This is mission-critical management information, not only tied to traditional network views but also tied to subscribers, subscriber groups, handsets and geographical areas. Instead of just monitoring and maximizing OSS by using network performance data, operators can now support advanced decision-making within BSS and BI systems too.

Mobile data service performance: a new beast

While mobile data volumes are growing, they are also not the only challenge. The impact of the decoupling of control signalling from the “service plane” is even more evident in mobile data than with voice services. Hence, measuring service performance for mobile data is much more challenging. Once service delivery moves into the packet world, it becomes even more so. To effectively measure data service performance and, at the same time, deliver root-cause analysis, operators need to correlate subscriber positioning and KPI metrics such as throughput in real-time. This means transactions from the radio network need to be correlated with core network metrics for all customers at once, all the time and in real-time, capturing the essential while shaving off the irrelevant.

Service performance and “area off” effect

Often network problems and service outage issues are local in the mobile world. Thus, geo-positioning of base-stations coupled with positioning of subscribers can provide an unparalleled view of the actual service outage spread and impact. This information is vital in communication with customers as well as for assessments of the severity of a service outage. To make this happen, operators need to enrich their network data with geo-position in real-time as well as keep track of the number of unique subscribers utilizing services at any given time and in any given area.

The challenges in achieving this new OSS are considerable. For instance:

• Multiple Network Data Records need to be merged from a customer perspective to create a unified Customer Service Performance Record.
• The control plane must be linked to User plane records.
• Data must be correlated in real time.
• Data must be enriched with location information.
• State needs to be kept to understand who is where when a negative impact occurs.

Addressing the challenge 

The challenge for traditional OSS and BSS suppliers is to provide operators with a new paradigm. This will likely take the form of Assurance and Analytics applications that are based on probe data which is collected and consolidated to do the following:

• Provide a horizontal integration layer that is capable of acquisition and high-volume processing from a large number of individual sources simultaneously.
• Correlate from all network segments to create actionable information adapted to target applications. 
• Filter away and refine the raw data and thereby off-load the database layer by 90-95%.
• Manage data type diversity in both online and offline mode.

Such new applications will bridge the gap between the business and the technical departments of telecom operators. By bringing these different sides of the organization closer, new ways of looking at problems and possible solutions arise. They open up new possibilities for the Service Provider to make the best use of resources and achieve greater performance while, at the same time, satisfying customers' needs via:

• Better leveraging existing hardware,
• Removing hardware bottlenecks and lower total-cost-of-ownership (TCO),
• Simplifying operations when scaling architectures through automatic data distribution,
• Optimizing data streams,
• Gaining protection from disruptive changes in the network via a better picture of resource utilization,
• Ensuring the continuous availability of services,
• Seeing the complexity of the underlying network in one, end-to-end service experience record, and
• Minimizing revenue loss and reduce risk for churn!