Telekom Malaysia - Huawei

Data service & operational
challenges
Shandong is an economically developed
coastal province; its mobile market has
grown steadily over recent years, but this
growth has brought greater demand for
data services. These services have become the
battleground where operators compete for newly
added subscribers and cultivate new revenue streams.
China Unicom Shandong (Shandong Unicom)
has committed to this battle wholeheartedly. It
has carried out intensive marketing campaigns
under its own brand (Wo) and committed a
variety of other resources to furthering its data
service competitiveness. Its efforts have paid off
handsomely; its 2010 3G subscriber additions were
double what they were in 2009, while 3G revenue
jumped twelve fold. However, all this new business
was straining its infrastructure and outpacing its
O&M practices.
Shandong Unicom had trouble comparing
and managing service quality between different
hotspots; user perceptions were hard to quantify,
leading to lapses in quality control. A long E2E
service chain for mobile data; service diversity and
complexity; as well as varied assessment criteria for
service quality and user perception, all added to
their O&M management difficulties.
Subscriber data is also generally difficult to
access, making it difficult to identify and evaluate
data services. Currently, evaluation is performed
primarily through drive testing (DT) and call
quality testing (CQT), which are often performed
after complaints have been filed. While these tests
are suitable for finding dead spots in coverage,
they typically cannot isolate the fluid conditions
and traffic surges that often lead to disruptions in
today’s networks; they cannot paint a big picture of
what is happening on the network.
What’s more, even with network key performance
indicators (KPIs), user perceptions often remain
unclear. A core network’s put-through/call-through
rate and wireless call drop rate are both indicators of
network performance, but they do not reveal what
the user is hearing or experiencing.
Perception-based
optimization
Shandong Unicom partnered with Huawei to
explore user perceptions in depth. It has put into
place a QoS evaluation system meant to reflect
user perceptions. It has analyzed factors that affect
service quality throughout the connection process
and identified differences between terminals in
the provision of various services. This system has
enabled Shandong Unicom to carry out acrossthe-board
optimization at the network, service
platform, and device levels, which has led to
improved 3G operations and happier customers.
User perception indicators
Shandong Unicom has put into place a correlation
system for QoE, KQI and KPI, where real-world
service perceptions are quantified and used to
determine other relevant factors. It has established a
model for QoE, KQIs, and KPIs for certain services
and defined a five-level scale for QoE evaluation
ranging from very satisfied to very unsatisfied; then
DEC 2011
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