Procera Mobile Subscriber Experience For Dummies PDF

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Mobile Subscriber
Experience
Procera Networks Special Edition
by Cam Cullen and Keith Brody
These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Mobile Subscriber Experience For Dummies®, Procera Networks Special Edition
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Table of Contents
Introduction........................................................ 1
About This Book......................................................................... 1
Icons Used in This Book............................................................. 2
Beyond the Book......................................................................... 2
Chapter 1: Mobile Subscriber Experience Basics . . . . . 3

The Subscriber Experience Battleground................................ 4
Loyalty and disruption..................................................... 4
Retaining subscribers is a cash cow.............................. 5
Introducing Mobile Subscriber Experience Software............. 6
Truly understanding your subscribers.......................... 7
What mobile subscriber experience
software can do............................................................. 7
Meeting Subscriber Needs without Breaking the Bank.......... 8
Chapter 2: Gathering and Analyzing Data. . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Big Data Is Your Friend............................................................ 11
Moving into Real Time............................................................. 12
DPI: The Value of Intelligence.................................................. 13
Monetizing Your Data............................................................... 16
Chapter 3: Intelligent Charging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Intelligent Charging 101........................................................... 18
What to Look for in an Intelligent Charging Solution........... 19
Service charging implementation................................. 19
Service velocity............................................................... 20
Tiered charging............................................................... 21
Zero-rating....................................................................... 21
Chapter 4: Congestion Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Congestion Management 101................................................... 24
Understanding congestion domains............................ 24
RAN awareness............................................................... 25
What to Look for in a Congestion Management Solution.... 26
Managing queues............................................................ 27
Hierarchical management.............................................. 27
Parallel queuing.............................................................. 28
Performance.................................................................... 28
iv Mobile Subscriber Experience For Dummies
Chapter 5: Network Quality Assurance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Network Quality Assurance 101.............................................. 29
Active queue management............................................ 30
Fairness: Democracy in the network............................ 30
What to Look for in a Network Quality Assurance
Solution.................................................................................. 32
Managing queues............................................................ 33
Fair usage......................................................................... 33
Analytics and forecasting.............................................. 34
Usage management......................................................... 34
Chapter 6: Location, Location, Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Location Awareness 101.......................................................... 35
What to Look for in a Location Awareness Solution............ 37
Location analytics.......................................................... 37
Congestion management............................................... 38
Location-based service plans........................................ 38
Customer care visibility................................................. 39
Crowd-sourced drive testing......................................... 39
Chapter 7: Ten Wins for Subscriber Experience. . . . . . 41

Happy Customers!..................................................................... 41
Save Your Bacon....................................................................... 41
Know Your Subscribers........................................................... 42
Save Your Customers Money.................................................. 42
Deliver a World-Class Network............................................... 42
Differentiate Your Service Offerings....................................... 42
Become Proactive, Not Just Reactive..................................... 42
Diagnose and Solve Customer Issues Quickly....................... 43
High-Value Customers Get High-Quality Service.................. 43
Great Data, Not Just Big Data.................................................. 43
Introduction
M obile phone subscribers today are personally and
professionally reliant on their networks. Folks are
increasingly aware of the options they have and are demand-
ing always-on connectivity while refusing to tolerate any
downtime or delays.
In fact, a 2014 study by Nokia found that 41 percent of global

customers think an operator must offer excellent network
quality, even if it costs more to do so. Worryingly for the
industry, the study also found that messaging and Internet
service quality falls short of customer expectations in all
markets — with 60 percent experiencing problems with
mobile data and application usage.
So it’s increasingly vital for operators to assure the quality of

subscribers’ experiences.
A Mobile Subscriber Experience solution can help you meet

your subscribers’ needs and even predict what they want
before they want it. Mobile Subscriber Experience solutions
can help you solve problems related to network performance.
They can also enable personalized communication with the
customer and help you pinpoint exactly what each subscriber
needs. Such a solution can track data in such a fine-grained
manner that you will be able to invest in infrastructure that
you genuinely need.
About This Book

This book introduces you to the topic of mobile subscriber
experience software. These technologies use a wide variety
of data-gathering and analytic techniques to discover what
your customers are doing and create better service for them.
This technology is becoming essential for providers that want

to keep subscribers happy and bring new subscribers on
board.
2 Mobile Subscriber Experience For Dummies
Icons Used in This Book

As you flip through the pages of the book, you’ll see several
helpful icons in the margins of the book that flag particular
types of information.
This icon flags information that you should try to keep in

mind.
A Tip icon points out practical advice that can save you time
or trouble.
You don’t have to love technical details to read this book, but
if you do, this icon flags information you will find especially
interesting. If you’d prefer to skip over such arcane details,
go right ahead.
Beyond the Book

For more information on Procera’s take on mobile subscriber
experience, you can take a look at www.proceranetworks.com.
Chapter 1
Mobile Subscriber
Experience Basics
In This Chapter
▶▶Understanding why subscriber experience is important
▶▶Introducing mobile subscriber experience software
▶▶Understanding commercial challenges that face operators
M obile subscriber experience describes a relatively new

category of software that has become essential for
providers of mobile broadband services.
The mobile market is in a state of massive, ongoing flux. The

old ways of doing business no longer work. The best way to
gain and retain subscribers now is to track their every move
with sophisticated software. That’s where mobile subscriber
experience comes in. It can crunch data to give you measur-
able, competitive advantages in real time by allowing you to
know exactly what your subscribers are up to now and what
they’re likely to ask for next.
This chapter discusses how the subscriber experience affects

subscriber retention and why that’s important. We also
explain some of the basics of what mobile subscriber experi-
ence is and what it can do for you.
Mobile subscriber experience software not only gives you an

advantage in immediately understanding and managing the
present, but also in being able to respond ahead of time to
what’s likely to happen next!
It costs roughly seven times less to retain a subscriber than

to replace one after he or she has churned. That advantage
simply can’t be accrued if the service provider doesn’t com-
pletely understand what its subscribers are experiencing.
The Subscriber Experience

Battleground
Telco subscribers rely on their fixed and mobile broadband
networks more and more. Problems using those networks (for
example, in the form of dropped VoIP calls or failure to load
a web page) result in dissatisfaction, increased subscriber
support time, and, eventually, frustrated subscribers who just
give up and move to another operator. This process of sub-
scribers moving to another operator is called churn.
Reducing churn is a major goal in telco, because retaining

subscribers means more money in your pocket. (For more on
this, see the section “Retaining subscribers is a cash cow.”)
But an intelligent network can cater to what subscribers want
and dramatically reduce churn.
Loyalty and disruption

When studying the subscriber experience, you want to look at
both existing and new subscribers:
✓✓Loyalty of existing customers: You can study your exist-

ing customers to see what makes them stick with you.
By understanding which services they use and value
and gaining other insights into subscribers’ behavior, it
becomes possible to design and offer increasingly attrac-
tive service packages. Plus, service experience can pro-
vide the ideas for new business model innovations.
✓✓Disruption caused by customer churn: With new sub-
scribers, service experience can allow you to respond
almost immediately to their needs in a highly personal-
ized way. It can drive nontraditional but effective new
billing models. It can underpin a level of subscriber
satisfaction that would be difficult if not impossible to
achieve without the insights the knowledge of service
experience can provide.
Chapter 1: Mobile Subscriber Experience Basics 5
We talk more about how to track subscriber experience
using software in the section “Introducing Mobile Subscriber
Experience Software.”
Retaining subscribers
is a cash cow
It’s a well-known truth in the world of marketing that the
health of a subscriber-based business is better reflected by
its renewal rates than by its customer acquisition rates. The
media industry, too, has known this for a long time. That’s
why major magazines and newspapers have long prioritized
renewals over any other type of marketing.
Traditionally, mobile service providers have focused mainly

on acquiring new subscribers while paying less attention to
existing ones. In fact, the mobile market ignored the benefits
of retaining existing subscribers for way too long. But these
days, customer retention is understood to be important. (For
more on the history of service providers, see the sidebar “A
brief history of subscriber experience.”)
Keeping existing customers happy is a much more effective

means of achieving revenue growth than adding expensive
new customers.
It simply costs a lot more to bring in a new customer than it

does to retain an existing one. The trouble with acquiring new
subscribers is that they come at a price, and often a signifi-
cant one. You have to advertise, you have to market, you have
to establish a brand presence. And generally, you have to “rob
Peter to pay Paul” by offering a variety of incentives to lure
new subscribers into the fold. In the mobile world, the cost of
a free handset is the most obvious example.
As a result, you (the service provider) might be happy to

break even on a new subscriber’s initial contract, turning
to profit only in future years after the acquisition cost is
recouped and the subscriber has moved to the long-term
renewal stream. But this profit only comes home to roost
when the customer is happy with the service you’ve provided
and stays on as a customer instead of ditching you for a
different provider.
A brief history of subscriber experience

The global fixed-line telecommu- happy. Losing customers didn’t even
nications industry that preceded seem like a big deal since there were
the mobile revolution of the 1980s always more where they came from.
and 1990s was based on monopo-
As the 1990s became the 2000s and
lies. That generally meant one ser-
then the 2010s (where we are today)
vice provider per country (more or
and the mobile market matured, the
less — think BT in the U.K., Deutsche
inevitable happened: market satu-
Telekom in Germany, Telecom Italia,
ration. Plus, the underlying network
AT&T in the U.S., and so on). There
hardware of the industry matured
was little to no competition. If a sub-
through different generations, even-
scriber didn’t like the service she
tually enabling a massive array of
was getting, she didn’t have any-
services that customers came to
where else to go.
expect as a baseline of service.
Mobile services created competition
These realities changed the game
in the business of telecommunica-
for service providers. Constantly
tions. But at first, acquiring new
winning new customers was no
subscribers was the main preoccu-
longer a viable business strategy. In
pation. After all, it was a new tech-
fact, it was becoming more impor-
nology and the market was wide
tant to keep existing customers and
open. There were a lot of customers
to upsell them to ever-more-exotic
(subscribers) to compete for. The
new services in order to maintain
main focus was on building up sub-
and grow revenue.
scriber counts, not on keeping them
And what’s the point of winning expensive new subscribers

only to lose them as soon as their initial contract runs out?
Even if your acquisition marketing is successful in terms
of pure numbers, it will do little more than mask long-term
financial loss.
Introducing Mobile Subscriber

Experience Software
Monitoring the subscriber experience isn’t new in itself, but
today’s mobile subscriber experience software is consider-
ably more evolved and more effective than anything that has
preceded it. So although the term isn’t new, the functionality
that it now encompasses is.
Truly understanding
your subscribers
The capability to clearly understand exactly what the sub-
scriber has experienced and therefore to personalize an
appropriate response is a key deliverable of the software.
Mobile subscriber experience can help service providers get

their priorities right. Its most obvious and immediate impact
is in making existing customers happy. When your custom-
ers are happy, your renewal rates increase and bottom-line
revenues shoot up. You can also offer tailored services to sub-
scribers based on their behavioral history. Upselling existing
customers in this way is a huge moneymaker.
Understanding your subscribers is the key to every aspect of

success; it fuels upselling, cross-selling, increasing satisfac-
tion, and developing a proactive, need-based relationship.
With an improved knowledge of the subscriber experience,

the service provider can plan both network and service evolu-
tion based on real data about subscribers. By looking outward
rather than inward, providers reduce the chance of unwise
investments, while increasing the chance of generating a
favorable customer response by creating subscriber-driven
innovations.
What mobile subscriber

experience software can do
Any mobile subscriber experience software should be adept
at handling intelligent charging, congestion management, net-
work quality assurance, and location awareness. Those topics
are covered in much more detail in Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Mobile subscriber experience software allows you to pro-

actively manage your network by studying and reacting to
actual data instead of hunches. It also allows you to make
changes in real time instead of months after the fact.
Here’s a brief introduction to some of the most important

things you can expect from such software:
✓✓Fair use: Ensuring that a few subscribers on an access

link can’t degrade the experience for all users.
✓✓Analytics and forecasting: Forecasting when and why
links will need to be upgraded or additional link splits
will be needed to maintain acceptable quality levels.
✓✓Usage management: Managing the amount and volume of
bandwidth that individual subscribers, applications, and
content can consume at one time.
✓✓Selective optimization: Operators need to be able to trig-
ger advanced traffic steering when congestion is due to a
specific application or content type.
✓✓CAPEX management: Upgrade links only when QoE can’t
be maintained using congestion management techniques
to reduce operational costs.
Meeting Subscriber Needs

without Breaking the Bank
But the big problem with trying to anticipate subscriber needs
and meet them even before they arise is the problem every
business faces every day: the bottom line. Providers must bal-
ance the need for pleasing subscribers with the fact that they
don’t have a bottomless well of cash and in fact, need to make
money.
Service providers today face three overriding commercial

challenges:
✓✓Capital expense (CAPEX) reduction: One way for any

business to improve its bottom line is to make more
money. Another is to spend less. Most important of all
is to spend more wisely. This is particularly true in the
mobile industry — in which the globally recognized
accountancy firm PWC estimates that around 20 percent
of CAPEX investments are misallocated. This is mainly
because investments are consistently technology-driven,
rather than business-driven. Investments in technology
can sometimes resemble guesswork.
With knowledge of subscriber experience, you can base
your company’s investments on hard commercial results
and market demands, rather than internal politics.
✓✓Increased service agility: As the battle to win and retain
customers intensifies due to both competition and inno-
vation throughout the industry, the capability to quickly
identify and then launch and deliver attractive new ser-
vice offerings is key to success.
✓✓Operations expense optimization: Without knowledge of
the subscriber experience, making operational decisions
can be likened to driving to an unfamiliar destination
without the aid of a road map. With that knowledge (of
subscriber habits and preferences), the mobile service
provider can manage expenditure to achieve maximum
bang for his buck. Operations may be expensive, but that
expense need not be wasteful or misplaced.
Mobile subscriber experience software provides insights that

can impact all three of these areas by providing knowledge
that enables the service provider to quickly identify the cor-
rect responses to subscriber needs.
Speed is a key facet of effective mobile subscriber experience.

It not only improves the operator’s ability to do what the cus-
tomer wants. It enables operators to “do it now!”
Chapter 2
Gathering and Analyzing
Data
In This Chapter
▶▶Getting to know Big Data
▶▶Moving from historical to real-time data analysis
▶▶Explaining DPI
▶▶Seeing how to monetize data
T o date, mobile operators have relied mainly on historical

data to support customer care and billing. But increas-
ingly, for data to be really valuable, it has to be accrued, pro-
cessed, and understood in real time.
This chapter discusses Big Data, real-time analytics, and deep

packet inspection. Finally, we discuss how you can use these
tools to make some money.
Big Data Is Your Friend

These days, Big Data is ubiquitous. Everyone is trying to track
and understand the vast amount of data created and stored
by today’s technology.
For telco operators, Big Data is a record of everything that

happens on the network, reduced to bits and bytes. It’s a
lot of information (hence the “Big” in Big Data), so sorting
through it can be difficult. But the information contained in
Big Data, segmented into a broader context and analyzed,
brings valuable insights: Tracking how customers behave
(what they do) on the network is a potential gold mine. After
What telcos did with their data

in the past
Although the concept of Big Data intelligence that supports analytic
isn’t exactly new, it hasn’t historically queries. But still, these are limited
been a preoccupation of telcos to and it could be argued that the sum
leverage it, perhaps for the reasons value of such approaches is signifi-
mentioned in Chapter 1 (monopo- cantly less than the potential held by
listic legacy and historically limited the parts (the raw data).
network services). As a result, telcos
Historically, this approach has been
have struggled to understand and
acceptable and even sufficient while
get maximum value from the enor-
networks and services have slowly
mous amount of data generated by
matured. In the past, data that pro-
day-to-day operations.
vided information about operations
That’s not to say that telco data has and customers was, for instance,
been totally ignored. It hasn’t been. important in revenue assurance ini-
Many service providers have suc- tiatives, and data generated by net-
cessfully implemented enterprise work probes could provide insight
data warehouses and data marts, into network usage trends.
with a front-end layer of business
all, if you don’t know what customers are doing, how can you
improve their experiences?
Furthermore, as network evolution and, in particular, the tran-

sition to an IP backbone puts more useful data within reach,
the traditional, limited analytics approaches of the recent
past are becoming more and more inadequate. In a world
where new services that are both more complex and more
bandwidth intensive are dominant and provisioning happens
more or less immediately, the capability to quickly under-
stand and respond to market changes is critical for success.
Moving into Real Time

These days, real-time data analysis is vital. Real-time analysis
provides operators with the information required to make an
Chapter 2: Gathering and Analyzing Data 13
immediate impact. For instance, real-time data analysis can
help in the following situations:
✓✓Solving or mitigating a problem: For example, identify-

ing malicious activity or reallocating network resources
on the fly during an unexpected network event.
✓✓Capitalizing on an opportunity to upsell: For example,
extending a promotion to a high-value customer or
offloading certain subscribers during times of network
congestion.
Today, more and more operators are aware of the value that
can be accrued by combining historic data with real-time data
as part of their initiatives to better manage and mine their
subscriber information.
Historical data is still useful for predictive analysis — for

example, identifying degrading network performance by ana-
lyzing historic data from OSS systems or recognizing a sub-
scriber’s propensity to churn based on call center records.
Historical data hasn’t ceased to be valuable in an increasingly

real-time world, but nevertheless, leveraging real-time analysis
is now necessary for the successful operator.
DPI: The Value of Intelligence

Deep packet inspection (DPI) is a network function that clas-
sifies the data contained in packets that pass across IP net-
works. Packets might be examined for any number of reasons,
from routing them to the correct destination to identifying
viruses or security threats.
DPI has also been equated traditionally with application

awareness — enabling the association of data sessions with
specific protocols or applications running over a network.
The granular visibility into network behavior this reveals can
play a key role in Big Data initiatives.
Done in real time, DPI is the basis for immediate action.

Because both problems and opportunities related to network
performance can be immediately identified, DPI is a basis for
improving the subscriber experience. An operator can gain
real insight into customer behavior by augmenting subscriber

information with the detail that DPI can provide.
Deep packet inspection works best in tandem with other

components of mobile subscriber experience. Its value is
enhanced when information from other sources (for instance,
billing) is added to augment it.
Each bit of context that can be applied to data enables new

insights and opportunities for enhancing the subscriber expe-
rience. Examples of this include:
✓✓Subscriber identification: The definition of a subscriber

is changing. Many operators no longer refer to average
revenue per user (ARPU), because the data plan focus-
ing on a single-device user is rapidly being replaced
by shared data plans with multiple users and multiple
devices. Today, the term average revenue per account
(ARPA) is replacing ARPU.
When working with ARPU, being able to identify a spe-
cific subscriber’s traffic and also differentiate between
the devices and users within that account is vital.
Services targeted at a specific device in the plan, such as
parental control, require fine-grained subscriber identifi-
cation and not just generic identification.
✓✓Application classification: Though application identifica-
tion has always been DPI’s core domain, classification
of applications is no longer a cut-and-dried function.
For example, a DPI system might be able to identify cer-
tain network activity as Facebook or Twitter traffic, but
overlook the embedded video content. All application
classification isn’t created equal; the more fine-grained
the identification capabilities, the more value that can be
delivered to the analytics engine.
✓✓Content visibility: Content is becoming a cornerstone
of the perceived user experience, with users becom-
ing quickly frustrated by a slow download or a patchy
streaming experience. Visibility into the type of content
being accessed, and even visibility into which content
delivery node the content is being delivered from,
can improve the customer experience by allowing the
operator to address specific issues associated with that
content.
Chapter 2: Gathering and Analyzing Data 15
For example, YouTube is far more resilient to network
stalls than Netflix on certain devices with small buffers.
CDN awareness is also important for operators looking
to optimize their spending on peering. It makes sense to
invest in CDNs that are delivering content that your con-
sumers rate highly as critical to their user experience.
✓✓Service plan usage trends: Understanding how a sub-
scriber uses different service plans allows an operator
to deliver a higher quality broadband service. For exam-
ple, if subscribers to a specific plan are more likely to
stream video or use social networking, an operator can
plan its infrastructure investments to ensure that when
that plan’s uptake rate increases, the network can be
upgraded to support the usage. It also enables the opera-
tor to evolve the plans based on that insight into usage.
✓✓Device visibility: All devices aren’t created equal, at
least from a broadband consumption perspective. iPhone
users behave differently from Android users, and tablet
and dongle users consume far more bandwidth than pure
smartphones. With the constant stream of new devices
being added to fixed and mobile broadband networks,
understanding what devices are active on the network
is an important experience factor, enabling better traffic
management practices and even different service plan
options.
✓✓Quality of experience (QoE): The user’s QoE — or even
perceived QoE — will often determine a subscriber’s pro-
pensity to churn. By pinpointing quality issues for spe-
cific applications or content, the operator can address
those issues before they become a problem — and before
the customer makes a call into technical support. Solving
problems before the user notices them leads to a lower
churn rate.
The combination of these attributes with relevant subscriber

data such as service plan, billing history, and relative prof-
itability can provide operators with real insights into cus-
tomer behavior. For example, Gold Service iPhone users in
Manhattan like to stream financial quotes from Bloomberg
and prepaid customers using Android handsets like to tweet
from local sporting events. By adding context to subscriber
data contained in systems, such as subscriber provisioning,
billing, and customer care, DPI adds value to that data and
makes it more actionable.
Monetizing Your Data

Once you figure out how to use the data you already have
sitting around, you can act on your insights. By feeding that
combination of network attributes and subscriber data into a
policy engine, you can make relevant and targeted decisions
to increase revenue. A few examples:
✓✓Customer profitability analysis: By combining revenue

per user with call center data (for instance, how often
a customer calls in with an issue) and details about the
data the subscriber is consuming (peak versus nonpeak
hours, how bandwidth-intensive his applications are, and
so on), the operator can gain a complete view of the rela-
tive value of the subscriber and use that information in
its customer retention initiatives.
✓✓Targeted marketing: If an operator can identify that a
specific subscriber is a frequent online gamer, it could
offer that customer a gaming package that bundles con-
nectivity with certain multiplayer games. Alternately,
identifying that another subscriber is a heavy user of
content from kid-focused sites could prompt an offer for
a parental control service.
✓✓Revenue management: Combining awareness of how
subscribers or devices should be using the network with
granular data on how they actually are using it can reveal
revenue leakage and fraud. This feature is particularly
valuable in the case of machine-to-machine services,
where an embedded device generating unusual traffic
could indicate fraud.
✓✓Subscriber data brokering: Aggregate data or a nalytics
based on network intelligence, such as what sort of
content a specific type of user is likely to be consuming
during certain times of day, can be brokered to third par-
ties such as mobile advertisers and marketing firms.
Ultimately, once the hype surrounding data is cleared away,

it boils down to the operator’s ability to better understand its
subscribers, which allows it to make decisions that maximize
profitability. To achieve that goal, the operator must fully
leverage the information sources at its fingertips, including
the network and the intelligence that can be mined from it
via DPI.
Chapter 3
Intelligent Charging
In This Chapter
▶▶Understanding intelligent charging
▶▶Looking for a great solution
T oday’s mobile subscriber is incredibly dependent on

his or her data network. Whether for good old commu-
nications purposes, for social networking, for information,
entertainment, to purchase something, or for another reason,
everybody seems to want to be constantly connected. And
this is in spite of the fact that right now, the mobile experi-
ence is less than optimal for most users.
But the appetite for interacting with mobiles so heavily makes

network planning (and thus improving subscriber experience)
more difficult. The models used by network operators to
forecast network capacity become obsolete on a daily basis,
which negatively impacts network quality and makes the sub-
scriber’s experience worse. In turn, this leads to increased
churn.
Smart operators are now using Big Data to delve into cus-
tomer behavior, habits, and preferences (for more info on
Big Data, see Chapter 2). They can put what is learned into
action in the form of a charging mechanism, called intelligent
charging, that’s responsive to real customer needs. Because
they’re able to closely monitor each customer, mobile service
providers need no longer assume all customers are alike.
Intelligent charging is one of the most important areas that
can help improve subscriber experience.
Intelligent Charging 101

Intelligent mobile service charging is on the rise for a lot of
reasons — not least because the mobile world is changing
every day. All bytes don’t have the same value to subscrib-
ers, especially with rich media content streaming becoming
the norm. Personalized services represent a way for mobile
operators to tie usage to applications and offer consumers
value-based, predictable pricing.
Three recent changes in the way mobile works have helped

create an environment where intelligent charging makes sense
and is acceptable to subscribers:
✓✓Using mobile applications is becoming routine for

consumers. Not only are mobile applications a part of
everyday life, but they change every day. And mobile
applications will continue to innovate. Expect new device
form factors, hardware capabilities, and advanced func-
tionality on an ongoing basis. Applications are already
increasingly location-aware. Many existing mobile appli-
cations, such as social networking and e-commerce, will
be enhanced with new technology. Mobile payments,
allowing subscribers to pay for purchases with their
phones, will become even more common. While viewing
OTT video is gaining momentum on fixed-line networks,
video streaming is already shifting to mobile devices.
Mobile applications will continue to take on new roles at
a very fast pace.
✓✓Mobile operators are moving away from unlimited
data plans. When smartphones initially came to market,
they were often tied to unlimited data plans to entice
new subscribers. As smartphone penetration exceeded
50 percent, limited data service plans became the norm
in some countries. Mobile operators are abandoning
unlimited data plans because every megabyte transferred
increases what they have to spend on infrastructure.
Unlimited data plans mean that operators are spending
more without making more money.
✓✓Subscribers want personalized services to match their
usage needs. With unlimited data plans going away,
mobile subscribers must manage their mobile usage
within the confines of quota limits. This puts the burden
Chapter 3: Intelligent Charging 19
of quota management on the subscribers, which makes
them more aware of how much data they’re using. For
instance, some subscribers have to deal with costly
overage charges. Other subscribers aren’t reaching their
quota limits, which means they’re paying too much for
their data service plans.
What to Look for in an

Intelligent Charging Solution
So to create intelligent charging mobile network, operators
can respond by creating service plans that are consistent
with a subscriber’s application usage profile. Because sub-
scribers are different, a variety of subscriber policies are
created. Implementing a more granular solution and enforce-
ment mechanism that can determine in real time the appli-
cations in use, the location of the subscriber, the day and
time, and the device is the requirement for improving the
experience.
All this information can then be used to create personal-

ized services to optimize the subscriber’s experience, shift-
ing current mobile network data services from inefficient,
subscriber-blind services to intelligent, subscriber-aware app
clouds.
When you’re shopping for a mobile subscriber experience

software suite that addresses intelligent charging, be sure to
look for the following qualities.
Service charging implementation

Mobile operators have already invested heavily in the policy,
charging, and billing systems needed to implement personal-
ized mobile services.
To implement intelligent charging, operators need to coor-

dinate closely between the management and the enforce-
ment systems. They also need to keep a close eye on usage
trends that indicate potentially valuable new service offering
opportunities.
This is accomplished by fast and efficient integration across

these network elements, leveraging standards-based inter-
faces. This is because such platforms need to interact with
various CDMA, 3G UMTS, and 4G LTE mobile network ele-
ments to provide policy enforcement that is the heart of intel-
ligent mobile service charging. Together, they help mobile
operators address prerequisites for success.
A pan-infrastructure view — drawn from across the tradi-

tional OSS and BSS divide — is a critical aspect of progressive
deployments.
Any solution needs to integrate with a variety of legacy OSS

and BSS systems across the mobile operator’s business.
This will require knowledge of multiple protocols (Radius,
Diameter, SOAP, JSON, and so on) for retrieving the requisite
information. Particularly important is the integration with
policy, because the intelligent charging plans need to be
enforced in real time.
Service velocity
A key aspect of implementing personalized services is rec-
ognizing changing usage behaviors and reacting quickly.
Providers need to dynamically create services. The first step
in creating new services is to understand where and when
mobile subscribers use specific applications on their mobile
devices. This informs marketing teams about mobile usage
characteristics to help determine exactly what personalized
services to create.
This means having the capability to radically simplify the

creation of new services which, at present, often take months
using legacy software.
You also need to implement flexible charging models that

support creation of personalized services — with service
velocity — enabling mobile operators to respond to usage
patterns as they happen and seize these revenue opportuni-
ties. Operators that don’t deliver service velocity will fall
behind and miss new revenue opportunities that result from
impulse buys sparked by new applications.
Chapter 3: Intelligent Charging 21
Tiered charging
An intelligent charging solution can implement highly per-
sonalized service plans that, for instance, might tie specific
devices to specific applications, set different, category-based
volume usage limits, and more.
Tiered charging allows greater flexibility when creating

value-based personalized services. Tiered service models
can include charging for services based on application-based
volumes, application categories, application prioritization,
subscriber location, day and time, or specific applications and
websites. Given the usage scenario, these policies can be used
to implement intelligent, deliberate charging, with varying
rates that reinforce personalized, value-based service pricing.
Zero-rating
Zero-rating is another charging mechanism where application
usage or specific website access is allowed for “free” as part
of a base-level data service plan. This can be used to create
new services tied to specific devices: creating subscriber-
specific app cloud plans. Time usage constraints can be
added, allowing free usage at specific times or days. Not only
can this be used to create subscriber-specific service plans,
but also to drive promotions tied to new devices or services
and attract new customers.
Chapter 4
Congestion Management
In This Chapter
▶▶Understanding congestion management
▶▶Looking for a good solution
W hen the network gets overloaded, it slows down.

Services don’t load as quickly as subscribers require.
As a result, they may jump ship and move to another o perator.
The term congestion management means exactly what it

sounds like it means. Any network — transport, communica-
tion, computer — that carries traffic is open to the threat of
overuse. When telecommunications networks struggle to keep
up, poor subscriber experiences ensue.
Providers need a tool to manage congestion in a way that

meets the changing requirements of the network and of sub-
scribers but without requiring unlimited bandwidth.
Congestion management applications offer features and func-

tions that allow operators to manage congestion in a way that
ensures maximal experience for the end customer.
By using such applications, operators can reduce churn and

increase customer satisfaction, thereby increasing their own
operational effectiveness.
Congestion management is a subset of something called

network quality assurance (we discuss network quality
assurance Chapter 5). For now, you could say that managing
congestion is network quality assurance’s most important,
but not only, task. We discuss that task in this chapter.
24 Mobile Subscriber Experience For Dummies ��
Congestion Management 101

In order to gain traction with subscribers, mobile networks
try to act like broadband networks. And as a way of growing
market share, this strategy has been successful; mobile com-
munications service providers are doing really well at increas-
ing subscriber counts. Unfortunately, this success comes at a
price; they have to deal with the reality of inherent congestion
in a network that’s trying to act like a broadband network but
isn’t designed for the purpose.
Managing congestion proactively to create the very best expe-

rience for subscribers is critical.
Understanding congestion
domains
Any single segment of a network that can suffer from conges-
tion is called a congestion domain. The different domain seg-
ments that can suffer congestion in a mobile network include
RF (radio), backhaul (the segment between the base station
and the core or distribution part of the network), the core net-
work segments, or the Internet connections (transit/peering
links).
Each of these congestion domains can be independently con-

gested at any point in time, and so you need to queue each
packet multiple times.
Key to all of this is knowing not only the capacity of each

link, but also what traffic passes over it. The latter is tricky
in mobile networks because you need to know, in real time,
where each subscriber is located. This includes information
about his current CellID (which can change frequently), RNC
(if applicable), and SGSN/GGSN (SGW/PGW).
In general, the congestion domains can be treated in a similar

manner, but the RF segment has many technical differences
that need to be handled in a very specific fashion. When look-
ing for a congestion management solution, look for one that
emphasizes the importance of managing congestion domains
with a special way of managing the RF segment.
�� Chapter 4: Congestion Management 25
RAN awareness
RAN awareness means knowing the location (by cell) of each
subscriber in real time. It’s key to almost all traffic manage-
ment and analytics use cases in mobile networks. In the fol-
lowing sections, we outline two ways to be RAN aware, both
of which have limitations.
The details are pretty technical, but if you’re going to address

the issue of congestion you need to know not only what’s
happening in your network at any given time, but where! To
achieve this, you can leverage your existing operational sup-
port systems (OSS) infrastructure.
RAN awareness using OSS integrations

Using OSS integrations could be as simple as enabling location
updates from the RAN to the packet core and then forwarding
RADIUS packets from the GGSN/P-GW to a congestion manage-
ment solution.
Typically, that’s a lot harder than it sounds, because loca-

tion update will drive a substantial signaling load on the net-
work. The control plane elements might already be heavily
loaded and this additional information could be “too much
to handle.” But without it, the RADIUS integration will simply
have information about the location of the subscriber when
the data connection (PDP context) is activated and deacti-
vated. Sometimes you can get five-minute updates on top of
that. The “accuracy” of such solutions is known to be roughly
90 percent, which is good enough for some of the use cases,
but definitely not all.
RAN awareness using network probes

Deploying probes on the IUps (between the RNC and SGSN/
GGSN) interface in 3G networks is one way of getting enough
signaling information to do RAN awareness. But you still
need the RNC to forward location updates from the RAN
when a subscriber switches cell. Probing the IUb interface
(between the base station and the RNC) would work, but
would cost a fortune. Technically there should be no reason
such an integration could not be done in real time, but even
probing the IUps interface is a very costly exercise for most
operators.
What to Look for in a Congestion

Management Solution
Once you understand what congestion management can do
for your business, knowing how to most effectively treat the
traffic and what analytics to run is a big exercise in itself.
This is where business interests come in: building a brand,
figuring out what is important for a particular operator. Does
your company seek to deliver cheap services, high availabil-
ity, the best bandwidth, the most flexibility, or some other
superlative?
The possibilities are endless so how can you achieve your

goals?
Congestion management comes in many flavors. However,

some of the basic physical elements will be the same
throughout.
Take a look at Figure 4-1 to see the basics of how a congestion

management solution prioritizes traffic.
You need to make sure the solution has the following elements:
✓✓An enforcement point for all actions and analytics collec-

tion is required. Although functionality isn’t dependent
on network placement, these enforcers (which need to
work in real time) are typically deployed in close prox-
imity to border routers or network aggregation points
where congestion may occur or be managed.
✓✓A subscriber manager is needed to manage congestion
across network topology and deliver subscriber aware-
ness. This will need to be linked to the enforcer.
✓✓Ability to collect analytics data for determining the best
congestion policies and identifying hotspots in the
network.
✓✓To be maximally useful, the solution will ideally be easy
to configure and use easy-to-use visualization both his-
torically and in real time. For instance, a point-and-click
approach to policy creation would allow the operator to
quickly create, test, and deploy services in a matter of
minutes.
�� Chapter 4: Congestion Management 27
Figure 4-1: Congestion management.
Plus, make sure any congestion management solution you

look for has the following capabilities.
Managing queues
The capability to manage queues is a logical requirement in
any scenario where congestion is an issue. To improve the
subscriber experience, the operator needs an active queue
management system that likely deploys traffic management
algorithms that are highly effective at managing applications
TCP sessions. This will enable operators to achieve highly
scalable fair usage for thousands of users on a single link. In
other words, a high volume of traffic won’t degrade the user
experience.
In short, the solution needs to remove bottlenecks as a source

of congestion. (We discuss active queue management in con-
siderably more detail in Chapter 5.)
Hierarchical management
Another key capability is knowing what’s going on, and this
can be achieved through hierarchical management. Effective
hierarchical management means that from any single location
in the network, the operator can immediately have access-
level visibility to all the links that the subscriber’s traffic
passes over.
Parallel queuing
The operator needs parallel queuing of traffic, which means
traffic is queued into multiple, simultaneous queues and
actions based on prioritized policies. What this means is the
operator has the capability to not only see and have input
into network congestion, but also to implement specific and
predefined steps to address it. Most importantly, traffic can
match multiple rules and the most restrictive policy is imple-
mented to ensure a good user experience.
This means that the operator needs excellent analytics and

forecasting tools necessary to ensure it has visibility into both
subscriber and network behavior. Armed with this information,
the operator can make the right network investments, deliver
the right service packages, and most effectively leverage its
own network’s capacity to maximum effect.
Performance
And, of course, any solution must actually stand up to the
rigors of a massive communications network. The scalability,
reliability, and capacity demands are considerable. Make sure
your solution has already been implemented and that it works
well with mobile.
Chapter 5
Network Quality Assurance
In This Chapter
▶▶Understanding network quality assurance
▶▶Looking for a great solution
O ne element that is sometimes overlooked when

attempting to optimize mobile subscriber experience
is optimizing the network itself. By understanding, closely
monitoring, and fine-tuning the network, operators can better
serve customers and better manage their own operations.
They can also see clearly where investment in the network

is needed, and where it would not make such an impact.
Because network costs are astronomical, optimizing the net-
work should be a part of any mobile subscriber experience
software set you consider.
Network quality assurance includes, but goes beyond, deal-

ing with the issue of congestion management (described in
Chapter 4). Although congestion management is a key element
of network quality assurance, there’s more to it than just that.
We look at some of the other areas that need attention in this
chapter.
Network Quality Assurance 101

Two major areas in the field of network quality assurance are
active queue management and fairness.
30 Mobile Subscriber Experience For Dummies __________________
Active queue management

Active queue management (AQM) gives your network a hand
by helping packet transfer happen more efficiently.
TCP is the main protocol used for transferring packets, and it

does a reasonably good job of adapting to the circumstances
of the network. But a reasonably good job isn’t good enough
for mobile networks. AQM can give TCP engines a hand in
understanding available network resources. As a result, your
networks can adapt more quickly to changing usage. The
benefits include:
✓✓More goodput (for example, better utilization of actual

payload on the network)
✓✓Lower overall latency (less queue usage in the network
elements)
✓✓Better fairness among subscribers (covered in the next
section)
AQM is an algorithm that deals with how packets are queued

and which packets are dropped (when drops are necessary).
AQM deploys software that tracks flow and subscribers. And
AQM has a lot of CPU resources available to help it make
smart decisions.
The point is simply that with AQM you can run your links
hotter, with lower latency, and better utilization — and still
have happier subscribers. There is no downside.
Fairness: Democracy
in the network
Fairness is probably most powerful of all the aspects of net-
work assurance management when it comes to increasing
quality of experience (QoE). When it comes to networks, the
concept of fairness means that one subscriber can’t affect the
QoE of another subscriber.
But these days, downloading large amounts of data is

common. And without fairness, it takes only a few heavy
downloading subscribers on a cell before latency for everyone
shoots through the roof and QoE goes out the window.
�� Chapter 5: Network Quality Assurance 31
Without fairness, even if you have ten subscribers doing the
exact same thing, for example, watching Netflix, the QoE might
work well for two of your viewers (most likely the two closest
to the base station and at a very high bitrate) and stutter and
stall for the other eight. Without fairness, the subscriber with
the most number of flows will get the most bandwidth, so if on
this same cell a subscriber is downloading on Steam or using
P2P, he could easily destroy the experience to the point that
none of your ten subscribers will get a decent QoE.
The way to fix this issue is to share the bandwidth fairly

among the subscribers. You give each of the ten subscribers
the same bandwidth allocation and the video experience will
be solid for all of them. See Figure 5-1.
Figure 5-1: What fairness looks like.
Fairness can be addressed by software in a couple different

ways.
✓✓There’s host fairness, which is simply a stochastic fair

queuing mechanism where each subscriber is hashed
into a bucket (possibly shared with other subscribers)
and gets a subset of the queue space (in other words,
each subscriber is allowed to queue a finite set of packets).
This achieves some level of isolation, but aggressive
applications will still be able to get a larger piece than
they deserve.
Fairness misconceptions
There’s a preconception that the then the RF scheduler could forget
RF scheduler in the RAN today is about them for a while and focus on
fair. That is total nonsense. The RF the others.
scheduler is implemented to give the
By the way, 4th generation, LTE net-
most resources to whoever is down-
works don’t change this. They merely
loading the most. This feature made
increase the available bandwidth,
sense when web browsing was the
but since applications today are hun-
most common application, because
grier than ever, that’s hardly even a
focusing on subscribers with large
stop gap. LTE networks are just as
downloads meant that such users
sensitive.
could be handled more quickly and
✓✓The alternative is FairSplit, where each active subscriber

is allocated a piece of the available bandwidth. If a
subscriber is idle, his allocation is forfeited and if a sub-
scriber doesn’t use his whole allocation, then that band-
width will be shared among the other subscribers.
What to Look for in a Network

Quality Assurance Solution
Network quality assurance differs from congestion manage-
ment approaches highlighted in the preceding chapter. If you
like, NQA is a different solution set sitting in a different place
in the CSP’s infrastructure.
Network quality assurance requires an enforcer function to

act as the enforcement point for all actions and analytics col-
lection. Although functionality isn’t dependent on network
placement, real-time enforcers are typically deployed in close
proximity to border routers or network aggregation points
where congestion may occur or be managed.
A subscriber manager is needed to provision network topol-

ogy and subscriber awareness that the real-time enforcer uses
to manage network congestion.
�� Chapter 5: Network Quality Assurance 33
An intelligence center is required to collect analytics data for
determining the best network management policies and iden-
tifying hotspots in the network.
And the operator will require a solution that is easily config-

ured through a user-friendly client. A point-and-click approach
allows the operator to quickly create, test, and deploy services
in a matter of minutes.
Network quality assurance solutions that address the follow-

ing issues can improve the mobile subscriber experience.
Managing queues
Any solution must have the capability to manage queues. With
support in this area, the operator can deliver more goodput
(better utilization of actual payload on the network) and lower
overall latency (less queue usage in the network elements) in
its network.
Optimizing the customer experience requires a multilayered

approach to be fully effective. For instance, managing con-
gestion while failing to address fairness issues won’t solve
the problem of keeping customers happy. You need to take a
holistic view of everything that impacts what your customers
experience on the network.
Not all traffic management algorithms are created equal. The

capability to manage network TCP applications effectively
is critical and the operator should prioritize functionality in
this area.
Fair usage
The capability to ensure fair usage for thousands of subscrib-
ers on a single link in a highly scalable way is mandatory.
The solution must have the capability to allocate bandwidth

on any link based on the number of active subscribers or con-
nections to ensure fair access bandwidth for all subscribers,
resulting in a better quality of experience for all users.
Analytics and forecasting

Effective hierarchical management from a single network loca-
tion to deliver access-level visibility into performance to sup-
port hundreds of categories and millions of entries without
any performance degradation is today a prerequisite.
In other words, advanced analytics and forecasting tools are

required. An intelligence center is also required to enable vis-
ibility into subscriber and network behavior, enabling opera-
tors to make the right network investments and to deliver
service packages that leverage their network’s capacity.
Usage management
The capability to classify traffic into separate but simultane-
ous queues based on policy is also mandatory. And of course,
as before, the solution needs to perform at high levels, partic-
ularly from the perspectives of reliability, capacity, and scale.
The visibility of subscriber, application, content, device, loca-

tion, and QoE enables flexible management of the subscriber’s
user experience to maximize customer satisfaction.
Chapter 6
Location, Location,
Location
In This Chapter
▶▶Understanding location awareness
▶▶Finding what you need
I f you’ve read the rest of this book, you may have noticed
that the word “location” keeps creeping in. Are those who
operate mobile networks like realtors, where everything is a
question of “location, location, location”? Well, up to point,
yes. In this chapter, we dip our feet into the important topic of
real-time, location-based services and subscriber intelligence.
Location information enables operators to react proactively

to performance issues, rather than after-the-fact, as has been
the case in the past. This means addressing issues before they
become embedded problems!
Plus, knowledge of location can significantly enrich other

information about subscribers and network performance,
thus making it even more valuable. Location also adds a new
perspective to the congestion management paradigm, making
it easier to address effectively. A DPI-based location solution
is likely to quickly become a necessity for the competitive
operator in a 4G world.
Location Awareness 101

In the mobile network, a subscriber’s location is the single
most important factor that can impact quality of experience
(QoE). As consumers carry more devices, mobile tethering and
hotspots proliferate, and the Internet of Things (IoT) begins to

take hold, the last mile (which is the physical point where the
service is actually delivered to the subscriber) on mobile net-
works is more prone to congestion and other quality issues.
The key for mobile operators to ensuring a high QoE for their
subscribers is to have real-time location awareness that can
be placed in context with the subscriber radio access network
(RAN) and IP QoE metrics as seen by the subscriber. Yet most
mobile operators are able to measure only basic key perfor-
mance indicators (KPIs) in the mobile network based on the
signaling between the devices and the handset: basic connec-
tivity (for example, the dropped call) and activity heartbeats
(data going to the handset).
Video stalls, slow page load times, social networking feeds not
loading, or slow sync times for cloud services — the KPIs that
really matter to subscribers — are completely beyond the capa-
bility of most operators to diagnose or resolve.
To achieve visibility of these performance indicators and to

consistently deliver a higher QoE, operators need subscriber
experience analytics solutions in their network with real-time
location awareness.
Getting a perspective on RAN

The operator today needs a solution example, 2G, 3G, or LTE). The 3GPP
that delivers a combination of RAN signaling information (signal
and DPI intelligence and services. strength, error codes, available net-
Such a solution represents a great works, and so on) could be configu-
leap forward toward enabling a ser- rable and the software can be loaded
vice that gives network operators over-the-air (OTA) using already
real-time signaling updates from any deployed systems.
SIM-enabled mobile device.
In such scenarios, real-time infor-
Rather than deploy costly probes mation is streamed into the solu-
throughout the network, an IT-based tion, where the location and quality
solution approach can access infor- information can be used to ensure
mation directly from devices — the subscriber experience, quickly
regardless of device type, operating diagnose problems, and deliver
system, or RAN access type (for advanced services to the subscriber.
�� Chapter 6: Location, Location, Location 37
What to Look for in a Location

Awareness Solution
Leveraging a new, software-based approach to location
management can deliver huge cost-savings versus network-
centric approaches to tackling location issues. Location
information can help ensure different services with different
resource requirements can be more effectively managed in
different ways.
When you’re shopping for a mobile subscriber experience

software suite that addresses location, be sure to look for the
following qualities.
Location analytics
With the combination of RAN and DPI intelligence, mobile
operators can analyze a full set of customer experience met-
rics to guide operational and capital expenditures as well as
identify new service opportunities.
Different heat maps (images that visually illustrate physical

network performance) can be generated that show the QoE
in each cell tower, for each service group, for each device
type, for each application, and many other views based on a
prospectively broad range of intelligence metrics. These heat
maps can quickly identify for the operators where they may
have deficiencies in their network and where new opportuni-
ties exist. See Figure 6-1.
Location analytics can also compare the number of subscrib-

ers receiving a good experience to those receiving a poor
experience. This enables root-cause analysis of customer
issues, which may be very simple. For instance, a specific
device type may be having an issue with your services. Or a
specific cell site with a high concentration of high-ARPU (aver-
age return per user) subscribers could be experiencing con-
gestion. Knowing these types of things can make for simple
fixes in certain circumstances.
Figure 6-1: Image of a heat map.
Congestion management
Effective congestion management requires both topology
awareness and location awareness. Many operators use very
coarse-grained congestion management, with no application
awareness or use basic fairness algorithms. Such heavy-
handed solutions can actually make the service experience
worse for all subscribers.
Yet operators need to ensure that the mobile network takes

into account subscribers, service plans, and applications as
factors when managing congestion. Video traffic, for example,
needs different congestion management techniques than web
browsing.
The operator may also want to manage high-ARPU subscrib-

ers differently than prepaid subscribers, because they gener-
ate significant revenue and will cost more to replace if they
churn. Combining real-time location awareness with sophis-
ticated queue management enables the mobile operator to
maximize the efficiency of its existing infrastructure.
Location-based service plans

Location awareness can be a powerful option for creating new
service plans. Mobile operators can use their LTE networks to
�� Chapter 6: Location, Location, Location 39
offer a home residential mobile broadband service to
monetize residential cell towers that aren’t heavily used.
The subscribers get a higher data volume and a lower cost

when they are in their home cell tower (either by using tether-
ing or a mobile hotspot device), and they get access to poten-
tially more bandwidth than a DSL offering. Location awareness
also offers Internet of Things providers fine-grained control
over where SIM-enabled devices can transmit data (and what
they can transmit).
For example, an ATM machine doesn’t need the capability to

drive down the street streaming Netflix, so the operator might
choose to limit that system to a specific cell tower and only a
specific type of traffic.
Customer care visibility

Insights gained from understanding RAN quality and loca-
tion are extremely valuable tools for customer care agents
attempting to solve a customer’s problems during a service
call. With the right solution, customer care teams can see
a comprehensive view of a user’s mobile data experience,
including plan usage, upsell opportunities, application usage
and quality, and RAN quality.
Access to real-time information during the customer service

process dramatically increases the speed with which prob-
lems can be addressed. In the long run, this saves money.
This detailed information about each customer can be pre-

sented to operators during calls — in historical or real-time
view. This comprehensive view improves customer care’s
ability to solve customer issues on the first call. Solving
problems the first time means there are no costly escalations
that also negatively affect the subscriber’s perception of the
mobile service.
Crowd-sourced drive testing

Some operators’ primary competitive differentiation is their
network coverage. And mobile operators spend a great deal
of time and money to ensure good network coverage for their
subscribers. However, often they’re very reactive to customer

complaints on poor coverage — only responding to issues
after the fact. This slow response is a common reason for
churn, especially with high-ARPU subscribers.
Using location awareness solutions, the operator can install

an applet on customer devices and proactively monitor when
a subscriber loses coverage. The operator can then notify the
customer that it’s aware of — and working to correct — the
coverage deficiency. This method is a huge cost savings
over the existing method of drive testing (which delivers an
operator-centric view), while providing the operator with
information from the customer’s perspective, which is what
really matters.
This approach can help operators save money while also

helping them to make themselves look better. It’s a way to
provide better customer service that actually saves money.
Chapter 7
Ten Wins for Subscriber
Experience
In This Chapter
▶▶Ten mobile subscriber experience benefits
U nderstanding the mobile subscriber experience is

critical to success in the next-generation communica-
tions world. This book is here to help, but it’s hard to cover
everything you need to know about the mobile subscriber
experience in just 48 pages. So this chapter discusses ten
key wins you’ll get by deploying next-generation mobile sub-
scriber experience solutions to deliver better quality to your
customers.
Happy Customers!
If you don’t have customers, you won’t get paid. Acquiring
new customers is more expensive than spending to keep exist-
ing customers happy. Using the mobile subscriber experience
to deliver great service will make your customer an advocate
for your service. For more on this, see Chapter 1.
Save Your Bacon

Gaining visibility into what your network issues are ensures
that you spend money on the right things. Just because
your network is congested doesn’t always mean you need
to invest — only invest when you can improve the quality of
the network.
Know Your Subscribers

Knowing your subscribers through analytics ensures that you
can offer a network service offering that meets your customer’s
needs, expectations, and actual usage. For more on this, see
Chapter 2.
Save Your Customers Money

If you’re offering service packages that better reflect a cus-
tomer’s usage, that customer can save money by purchasing
the right service package. For more on this, see Chapter 3.
Deliver a World-Class Network

With the right mobile subscriber experience solution, your
network will be world class and a competitive differentiator.
Differentiate Your Service

Offerings
By leveraging your visibility into subscriber metrics like
applications, content, or location, you can offer services that
competitors can’t match — winning you new customers and
keeping existing ones.
Become Proactive, Not Just

Reactive
With RAN visibility through device applet deployment, you
can know when your subscribers have a bad coverage experi-
ence and proactively notify them that you’re addressing the
issue and even offer them a monetary benefit. For more on
this, see Chapter 6.
�� Chapter 7: Ten Wins for Subscriber Experience 43
Diagnose and Solve Customer

Issues Quickly
When a customer calls in with a problem, you have all you
need to diagnose and resolve the issue for him or her on the
first call, saving you money and the subscriber time. For more
on this, see Chapter 6.
High-Value Customers Get

High-Quality Service
Not all customers are equal — if you pay $100 a month for
a service, the mobile operator wants to keep you happy.
Awareness of service plans during congestion management
ensures high-value customers don’t churn. For more on this,
see Chapter 6.
Great Data, Not Just Big Data

More data isn’t always better. Make sure that you can harvest
the best data from your subscriber experience solutions. For
more on this topic, see Chapter 2.
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Procera Networks Special Edition

by Cam Cullen and Keith Brody

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE

Development Editor: Jennifer Bingham Project Coordinator: Melissa Cossell

Chapter 1: Mobile Subscriber Experience Basics . . . . . 3

Chapter 2: Gathering and Analyzing Data. . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Chapter 3: Intelligent Charging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Chapter 4: Congestion Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Chapter 5: Network Quality Assurance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Chapter 6: Location, Location, Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Chapter 7: Ten Wins for Subscriber Experience. . . . . . 41

In fact, a 2014 study by Nokia found that 41 percent of global

So it’s increasingly vital for operators to assure the quality of

A Mobile Subscriber Experience solution can help you meet

About This Book

This technology is becoming essential for providers that want

Icons Used in This Book

This icon flags information that you should try to keep in

Beyond the Book

M obile subscriber experience describes a relatively new

The mobile market is in a state of massive, ongoing flux. The

This chapter discusses how the subscriber experience affects

Mobile subscriber experience software not only gives you an

It costs roughly seven times less to retain a subscriber than

The Subscriber Experience

Reducing churn is a major goal in telco, because retaining

Loyalty and disruption

✓✓Loyalty of existing customers: You can study your exist-

Traditionally, mobile service providers have focused mainly

Keeping existing customers happy is a much more effective

It simply costs a lot more to bring in a new customer than it

As a result, you (the service provider) might be happy to

A brief history of subscriber experience

And what’s the point of winning expensive new subscribers

Introducing Mobile Subscriber

Mobile subscriber experience can help service providers get

Understanding your subscribers is the key to every aspect of

With an improved knowledge of the subscriber experience,

What mobile subscriber

Mobile subscriber experience software allows you to pro-

Here’s a brief introduction to some of the most important

✓✓Fair use: Ensuring that a few subscribers on an access

Meeting Subscriber Needs

Service providers today face three overriding commercial

✓✓Capital expense (CAPEX) reduction: One way for any

Mobile subscriber experience software provides insights that

Speed is a key facet of effective mobile subscriber experience.

T o date, mobile operators have relied mainly on historical

This chapter discusses Big Data, real-time analytics, and deep

Big Data Is Your Friend

For telco operators, Big Data is a record of everything that

What telcos did with their data

Furthermore, as network evolution and, in particular, the tran-

Moving into Real Time

✓✓Solving or mitigating a problem: For example, identify-

Historical data is still useful for predictive analysis — for

Historical data hasn’t ceased to be valuable in an increasingly

DPI: The Value of Intelligence

DPI has also been equated traditionally with application

Done in real time, DPI is the basis for immediate action.

real insight into customer behavior by augmenting subscriber