The inherent characteristics of LTE technology and deployment scenarios bring about a number of new challenges: migration to an all-IP architecture all the way to the radio interface, the imperative of mobility and traffic offload across multiple technology layers (LTE, HSPA, 2G and Wi-Fi), the complexities of managing VoLTE, and the higher strain on mobile backhaul. In addition, investments in LTE infrastructure can be considerable, especially in the 2 GHZ band. Finally, competition and market conditions are imposing compressed timescales for Service Providers to rollout and offer LTE services.
We are helping service providers deal with these challenges by offering them our end-to-end LTE Service Assurance solution, NIMS-PrOptima, that provides near real-time visibility and analysis of LTE performance across all domains and layers combined with a set of LTE Challenges with End-to-End LTE Service Assurance Solution and traffic balancing solutions. This is made possible via collection and correlation of very large amounts of Performance, Configuration and Fault management data feeding a set of smart scenarios and data models. Lastly, we also offer a portfolio of specialized LTE services including network design, infrastructure deployment and integration, and advanced device certification and testing services.
Telecom Review recently talked to Mounir Ladki, CTO of MYCOM, about LTE network performance management challenges and recent customer successes. This post contains excerpts from the article, to read in it full please click here.
Today, many Service Providers have outsourced their network operations and management to third party managed services providers. What value does your solution offer them?
Firstly, our NIMS-PrOptima solution offers an independent management platform with end-to-end network visibility for the governance of managed service providers. We harmonize various disparate performance data, KPIs – and ultimately SLAs – across one or multiple MSPs, and we align these to subscriber quality of experience. This supports the evolution we see in CSP Operations teams from being a network-centric to a service-centric organization.
In addition to this layer of governance, we offer advanced capacity forecasting and optimization capabilities across capital intensive resources such as power, channel elements, carriers, backhaul, etc. This improves the quality and efficiency of capacity planning processes and helps optimize the capital expenditure on the network.
Finally, our solutions extend beyond the network and include visibility on Service Performance, made possible by an innovative capability that correlates network performance data and probe service data, which we demonstrated in a TM Forum Catalyst at the TMF Management World conference in May. This gives Service Providers the advantage of better controlling the Quality of Service they offer to their subscribers to maximize the experience and improve retention.
MYCOM seems to have had quite a bit of success so far this year, what have you been up to?
We’ve had a great start to the year. We ended 2012 on a high with the announcement of a new customer – E-Plus Group in Germany – who has deployed NIMS-PrOptima as a Managed Service through our partner Comarch. Then we kicked off 2013 by announcing at Mobile World Congress one of the largest network performance management deployments we’ve ever had with Vodafone India where we are managing the 2G and 3G Mobile RAN, Mobile Circuit, Packet Core and Value Added Service domains of its national network of over 150 million subscribers. This is also a really good example of an implementation through HP who has chosen NIMS-PrOptima as the preferred performance management solution in their OSS portfolio.
In April, we held our first international User Group Meeting attended by over 80 people and gathering many leading CSPs who presented some really insightful use cases around NIMS-PrOptima, including excellent talks from STC on management of the Hajj, Telenor on RAN Swap, capacity management and troubleshooting as well as Vodafone, T-Mobile and E-Plus/Comarch on their use NIMS-PrOptima. We also had talks from TM Forum and OSS industry analyst Analysys Mason who presented a new research report which assesses major providers of unified network performance management software – and I’m delighted to say MYCOM came out as the leader.
You were also at TM Forum Management World and CTIA in May – what did you do there?
We had a big presence at TMF with a large booth and private terrace mainly to support the announcement of our major new version of NIMS-PrOptima, V4 – that delivers huge scalability and performance with a single server instance now supporting up to 400,000 network elements, processing over 10 billion data records per hour and near real-time visibility down to 5 minute intervals – but also our TMF Catalyst demonstration which addressed use cases around Quality of Customer Experience Management by combining probe and performance data and using industry standard CxM metrics and the TMF Interface Program (TIP) PM standard interface. We also announced that we are being used for LTE expansion in T-Mobile Austria which is part of a wider initiative by T-Mobile Group to standardize on NIMS-PrOptima.
At CTIA in Las Vegas, we also had a booth and announced a new Special Event Management Solution for automating cell load control at events such as sporting events or trade conventions where extraordinary numbers of people gather and put a strain on the network. The solution uses NIMS-PrOptima to create an automated closed loop system that monitors the network in near real-time, computes customer-defined (or default) RAN optimization algorithms and makes controlled changes to network equipment parameters to optimize KPIs.
This is an excerpt from an article “Overcome LTE Challenges with MYCOM’s End-to-End LTE Service Assurance Solution ” which first appeared in Telecom Review, click here to read the full story.
