2. Analytics and Automation Experience

In a virtualized environment, automation not only increases efficiency, but also the quality and speed, as elements of human error, inefficient repetition are removed, reducing the time for delivery of new services.

As the networks move into the cloud space, with the advent of NFV, which has the innate attribute of introducing velocity to the launch of new services, discerning customers of new services, especially of video and high speed data, require automated monitoring. The slightest service degradation can result in a barrage of calls to the Customer Care. New services almost always have a high speed, low latency, low jitter requirement, which, even in the most advanced LTE-A networks, are hard to control and manage. The better the operator’s control on these slippery KPIs, the more secure the business. Analytics, short term and long term, not only identify the impact of such KPIs on service performance, but also offer deep insights into customer usage and behavior patterns. They can also identify the customer’s proclivity to a particular type of app, device, location or time of day.

However, CSPs may have concerns about a fully analytics-driven automated system; they might not want to handover all operational control, until they understand the reliability and security offered by such systems. 

The pragmatic way to introduce automation is through:

1. Open Loop actions - recommended corrective actions that can be carried out through user action and verified;
2. Semi-closed loop actions - a combination of open loop and selected automatic actions whose outcomes are automatically monitored; and
3. Closed Loop actions - for those processes and activities which are repetitive, time-consuming and whose outcomes can be automatically monitored and corrected, in case of unsuitable results.

3. IoT Experience

Future 5G networks are expected to deliver latency as low as 1 ms and throughputs up to 10 gigabits/s, and support high bandwidth IoT in the future. Until 5G happens, the growth of sensor-based, connected smart devices that have begun to flood the global markets require efficient management. Billions of sensors coming together to form IoT networks, interconnecting millions of new devices in industries like healthcare, automotive, energy and smart cities, require low latency and high reliability. As machines continue to communicate with humans and with each other, the networks need to evolve to carry the rapidly-exchanged information. IoT traffic will not have the same bandwidth requirements as voice and video (since they are expected to be of bursty, polled or event based transactions), but because of little human interaction, the reliability and availability ask of the IoT networks is very high.

With the increase in wearable technology, motion based sensors, voice command and eye movement sensors, new devices and applications are emerging, adding to the digital traffic in networks.  As a result, the transactions carried out between connected objects will be tremendous, consuming short lengths of data at high speeds. Networks need to be scalable and secure to carry such multiple data bursts rapidly.

Because of IoT’s machine to machine interactions, effective feedback/corrective systems play a vital role in managing the IoT experience. With IoT-generated traffic crossing and loading CSP networks it is vital that OSS vendors evolve and develop new solutions and services to meet the CSP needs.

4. Reliability Experience

Reliability is vital in IoT networks. The acceptable level of service assurance for the above-mentioned critical IoT applications is 100%. However, current management of mobile networks does not assure this high level of reliability.

To improve reliability, the digital OSS must be able to expose open APIs to allow multiple systems to exchange management information rapidly for swift corrective actions. The capabilities of a digital OSS must cover fulfillment (ordering, provisioning, service and resource activation, service and resource inventory) and assurance (performance management, alarm management, threshold management).

Reliability of the network can also be increased by closed-loop automation of many operator processes, which reduces delays incorporated because of multi-function, multi-vendor and multi-technology inter-working.

The use of proactive NOC (network operation center) and SOC (security operation center) systems that are capable of combining dedicated as well as NFV network data and processing it for fast proactive actions will keep the reliability of networks at the required 100% level.