Transcript Networks and Services

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
2
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.
3
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?
3
How can it impact cost, revenues and customer
experience?
4
LTE Adoption : Malaysia has high growth potential among the
EMAP countries
350
12
300
10
250
8
200
6
150
Mobile voice
Mobile messaging
Mobile handset data
Mobile broadband
Mobile M2M
Mobile ARPU
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
0
2014
0
2013
2
2012
50
2011
4
2010
100
Fixed voice and narrowband
Fixed broadband and IPTV
Business network services
LTE adoption starts to
grow significantly
100%
90%
Australia
Hong Kong
80%
4G percentage of connections
14
LTE adoption in APAC, by country [Source: Analysys Mason, 2014]
ARPU/ASPU (USD per month)
400
2009
Revenue (USD billion)
Telecoms retail revenue by service type, emerging Asia–Pacific [Source:
Analysys Mason, 2014]
Japan
70%
Singapore
South Korea
60%
Taiwan
Bangladesh
50%
China
40%
India
Indonesia
30%
Malaysia
Pakistan
20%
Thailand
Fixed voice ASPU
Fixed broadband ASPU
10%
0%
2009
Vietnam
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
5
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]
12
22
20
Emerging
Asia–Pacific
4
2
14
Thailand
12
10
8
Developed
Asia–Pacific
Pakistan
China
Malaysia
Indonesia
Japan
Taiwan
6
4
South Korea Singapore
2
600
400
200
0
0
EMAP
MENA
LATAM
World
DVAP
SSA
NA
CEE
WE
0
Hong Kong
Australia
Usage (MB/month/pop)
1400
6
India
16
1200
8
1000
Growth multiple (1 = 2013)
18
800
10
Growth multiple (1 = 2013)
Bangladesh
6
Scenario: Complex services are driving network complexity
and Customers’ expectations are becoming more demanding
Illustrative
Anytime,
anywhere,
any device
 End-to-end performance management across devices, applications and
network (not just network availability)
CUSTOMER
 Secure and quality access to network-based data, applications from any
device and access medium
Digital services
Voice/VoLTE
Streaming video/content
Multiple
services
SERVICE
Social media
Enterprise
services
Mobile access
voice/data
IPTV
RESOURCE
Multiple
networks
Customers expect secure, high-quality access to network
IP/MPLS Core
VoIP
Operators offer diverse services relying on shared network
 Diverse services and applications, often relying on shared network
infrastructure
 Increased exposure to security threats and unplanned events
 Device- and access-agnostic services
There are issues in handling such a complex network
 Multiple, disparate (but converging), geographically dispersed networks
 Converged TDM/IP networks carrying large quantities of data
 Virtualised infrastructure with more logical connections than physical
 Multi-vendor infrastructure with interoperability challenges
Network
infrastructure
IMS
PSTN
7
Networks and Services: Now and the future: Customer
experience is PRIME and service quality is a key contributor
Now: Content and services for high speed LTE networks: Premium content for high value
users and popular content and OTT apps for other customers
Future: Personalised, differentiated services focused on Customer Lifecycle value
Music
UC
Core
content
now
Gaming
Video
Cloud
Storage
Future: Value-added Digital Economy services or Communications Services
exposure: Service provider or enabler?
Future: Dense HetNets and Software control that will provide the agility to enable
the new services at lower costs
Now: Customer and Network Analytics are merging to provide a total view of the
customers, their preferences and service usage
Now: Customer experience is key, to acquire and retain customers and increase usage
and ARPU. Service quality is a key contributor to customer experience
8
CSPs’ evolving business objectives will trigger network
changes that will indirectly drive operations automation
Business
objectives
Reduce
costs
Reduce
churn
Increase efficiency
of networks
Provide superior
customer experience
Increase
revenue
Provide high-value
data services
 CSPs will need to
maximise resource
utilisation across
What do CSPs
multiple network layers
need to change?
 CSPs need to rationalise
and automate operations
 CSPs will need to
provide differentiated,
personalised services to
customers
 CSPs need to ensure a
high level of customer
satisfaction
 CSPs will need to deploy
and maintain highcapacity, rapidly growing
networks with LTE
macros and small cells,
deployed in many layers
Desired
Outcomes?
 Decreasing churn rates
 Increasing data ARPU
 Making customer
analytics & geolocation
data available to OSS
enables personalised
service optimisation and
support
 Automated configuration
and optimisation can
enable CSPs to build
capacity faster and still
maintain a high-quality
network all the time
 Reduce capex and opex
 Automated service
management provides
How OSS
better quality networks
evolution can
and services at a lower
enable CSPs to
total cost of ownership
achieve this?
CSP – Communications service provider: a generic name for operators (network and virtual (MVNOs)
9
Service assurance functions will need to upgrade for more
features and functions to support LTE and beyond
▪
▪
▪
Customer experience management (CEM) on the
support stage of the customer lifecycle: Service
problems need to be solved before they impact
customers. 56% of CSPs believe QoS influences
customers willingness to recommend a CSP.1
Real-time data network monitoring, IP traffic
management and network analytics – for
customer centric view to cater to LTE data
monetisation strategies.
LTE brings more RAN layers. Unified assurance
systems are needed for cross domain correlation for
fast root-cause analysis of network / service issues
▪
Performance monitoring data becomes critical for
Network benchmarking, Trending and Predictive
operations across the network
▪
Network provisioning / Service activation /
Network Optimisation needs to be efficient and
automated enough to drive changes faster
▪
Information sharing between functional areas like
Operations, Customer Care, NPO etc is essential
Customer
Experience
applications
Predictive
Operations
Trending
Customer
records
Service management
Analytics
Probe systems
Active
Passive
Remote
test
DPI
SLA
Impact
analysis
Capacity
planning
Fault and event
management
Performance
monitoring
Workforce
automation
Root cause
analysis
IP / Ethernet
Home network
management
Network
topology
Counter
analysis
Dispatch
Discovery
Polling
ACS
End
user
Mobile
phone
KPI/KQI
NMS – SON, Configuration management
CPE
Access
network
Aggregation
network
Core
network
IT network
Virtualised
services
10
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 optimisation techniques will enable a
better customer experience
▪
End to End Service management becomes
imperative. Probe solutions that are capable of
correlating control-plane and user-plane data for
effective troubleshooting will be needed.
▪
Service management - Service KQI reporting
application for VoLTE; per-subscriber reporting with
likely cause of service quality disruption
▪
▪
End-to-end call trace data can be very valuable for
troubleshooting QoS issues. This information can be
enriched with real-time network data obtained from
passive probes and performance monitoring
systems to develop a more comprehensive QoS
monitoring approach.
Voice QoS measurement techniques - Perceptual
evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) / Perceptual
objective listening quality assessment (POLQA) will
be needed
VoLTE application
KQIs
•
•
•
•
•
•
Accessibility
Retainability
Integrity
Availability
Mobility
QoS – POLQA,
PESQ
Service management
Real-time mediation/analytics
Performance
monitoring
Fault/Event
management
Mobile
access
Backhaul
and
aggregation
Mobile
packet
core
Probe
systems
IMS, app
and
content
domains
11
CSPs should evolve towards customer centric operations
models with ICT transformation
Leap of faith
Network
operations
centre
(NOC)
99%
90%
10%
Fix the basics
Service
operations
Centre
(SOC)
Customer
connection
Customer
Experience
Center
(CXC)
Network-centric
operations
Service-centric
operations
Customer-centric
operations
 Focused on network
elements and OSS
 Starting point for all
CSPs
 CSPS will retain their
NOC and outsource
functions
 SOC require new
service management
systems and more indepth systems
integration to monitor
and manage services
 Bharti Airtel, Vodafone
and Telefónica are a
few CSPs deploying
advanced CEM
systems on top of their
SOC tools.
12
If you don’t know where you are going any road will take you
there, but …
IT, BSS
and SDP
SDP
IT and
architecture
architecture
IT, BSS and SDP
IT and SDP
technologies
technologies
Customer and Service
Service
layer layer
Network
Network
architecture
architecture
… in a competitive
environment CSPs must
Operations
Operations
choose the right
approaches
and
approaches transformation path to
practices
& practices
navigate
Transformation
Analytics
ICT
Transformation
(is for cost
(Data
optimisation)
Transformation
Roadmap
transformation)
Operations
architecture
OSS architecture
Key
transformation
challenges for
South Asia
CSPs?
 Stabilising the organisation from volatile changes.
 Building realisticNetwork
and achievable ICT transformation
Operationsprogrammes, as more ambitious
Network
initiatives have
higher risks an will be harder
to justify the business case.
technologies
Technologies
technologies
OSS
technologies
 Establishing a sound Project management office (PMO)
13
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.
 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.
14
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.
 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.
15
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
penetration rate exceeds 200% (based on 3 months active
SIMs).
 About 28 million roaming users were on Hong Kong’s mobile
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
2013.
 The operator launched a customer experience management
(CEM) transformation programme in 2009 to improve
customer loyalty, starting with corporate/premium customers.
 Corporate customers account for 20% of PCCW-HKT’s
subscriber base, but generate 70% of its service revenue.
 PCCW-HKT’s CEM strategy focused on the following goals:
Figure 1: Key metrics before and after implementation of PCCW-HKT’s CEM
transformation plan [Source: Analysys Mason and PCCW-HKT, 2013]
2012
Pre-implementation
2013
Post-implementation
Postpaid ARPU
HKD185
(USD23.85)
Postpaid ARPU
HKD210
(USD27.05)
(13% increase)
Mean time to
identify faults was
3 hours
Mean time to
identify faults now
30 minutes
Drive test and
on-site visits by
technicians to
assess network
coverage
67% reduction in
cost to assess
corporate users’
network coverage
 providing a unified view of the customer experience
 improving customer satisfaction among corporate and
high-value, VIP customers in order to reduce churn
 reducing the mean time to resolve problems related to
billing inquiries and service disruptions
 reducing the cost of acquiring new corporate customers.
16
 Systems design, implementation and
configuration are most effective when they
Rationalisation of tools and
follow the business and operational
systems are aimed at
processes.
consolidating and linking
information
sources
 Existing BSS/OSS
must be
evolve to take on
new features to support new services.
an ICT transformation
 Processes must meet strategic business
needs as well as tactical technical and
operational requirements.
 Processes re-engineering is more complex
than greenfield process development.
Customer-centric
Re-skilling of staff is
essential for any
objectives
 Process transformation.
implementation
is more
This
Business led programs are
dependent
on achieving
the organisation
and people
enables
more
 Resistance essential
to change
lead
for can
leading
theto issues
than systems.
tasks with the same people
change
assessing the existing
environment can be
 Skilled staff need to be utilized optimally by:

increasing business and operations
process transparency
disruptive to CSP’s business and customer
experience / satisfaction
 Change must be incremental, not drastic

centralising and coordinating operations

making actions proactive
 Poor change management can lead to loss of
expert resources

increasing knowledge and skill sharing
 Personal attachments can lower team spirit
Change
Organisation
 Network virtualisation, analytics of Big Data and
flexible API-enabled service layer software
oriented ICT architecture are needed
 Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is
only a process guideline and each CSP needs
Merging / processes
mapping of to
eToM
tailored operational
align with the
and
ITIL
processes
is
key
in
eTOM framework.
Processes
Systems
Successful transformation need a pragmatic, long-term
organisational approach, where the customer is king
17
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
Shanthi.Ravindran
@analysysmason.
com
She is an expert in designing optimized, End to End solutions across Access
Network, Circuit and Packet Core, IMS, Subscriber Databases and Policy,
OSS and BSS with a strong understanding of the applicable telecoms and
network evolution standards.
17