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Astellia:
Tuning the RAN in real time
to optimize end-to-end performance
A conversation with Vicent Soler
CTO RAN Optimization
Astellia
By Monica Paolini
Senza Fili

In collaboration with

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Astellia
RAN optimization
solutions
Astellia provides end-to-end network and
subscriber intelligence solutions to mobile
operators. The solution Astellia developed for RAN
optimization works within this wide perspective:
RAN performance has to be tuned to make sure
both that the resource utilization is efficient and
that the subscriber experience meets the
customers expectations. To do so, it is crucial to
collate data from handsets, core network
elements and RAN to understand where the
bottlenecks are, and how to remove them.

network element, cell, APN, QCI, application,

group of subscribers, and device.
Nova RAN Optimizer, which operates across
technologies, spectrum bands, and vendors,
collecting and analyzing network equipment call
traces to allow mobile operators to continuously
monitor and optimize their RAN from a central
location.
These tools enable mobile operators to use
geolocation to optimize RAN performance at a
high spatial resolution. The Nova solution
identifies incorrect network parameter settings
and recommends corrective actions (e.g., add or
remove neighbor relations, resolve PSC/PCI
clashes). It also identifies congested and poorcoverage areas where the operator may want to

expand the network. Finally, Nova detects

performance issues linked to device-specific
behavior due, for example, to high signaling
levels caused by some handset models.
The Nova solution is designed to monitor and
improve SON effectiveness by enabling further
automation in the network configuration and
optimization processes, thus reducing opex.
In addition to the traditional macro
environment, the Nova solution supports smallcell deployments and challenging environments
such as high-mobility areas (e.g., passenger
trains or highways) and special events (e.g.,
games in stadiums). It can also help operators
evaluate new technologies and equipment.

The Nova solution enables Astellia to work on the

CEM and analytics side with its Nova Customer
Analytics and Nova Care applications and on the
network optimization side, with an additional four
modules:
Nova Explorer, an application for end-to-end
troubleshooting, from core to RAN, which
enables operators to identify causes of
subscriber complaints and performance
impairment.
Nova Alerter, for real-time fault detection
triggered by QoE metrics and traditional KPIs.
Nova Performance Analytics, generating multidimensional dashboards, reports and KPIs per

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Astellia
Tuning the RAN in
real time to optimize
end-to-end
performance
A conversation with Vicent Soler,
CTO RAN Optimization, Astellia
Monica Paolini: Good morning and welcome to
our conversation on RAN optimization with Vicent
Soler, CTO RAN Optimization at Astellia Spain.
Vicent, thanks for taking the time to talk to us
today.

Our solution and services address the needs of

different teams such as network performance,
customer care and marketing, but our DNA lies in
RAN optimization. That is, we have more than 15
years of experience in RAN optimization. Our Nova
RAN Optimizer solution has recently been
awarded Best Test and Measurement Solution at
the LTE Awards 2015.
Monica: What are the major pain points of the
operators that youre trying to address?
Vicent: 80% of quality and hence customer
experienceimpacting issues occur in the RAN. To
provide a seamless user experience across radio
access technologies and layers, it is therefore
extremely important for mobile operators to focus
optimization activities on this part of the network.
Without performing any drive tests, Astellias
solution pinpoints coverage holes and traffic
hotspots and detects bad RF conditions from a
subscriber perspective.

Vicent: Networks are evolving into very complex

multi-technology, heterogeneous environments
(2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, etc.). So automation of
repetitive RAN optimization tasks is needed. It
saves time and money, and it allows radio
engineers to focus their optimization activities on
more complex issues, on high-value customers and
high-value locations like tourist attractions,
shopping malls, business centers, roads, airports
and high-speed train lines. It helps operators move
from network-centric to customer-centric
optimization.
For instance, we helped Orange Spain to optimize
its network for business travelers on board highspeed trains. These are very complex
environments due to the high speed at which
customers are moving, but Astellia managed to
separate out those people who are actually on the
train and focus optimization activities on these
users. This allowed Orange to become the best
service provider on high-speed trains in Spain and
created a real competitive differentiator for them.

Vicent Soler: Its a pleasure.

Monica: Vicent, can you give us an introduction as
to what youre doing at Astellia?
Vicent: Astellia is a leading provider of network
and subscriber intelligence, helping mobile
operators drive customer experience and business
performance.
Over 200 mobile operators use our vendorindependent monitoring solution based on probes
and call traces to detect, report and troubleshoot
issues related to network performance, handset
behavior and subscriber usage.

We perform radio sanity checks, meaning that we

provide automated analysis to detect incorrect
radio settings in neighbor list optimization; BA list,
PSC and PCI clashes; crossed sectors; cell
overshooting, etc.
Astellia also guarantees configuration parameter
consistency by identifying out-of-range values,
missing elements and conflicting settings.
Monica: Traditionally, RAN optimization has been
done in a manual fashion, and this is changing.
Why is that so?

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Monica: Optimization typically starts with a

problem, and, increasingly, the problem is with
subscribers. Subscribers say quality of experience
is not good, and operators have to address it.
If video doesnt work well, it may be difficult to
identify the cause. It could be in the RAN. It could
be in the core. It could be in the handset. How do
you figure that out?
Vicent: You are right. A multitude of elements
have an impact on the customer experience:
device and OS type, latency, congestion,
applications used, network topology, location,
time, etc.

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In order to decide how and where to optimize the

network, and to ensure a good customer
experience, mobile operators therefore need a
holistic, end-to-end view of the subscriber, the
network, the device and application usage.

Monica: How do you use geolocation to optimize

the RAN or to understand what goes wrong? And
how can you do so without getting completely
flooded with all the details of where subscribers
are and what they do?

Astellias solution correlates control plane, user

plane and call trace information. It thereby
provides this end-to-end view, from radio all the
way up to the core.

Vicent: There are different use cases with

geolocation. Geolocation represents, for instance,
a very cost-efficient alternative to drive tests for
measuring RF network quality; it can reduce field
drive testing by 90%.

This allows us to identify low-performing network

elements, measure device impact on the network,
benchmark handsets, analyze application usage
and understand customer mobility.
So, Astellia not only brings this 360 vision of the
subscriber experience, but also identifies the root
cause of the problems a subscriber might face.
Monica: Sometimes when you talk to operators,
theyre wary of the increase in complexity that
optimization may cause. How can you avoid that?
Vicent: As I mentioned before, Astellia is a real
RAN champion. With that I mean that we do not
only have a solid multi-vendor and multitechnology monitoring and troubleshooting
solution, but we also provide a wide range of
consulting services such as network performance
optimization, equipment parameter
reconfiguration, etc. to help operators manage
this increased complexity. Operators can also
check that both network performance and
customer experience improve after parameters
change, with our reliable, vendor-independent, KPI
trend analysis tool.

By the massive use of call traces we are collecting

daily hundreds of thousands of measurement
reports on each cell, which includes geolocation
information we are hereby turning every
subscriber into a drive-tester.
In contrast, drive tests can only generate a dozen
measurement reports and therefore do not reflect
the real customer experience.
Additionally, drive tests are often inefficient at
reproducing an issue reported by a subscriber,
since 70% of voice calls and 80% of data sessions
occur indoors. They only provide QoS snapshots at
a certain moment in time.
Finally, drive tests do not provide any information
on handset performance, which is critical when
evaluating the customer experience.
With our Nova solution, mobile operators can
benefit from up-to-date maps of their network
coverage and performance. In order to obtain the
same results with drive testing, it would require a
long and costly drive test campaign, and thereafter
measurements would have to be extrapolated to

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simulate overall coverage and network behavior,

including indoor and outdoor maps.
Astellia also helps operators pinpoint black spots
or coverage holes. If an optimization engineer is
able to geolocate the areas with a high number of
dropped calls, then he can focus his optimization
efforts on that area.
Another relevant use case is small-cell planning.
Right now, operators are looking for solutions to
offload the traffic from the macro cells, and having
information about where subscribers are located is

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very useful to define the right position to deploy

new small cells.
Then, there are use cases not directly related to
RAN optimization but to support functions like
marketing and customer care.
Marketing, for instance, can engage immediately
with a customer entering a predefined area. Some
examples of use cases are guaranteeing public
safety by notifying people in real time when they
are entering a hazardous area; location-based
advertising; analysis of population flows for road
traffic information; analysis of catchment areas
around commercial centers, etc.
Without geolocation information, it is hard to
determine where an issue happened to a specific
subscriber. If customer care agents can geolocate
the area or cell where the problem occurred, they
can diagnose whether the subscriber is the only
one impacted or the problem is global to the cell.
This is particularly useful to check if the subscriber
is experiencing an already known issue, or to
proactively prioritize network operations based on
the number of impacted subscribers.
Monica: Basically, you help operators to decide
where they should put small cells where they
need capacity?
Vicent: Yes. Knowing the right position for a new
site deployment is critical. In some cases, you may
want to reduce the traffic on the macro cell. In
other cases, you may want to improve the quality
of the subscriber experience. So we have to be
able to combine different indicators to provide the
right answer to our customers.

Monica: Increasing
capacity only where you
need it saves capex and
opex for the mobile
operator. How can you
help operators manage
that, specifically?
Vicent: Mobile
operators can no longer
massively add network
capacity. They need to
optimize the use of their
existing equipment and
radio resources first
before investing in new
capacity.
They can reduce capex,
for instance, by reducing
congestion through
optimization of the
antenna tilt or by adding a new carrier or by
redefining engineering rules to move traffic
between different carriers.
At the end, optimization not only means capex and
opex reduction, but can mean an increase in
revenues as well. By focusing optimization
activities on high-value subscribers and on the
most revenue-generating areas, there will be an
increase in voice, SMS and data traffic, and global
revenues will be boosted.
Monica: This is quite important, especially as
network complexity grows with small cells and
HetNets, where you have multiple layers
interacting with each other. How can an operator
deal with that?

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Vicent: When you deploy new carriers on specific

sites, for instance, you have to rebuild the
parameterization of that site. Our solution is able
to cope with very complex engineering rules, to
ensure that the traffic is moving between all the
carriers as specified.
In some cases, we have seen situations where the
operators were deploying new carriers and the
carriers were not covering any traffic. They were
not used, and it was basically due to issues with
the parameterization.
Its clear that you have to deploy new carriers and
new sites. But you have to be sure that the
network is under control, and that newly deployed
cells are properly optimized as soon as possible.
Automation, again, is one of the key tasks here,

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because it ensures that the configuration of all the

cells in the sites is properly defined.
Monica: How does your solution relate to SON?
Vicent: SON is needed to reduce the complexity of
RAN heterogeneity. SON allows RAN optimization
engineers to spend less time on recurring tasks
and focus more on added-value optimization
tasks. Through automation you reduce the risk of
inconsistencies, human error. For instance, an RF
optimization team needed 8.5 hours to perform a
complete optimization process on a cluster, while
with automation it took less than 1 hour.
One of the applications of SON is ANR. Our
solution automatically defines the right
recommendations for different use cases, and it
automatically delivers these recommendations to
the OSS. If desired, the operator can see the
recommendations provided by our tool before
they are sent to the OSS.
When you have a customer complaint and you
need to understand whats happening, SON
probably is not useful. In that case, you need a
monitoring solution with the capability to drill
down into the root cause.
In other situations, what you need is just to be
sure that the network is under control, and SON
gives you this capability.
In RAN optimization, you need to have all these
capabilities to be able to understand whats
happening. In some cases, it can be an issue with a
customer or with the handset. In other cases, it
can be an issue with neighbor cells, or with a
parameter setting.

I think that in the end, RAN optimization solutions

should cover all these things, including
geolocation, SON, monitoring and automation.
Monica: Another dimension here is voice, and
especially VoLTE. How can you help operators with
that?
Vicent: Astellia is involved in many FUTs and
provides dashboards to efficiently benchmark
equipment vendors, assess interoperability issues
between vendors, and detect malfunctioning
handsets. End-to-end monitoring here is very
important; therefore Astellia provides SRVCC
dashboards.
Monica: This is very important, especially for
applications like VoLTE. It may look like the traffic
is flowing perfectly well in the RAN, but then the
problem may be somewhere else, so you need to
have the end-to-end solution.
Vicent: You are right, its very important to have
the end-to-end vision and the capability to
monitor the user plane and control plane, from
radio to core network.
Monica: In addition to VoLTE and OTT voice, we
are seeing the introduction of Wi-Fi calling. Can
you help operators with that as well?
Vicent: Yes, we are monitoring the IMS, which
allows us to understand if the subscriber is using
Wi-Fi or the cellular network. Also, we can provide
all the signaling messages end-to-end, down to the
radio.

But they still need to know what the performance

is, so they can make their own decisions. So you
enable them to do the same analysis, whether its
Wi-Fi or 3G?
Vicent: Even if Wi-Fi access points cannot be
optimized, we can measure QoS of a Wi-Fi call
from EPC to IMS and detect any QoS issues.
Astellia has a single solution that is able to monitor
all interfaces related to voice and have the same
indicators.
Monica: As mobile networks become virtualized,
its very important to have an end-to-end
optimization approach.
Vicent: As the network goes virtual, so do probes.
Astellias full virtualized monitoring solution is
based on Open Stack and can feed the NFV
orchestrator. For instance, it provides the right
information so that the orchestrator can allocate
additional resources to congested areas serving
high-value customers.
Monica: Im sure you talk to many operators.
What do you think are the major challenges they
are facing now, or that they are looking to tackle in
the near future?
Vicent: What we see is that operators have to
manage their immensely complex multitechnology and multi-vendor networks.
On top of that complexity, they have to keep
capex and opex under control while supporting an
increasingly diverse range of subscriber behaviors
and connected devices. They need the data, tools
and expertise to understand and reduce customer

Monica: This is quite important, because for Wi-Fi,

operators may not have control over the APs, or
they might not have any visibility into the network.
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churn, to boost customer experience, and to

increase revenues.
Big data will be a big help in this. All Astellia
solutions are already big-data compatible thanks
to Kafka connectors, so we can feed valuable
information (CDRs) into operators big-data lake.
On top of that, we are developing typical use cases
(e.g., segmentation) and creating customized
reports and statistics.
Another challenge is HetNet rollouts. It is crucial
for operators to extend coverage and capacity.
One of the challenges of HetNet is to be able to
optimize Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G, and put in place an
efficient strategy of offloading and onloading
according to QoE and the user.

Monica: What are you working on at Astellia right

now? And what do you see as becoming a hot
topic over the next few years?
Vicent: Automation remains very important, so we
keep on working on that. Customer analytics is
also something that is extremely relevant.
Of course, 5G is coming, and our company is also
entering into this new world. Im sure that in the
following months, in the following years, we will
see a lot of changes in the market because of 5G.
Glossary

We also see that more and more operators are

trying to break their silo structure and are looking
to create a SOC, or service operation center, a
centralized structure that allows divisions such as
marketing, customer care and network operations
to work more closely together and to provide a
holistic picture of the customer experience.
Astellia is supporting operators to implement this
new transversal structure.

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ANR
AP
APN
BA
BCCH
CCO
CDR
CEM
CRM

Automatic network relation

Access point
Access Point Name
BCCH Allocation
Broadcast control channel
Coverage and capacity
optimization
Charging data record
Customer experience
management
Customer relationship
management

E2E
EPC
FUT
HetNet
IMS
KPI
LTE
NFV
MRO
OMC
OS
OSS
OTT
PCI
PSC
QCI
QoE
QoS
RAN
RF
SMS
SOC
SON
SRVCC
VoLTE

End-to-end
Evolved Packet Core
Friendly user test
Heterogeneous network
IP multimedia subsystem
Key performance indicator
Long Term Evolution
Network Functions Virtualization
Mobility robustness optimization
Organization and Maintenance
Center
Operating system
Operations support systems
Over the top
Physical cell ID
Primary Scrambling Code
QoS class indicator
Quality of experience
Quality of service
Radio access network
Radio frequency
Short message service
Service operation center
Self-organizing network
Single Radio Voice Call Continuity
Voice over LTE

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About Astellia
Astellia is a leading provider of network and subscriber intelligence enabling mobile operators to drive business
performance and customer experience. Astellias vendor-independent real-time monitoring and troubleshooting
solution covers end-to-end 2G, 3G and 4G from radio access to core network. Astellias scalable products and
expert services address the needs of operators full value chain: CEM, network performance, customer care,
marketing and big data. Astellia has close partnerships with more than 200 telecom operators globally.
Headquartered in France, Astellia has worldwide presence with offices in Brazil, Canada, India, Lebanon, Russia,
Singapore, South Africa, Spain and USA. Follow Astellia at astellia.com, on LinkedIn and at #Astellia_news.

About Vicent Soler Ruiz

Vicent Soler Ruiz leads Astellia's subsidiary in Spain. Vicent joined the UPVLC iTEAM research institute in 2001 to
develop projects related to mobile wireless communications for UMTS, IMS and GSM technologies. In 2007, he
founded Ingenia Telecom S.L. and became CTO, leading the technical and inNovation strategy of the company.
Vicent received an M.S. degree in Telecommunications engineering in 2001 from the Universitat Politcnica de
Valncia (UPVLC), Spain. His final degree project was awarded with the National Prize from Universidad
Politcnica de Madrid within the Amena-Auna cooperation framework with the topic Mobile system for the live
transmission of images through Internet.

This conversation is included in the Senza Fili report

The smart RAN. Trends in the optimization of spectrum and network resource utilization,
prepared in collaboration with RCR Wireless News and available for download
from www.rcrwireless.com and www.senzafiliconsulting.com

About RCR Wireless News

Since 1982, RCR Wireless News has been providing wireless and mobile industry news, insights, and analysis to
industry and enterprise professionals, decision makers, policy makers, analysts and investors. Our mission is to
connect, globally and locally, mobile technology professionals and companies online, in person, in print and now
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databases and digital networks leads readers and advertisers to consistently choose RCR Wireless News over
other industry publications.

About Senza Fili

Senza Fili provides advisory support on wireless data technologies and services. At Senza Fili we have in-depth
expertise in financial modeling, market forecasts and research, white paper preparation, business plan support,
RFP preparation and management, due diligence, and training. Our client base is international and spans the
entire value chain: clients include wireline, fixed wireless and mobile operators, enterprises and other vertical
players, vendors, system integrators, investors, regulators, and industry associations.
We provide a bridge between technologies and services, helping our clients assess established and emerging
technologies, leverage these technologies to support new or existing services, and build solid, profitable business
models. Independent advice, a strong quantitative orientation, and an international perspective are the
hallmarks of our work. For additional information, visit www.senzafiliconsulting.com or contact us at
info@senzafiliconsulting.com or +1 425 657 4991.

About the interviewer

Monica Paolini, PhD, is the founder and president of Senza Fili. She is an expert in wireless technologies and has
helped clients worldwide to understand technology and customer requirements, evaluate business plan
opportunities, market their services and products, and estimate the market size and revenue opportunity of new
and established wireless technologies. She has frequently been invited to give presentations at conferences and
has written several reports and articles on wireless broadband technologies. She has a PhD in cognitive science
from the University of California, San Diego (US), an MBA from the University of Oxford (UK), and a BA/MA in
philosophy from the University of Bologna (Italy). You can reach her at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.

2015 Senza Fili Consulting, LLC. All rights reserved. This paper was prepared on behalf of Astellia. The transcription of the conversation has been edited for consistency and readability. The document can be
distributed only in its integral form and acknowledging the source. No selection of this material may be copied, photocopied, or duplicated in any form or by any means, or redistributed without express written
permission from Senza Fili Consulting. While the document is based upon information that we consider accurate and reliable, Senza Fili Consulting makes no warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy of the
information in this document. Senza Fili Consulting assumes no liability for any damage or loss arising from reliance on this information. Trademarks mentioned in this document are property of their respective
owners. Cover-page and last-page graphics from Dmytro Titov/Adobe.