Does your KPIs still hold "The Key" to optimization

1. KPIs:Do theyneedtochange withtime?
I read somewhere that the KPIs are one of the most over used and littles understood terms. And I agree
with the same saying.
Although as the crux of the article is actually valid for every industry you may like to give it a read, but
being from telecom background my this post will be discussing specifics of more about Key Performance
indicator of Telecom networks, so If anyone here not looking for the same information can save time
without reading further.
What are KPIs?
Key performance indicators well everyone knows that (may be not) but in simple words these are the
data/counters/statistics which provide us the information how our network is performing. The goal is to get
some idea from the number how the network is for customers. Basic KPIs are (of course there are more
like MOS score, etc.):
 Availability: How much time the network is available in terms of time percentage for customers to
use that, now I need not to tell you that, it is required to be 100%
 Accessibility: How much of time (aggregated) if someone have to tried to access the network got
through.
 Retainability: How much time we can provide the network resources to the user till the time user
wanted to use the network, (1-drop rate).
 Mobility: For cellular networks it is more often known as Handover success rate moving from
coverage of one cell to other.
 Throughput: DL/UL speed.
Hold on here for some time and just look at these KPIs once again, these are same set of counters which
we are using from 2G to 3G to now even 4g. Most importantly from voice to data centric service era, from
the time when phone was only for calling to the time when Phone is not only smart but also a mobile
personal computer. Do these KPIs still make sense to you? Don’t we need to fetch/collect something
more valuable?
“Most people use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamp post, more for support than
illumination."

2. I seriously think in this world of superfast data services, the KPIs shall hold more insight of what users are
experiencing, how operators can improve their services pro-actively, what is the Return on investment,
what is the customer retention. It is not we need to induce any new counters, statistics built have to use
the already available data in more meaningful way.
The operator has to be proactive and smart to retain customers.
Here are few examples, happy to take suggestions/feedback for more :
1. Data plans per usage: Why customer has to bear the pain of choosing the correct data/voice
plans, operators can push in the customized plans per user based on Data/Voice volume usage
of customer.
2. Latched on to which Technology: Network expansion can be more planned if we get a sense the
average usage pattern of users and which technology they are latched to at which location and
time. May be customer does not have to worry about Switching on/off WiFi /Data of phone. Good
examples is Google Fi.
3. Return on Investment per cell per site: If the cell is added due to capacity requirements why don’t
have KPIs to check how much sense the site addition made.
4. Low throughput/ Low signal quality: What if user device can send measurement reports based on
MDT which gives a real time heat map where the coverage is low and where additional cells are
required.
5. Per feature based delta analysis: How does the feature added help my network or users does it
make sense to induce it to other cells of the network.
6. Customer retention/turnover: Delta analysis how many new customer or retained customers.