purchased from the carrier. It could also include a high level view of packet core performance that the service provider could offer to MVNOs. This enables the operator to build trust among existing customers and also offer reporting capabilities as an incentive for potential wholesale customers; or could be potentially sold a value-added premium service.
- #15 Currently in most service providers there is a lack of business-centric metrics available for consumer/broadband services that would help product management and marketing better plan these services and reduce customer churn; a rightly integrated and optimized SQM solution could help in this regard with necessary business service information enrichment. Also the solution could include dashboards for corporations that purchase enterprise data services (private APNs), enabling these corporations to view the performance of the respective private data service they have purchased from the carrier. It could also include a high level view of packet core performance that the service provider could offer to MVNOs. This enables the operator to build trust among existing customers and also offer reporting capabilities as an incentive for potential wholesale customers; or could be potentially sold a value-added premium service.
- #17 Empowered with this comprehensive e2e visibility, service providers will be able to more quickly troubleshoot and focus on the root causes of service degradation issues before customers are negatively impacted. This will also help them proactively plan the network capacities keeping in view the subscriber behavior and usage of the services offered.Such a holistic Service Quality Assurance approach should help the MBB service providers to prevent the ongoing explosion of data traffic volumes result in increase of their Operational Costs and decline of quality of services and customerbase.