Network monitoring? Let the customers do it for themselves

A network quality monitoring company called Metricell has launched a service that lets users track, by location and time, the quality of service they are receiving from their network provider.

The service, called Tracesaver, is available as an Android or Blackberry app (Apple app is “coming” the company said) and is said to deliver continuous transparent tracking of phone usage and precise locations across the day.

If it delivers on its promise, it could provide a service that lets users see exactly the quality they have received, and of course have the ability to share that with their service provider or operator.

Tracesaver users are provided with encrypted access to an industry quality web site to review their call details, whereabouts and all other key facts. Weekly, monthly summaries are provided to show metrics concerning the service performance they receive from their network provider. Low signal and dropped calls are pinpointed, services used, upload data speeds and more are summarised for all registered mobiles. An overall Global Service Quality measure is provided for users over any period. 

End of the drive test?
The service can also be made available to mobile operators, with the platform tailored to integrate with an operator’s customer support services function.  Metricell said that the use of smartphones to report the actual customer experience could enable major advances to existing operator customer support systems with efficiency benefits and cost reductions by eliminating most 1st generation drive test measurements.

Steve Mockford, Metricell’s Managing Director comments: “Tracesaver uses smartphones to capture key data 24-7 to pinpoint network problem areas. Subscribers have a free service to track their whereabouts and summarise all aspects of their mobile phone usage. Customer use cases include emergency location of family or general tracking of fleet vehicles.

“Many users specifically want to pinpoint where they have unacceptable network service levels. From an operator point of view, tracesaver has targeted collection to report locations of poor quality or dropped calls. Other key metrics such as upload data speeds, services used, overall coverage experience and more.”

Metricell works already with MBNL, providing its Livetime NetView product. Its Subscriber Experience module for Livetime can be used with Livetime NetView in an operator environment, and drives the Tracesaver customer-facing application.

Livetime also acts as the project data warehouse for Everything Everywhere’s network consolidation project.