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Tekelec launches seven CEM applications

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Ahead of a Management World likely to be dominated by talk of how operators can exploit and manage customer data in order to compete with over the top comms providers, Tekelec has announced seven Customer Experience Management (CEM) applications.

A press release from the company states that the “portfolio” combines network and service intelligence “to give service providers a complete view of the subscriber experience within the network along with customised views to improve performance and deliver more personalised services”.

Use cases provided by Tekelec include proactive notification of network performance issues, investigation of service disruptions, diagnosis of device issues, and granular subscriber application analysis to enable marketing and service innovation.

 

The applications are designed to integrate with Tekelec’s Performance Intelligence Center, the company’s performance management product, to collect information from the user plane (i.e. mobile devices and endpoints), network plane (i.e. elements, nodes, systems, and management databases), and control plane (i.e. core signaling equipment, subscriber data management).

The CEM applications include:

Subscriber Activity: a subscriber’s view of service and quality. Operators can use this data for timely complaint resolution, customer support activities, and improvement of the customer’s quality of experience.  
Data Services Management: provides mobile data performance measurements that tell operators if issues impact the quality of experience for a particular subscriber or a group of subscribers. The application also enables service providers to optimize network performance, balance traffic loads across servers and identify and resolve vendor-related problems.
Marketing: maximize operator revenues by providing a precise picture of customer behavior, service consumption, and handset and network usage. Equips marketing with the tools to adapt services, products, and bundled offers.
Roaming Management: real-time and historical data to analyze each subscriber’s roaming experience to identify potential roaming bottlenecks and proactively manage service level agreements (SLAs) on a per partner basis.
Handset and Devices: voice and data efficiency rates by device model, allowing operators to rapidly diagnose and resolve network issues and device incompatibilities before they impact a large number of device owners.
Network Operations: network performance metrics that enable operators to optimize network performance and improve the customer experience by proactively identifying network issues before they impact the subscriber.
Network Planning: data for operators to anticipate and forecast network loads and service volatility, manage traffic spikes, and ensure high quality of service levels for highest-value traffic.

“The customer experience is the last remaining and single most important source of significant competitive advantage for service providers,” said Susan McNeice, vice president, software research at Yankee Group. “A ‘customer first’ approach to capture and translate the subscriber’s end-to-end experience is essential to stay ahead of both operator and over-the-top competitors.”

“The goal for service providers is to have greater visibility into the experiences of their customers – and then proactively improve the service,” said Susie Kim Riley, chief marketing officer of Tekelec. “The CEM solution translates millions upon millions of network, device, service and subscriber data points into actionable intelligence for a variety of service provider organisations.”

Ericsson signs managed services contract with Telenor Sweden

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Ericsson has signed a major managed services contract with Telenor Sweden, a provider of data and telecommunication services.

Ericsson says its Service business has grown significantly over the past years, and the company foresees that the importance of services will continue to increase. Ericsson is well positioned to react to this scenario, thanks to the skills of its service professionals and the scale of its global operations in service delivery. Ericsson employs more than 45,000 service professionals worldwide, the majority working regionally or locally, and has invested USD 1 billion in tools, methods and processes to secure capabilities and competence in service delivery.

Robert Puskaric, Head of Region Northern Europe and Central Asia, Ericsson, says: “Today Managed Services is one of the fastest growing areas in the telecom industry. With this new strategic partnership we gain valuable competencies and greater capabilities for us to continue to develop our service business, and to emphasize our long-term service commitment in the region. The experience of Telenor’s employees and the best practices of Ericsson’s global services organization will benefit this entire community.

“Ericsson will now continue to develop as the most competitive and attractive service supplier on the Swedish market,” he adds.

Magnus Zetterberg, Chief Technology Officer, Telenor Sweden, says: “Our ambition is to build and operate the most modern network in Sweden, and Ericsson has throughout this process shown that they are willing to commit to this ambition. Ericsson has a clear plan for how to implement and develop the field-related activities, and we look forward to working with them on this. The industrial partnership between us will strengthen our competitiveness and be of great benefit to our customers throughout Sweden.”

Forty-four Telenor employees will join Ericsson’s Swedish service organization on July 1, 2011, as a result of the strategic managed services partnership.

Ericsson currently provides Telenor with solutions such as IMS, transmission networks and service platforms.

Orange and O2 announce mobile money details

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Operators start to deliver on mobile money services

Two UK operators have announced plans for mobile money and payments services.

Orange, which has committed at a group level to pushing out mobile payments throughout its European operations during 2011, announced that it was launching an NFC-based retail payment service called Quick Tap.

And O2 announced the technical and service partners it would be working with to deliver a mobile money service later this year. O2’s parent Telefonica is the probably the most aggressive group operator in the NFC space, outside of Orange.

Orange UK customers will be able to pay for items up to £15 without entering a PIN, Orange is offering the service on a Samsung Tocco Quick Tap handset available on Pay As You Go for £59.99, and from free on Pay Monthly contracts from £10 per month on 24 month contracts. Orange has said that it wants half of the smartphones it sells to be NFC-enabled. Clearly this launch has come too early to offer that sort of device diversity.

Gemalto is acting as the Trusted Service Manager, which includes the supply of NFC-enabled SIMs, containing the secure element, to Orange.

Orange said the NFC phones will work at 50,000 stores, mainly at branches of Pret a Manger, EAT, Little Chef, Subway, Wilkinson and McDonalds that already have contactless payments terminals. The company said 12.9 million contactless credit and debit cards are already in circulation, of which over 11.4m have been issued by Barclaycard

O2 confirmed that it too will launch a mobile money and payments service – under the O2 Money brand.

Due to launch in the second half of 2011, O2’s service seems to go further than Orange’s retail based payments solution. Capabilities planned for the wallet include m-commerce, airtime top ups, contactless/NFC payments and peer-to-peer payments. The operator will also add NFC capabilities to its existing O2 Money Visa pre-paid card service.

O2 said that its commercial and technical partners for its service would be Wave Crest, FIS, Intelligent Environments and Visa Europe.

Wave Crest will provide and operate the core banking platform upon which the new prepaid card and mobile wallet services will run. Wave Crest will also manage the security and online customer experience.

FIS will provide transaction processing and UK-based customer service for both the prepaid cards and mobile wallet. Intelligent Environments has been appointed to develop the wallet application and Visa Europe will be the payment network for the wallet and new prepaid products.

 

Samsung makes European network play – updated with additional comment

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Now updated with further comment

Samsung has announced plans to target LTE network contracts in Europe, basing its hopes on an expanded European presence and on kudos gained from LTE contract wins already made in the USA, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

To support its goals, the company is establishing a network equipment operations centre at its European HQ in the UK – and aims to have 100 people working out of the centre in two to three years if the company makes good progress contracts.

“We are hiring now,” IP Hong Vice President of Marketing at Samsung’s Telecom Systems Business, told Mobile Europe. Hong added that the company is already in trials with one major European operator, Hong said.

Although the vendor has little current footprint in European wireless infrastructure, it has won LTE deals in the USA with MetroPCS and Cellular South, with Mobily in the Middle East and will support SK Telecom’s commercial launch of LTE in July 2011, according to Hong.

Samsung is tying in the launch of its European operations with the launch of its Smart LTE portfolio, a set that emphasises features such as intelligent radio resource allocation. Hong added that amongst Samsung’s capabilities was a “special technology” for interference cancellation, that goes beyond current standards specifications.

The company is also marketing its multi-standards base station, with both macro and small cells in its product line. It will include 2G and 3G capabilities within that converged approach, hoping to offer operators flexibility as they swap out ageing equipment for more power and spectrally-efficient designs.

Steven Hartley, Principal Analyst of Ovum’s Telco Strategy practice, said that Samsung’s main differentiator appeared to be its end to end portfolio (“everything from washing machines and laptops to smartphones and network equipment”) – especially in the connected devices realm.

Despite that, the company might find the European operator market tough going, both in terms of timing and in finding a technical advantage over the existing vendors’ solutions.

“The downside is that they are entering a market that is fiercely competitive, both for vendors and competitors. Huawei and Ericsson are really carving up the majority of the deals, so my immediate reaction is that their timing isn’t giving them any advantages,” Hartley said. “Huawei is also having success with its MultiRAN product and some very aggressive pricing, so Samsung would need to have something majorly different when it comes to differentiating on technology.

Jim Eller, a Singapore-based analyst with ABI Research, placed the announcement in global terms. A note from Eller written for Mobile Europe said that it was “unlikely that Samsung would ever be more than a bit player in the LTE infrastructure market outside Korea”.

Eller wrote:
“In general, the Koreans and the Japanese have been conspicuously absent from the global infrastructure market. They are dominant in their home markets, but they have never figured out how to sell overseas, except for occasional successes in developing countries due to export financing. The traditional Korean business model has always been to get the bugs worked out in their protected home market, and then sally forth into the world with the working products at subsidised prices lower than they charge in their protected home market packaged with cheap government export financing. They still haven’t learned any new tricks, even though the economic development of Korea over the past 20 or 30 years has resulted in rapid growth of domestic consumption which renders the old export-driven economic policies irrelevant. It looks like Samsung is following the same strategy with LTE.

“Unfortunately for the Koreans, economic progress at home has made them uncompetitive globally in many areas, and the rise of cheaper Chinese vendors like Huawei and ZTE means that the Koreans have missed the opportunity window to grab market share in the global infrastructure business. Samsung will remain dominant in the Korean infrastructure market, thanks to their willingness to develop whatever the customers want (and thanks to the customers’ willingness to pay a lot more to get this support), and there is enough business in Korea to ensure the survival of Samsung’s infrastructure business. However, it seems unlikely to me that Samsung will ever be more than a bit player in the LTE infrastructure market outside Korea.“

 

 

 

 

Zinwave in-building wireless solution said to maximise flexibility at lowest cost

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The Convention Centre Dublin (CCD) is a high profile building in the heart of Dublin. The building is a new, purpose-built conference and events venue with iconic design and state-of-the-art facilities. The CCD targets major events and required a unified indoor wireless coverage system to support mobile broadband technology for international visitors.

From the outset of the project in 2006 there was a clear requirement for a modern wireless infrastructure that not only supported commercial cellular coverage but also offered the possibility of adding Wi-Fi hotspots, two-way security radio and Tetra emergency service provision as required.  With large numbers of visitors moving around the building; often concentrated into particular areas, the operators required the ability to easily deploy cellular sectors in three different zones.

The project brief required a single infrastructure solution, but with the capability of a wideband hardware platform that had little or no incremental cost as new services were added over time.  Zinwave’s wideband active Distributed Antenna System (DAS) is said to be the only solution that could meet all of these key criteria.
 
CCD is one of a growing list of buildings, which include airports, shopping malls, hospitals and corporate facilities, to take advantage of Zinwave’s unique support for multiple services over a single common infrastructure and wideband hardware platform. The Zinwave 3000 easily accommodates the specific services offered by all operators and required by the thousands of visitors from around the world. Cellular sectorisation is uniquely supported by a built-in switch matrix that, by simple software configuration, selectively routes services to specific areas of the building as required. 

The CCD implementation was carried out as a joint venture collaboration between OpenOptics and Obelisk.

“The telecommunications industry is a rapidly changing environment, and the ability to easily add future services to the selected wireless coverage solution was an important factor for CCD.  Zinwave‘s wideband technology provides this without the need for service specific hardware or system upgrade,” commented Christopher Plockelman, of OpenOptics.

Padraig Brady, of Obelisk added “When deploying cellular coverage across multiple operator networks and multiple services, including O2, Vodafone, 3 Ireland and Meteor, throughout the conference centre across the full service mix, being able to simply plug them in without worrying about service-specific hardware is a major advantage. Zinwave’s system has provided us with the most cost effective solution while the intelligence and flexibility of the architecture simplified deployment of cellular sectorisation. Thanks to Zinwave’s innovative, future proof DAS, we can add any future service at any frequency that may become available, with the ability to easily expand to meet future needs.”

CCD recently played host to the Pride of O2 Awards.

“This was an important day and an ideal setting to showcase Zinwave’s unique 3000 system.  Only the Zinwave solution can offer service independent capability and sectorisation created by simply software configuration to provide a truly future-proofed multi-service platform,” said Colin Abrey, President of Zinwave International.  “Zinwave provides the most cost effective and comprehensive wireless distribution solution in the industry, and one that benefitted from interaction with our forward-thinking industry partners Obelisk and OpenOptics. The architecture of our solution along with the flexibility to route specific services enabled the straightforward deployment of the project thereby satisfying all requirements for enhanced coverage across multiple wireless services.”

Operator momentum grows around LTE1800

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T-Mo, Orange, Telia-S call for devices; Cosmote says LTE at 1800MHz outperforms 2.6GHz

The wireless industry is facing fragmentation of LTE spectrum bands, with operators deploying in many different bands from 700MHz up to 2.6GHz in the near future. A recent piece of research from InformaTM, for example, found that the industry will centre around eight bands.

One of those, 1800MHz, seems to be attracting a growing amount of attention, especially from operators looking for a compromise between the coverage potential of 800Mhz and capacity of 2.6GHz.

Speaking at LTE World Summit in Amsterdam, Timo Sippola, Head of Radio Network Planning at Elisa, clearly had coverage more than capacity on his mind: 800Mhz was the best spectrum, he said, followed by 1800MHz. Sippola said that 2.6GHz is too expensive because it requires all the additional costs of new antenna lines, a new topology and more sites, all of which made LTE deployment at that frequency band “much more expensive”.

Bart Weijermars, MD of Deutsche Telekom Netherlands, announced an initiative between DT, Orange, Telia Sonera and the GSMA to pressure device manufacturers to speed up their development of 1800 LTE devices.

Weijermars said that refarming 1800MHz spectrum would be “more attractive” than waiting around for auctions in the 2.6GHz and 800Mhz bands. But in order to deploy efficiently, the operators need devices, he added, hence the pressure the three operators and the GSMA are hoping to bring to bear to “really start the for rapid development of devices in the 1800 band”.

Tommy Ljunggren, VP of System Development, Telia Sonera, said that the operator hoped to use 1800 spectrum where it was available. “I really think that 1800 is the most promising band for a combination of coverage and capacity,” he said. “We have momentum around 800MHz but we need the same momentum for 1800,” he said.

Ljunggren said he would be following a three-band model for LTE, at 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2.6GHz. Device makers should be providing RF support for all these bands, he said, so that Telia Sonera’s users could roam across the operator’s Nordic and Baltic properties without losing LTE service.

Ying Weimin, President of Huwaei’s LTE Networks division, also added his voice to 1800 chorus, saying that 1800MHz was shaping up to be “the most promising candidate for LTE”.

But the biggest vote in favour of LTE at 1800MHz came from Cosmote’s Principal Engineer for Access Networks, Konstantinos Chalkiotis. Chalkiotis said that in side-by-side trials of LTE1800 and LTE2.6GHz, it was services at the lower frequency that had given the best service – typically a 3-4dB gain. Measured throughput of LTE1800 had been 20Mbps better on average than at 2.6GHz, he said. Using 10Mhz bandwidth and Category 5 devices, Cosmote and Huawei got a rate of 70Mbps at 1800MHz compared to 50Mbps at 2.6GHz.

(Additionally, using extended cell technology, Cosmote provided 20Mbps service to a test device positioned 102km away from the eNodeB. The base station was on a hillside, the beam thrown across the sea.)

Konstantinos said that 1800MHz networks needed to be cleared of much of their 2G traffic, with that traffic being ported to 900Mhz (where available). Interference between LTE and GSM traffic at the 1800 band is avoided by conforming to the specified 200kHz guardbands, he said. And by positioning LTE within the middle of the available spectrum band, operators could also avoid LTE-on-LTE interference, he said.

Sharam Niri, NEC’s Director of Global LTE/SAE Strategy & Solution at NEC, agreed that LTE1800 makes a certain sense for operators, especially ones keen to provide a mainly macro level of coverage.

“Now operators have done their trials for LTE at 2.6Ghz they have realised that for macro networks, this is not a good frequency. 800MHz is too low capacity so something in between makes common sense. It’s a compromise solution, but how fast it will be adopted and how many operators have it [the frequency] I’m not so sure about.”

 

Tier-1 European MNO deploys Actix Network Acceptance solution

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Actix, a specialist in Mobile Network Analytics and Optimization, has announced that a tier-1 European operator is deploying the Actix Network Acceptance solution. The solution supports a 3-year project to modernize the operator’s mobile broadband offering through a combined RAN Swap and LTE rollout impacting over 65,000 sites.

The Actix Network Acceptance solution was chosen by the operator to enable them to carry out an in-depth acceptance process across the whole network, helping them achieve an on-time and, more importantly, an on-quality network rollout. The Actix solution allows the operator to analyze various data sources to automatically track contractual acceptance KPIs, generate acceptance reports, measure live network impact and to provide a country-wide view of the rollout process.

The Actix Network Acceptance solution helps operators manage the substantial risks involved in “live-network” RAN Swaps and traditional new network rollouts.  “Operators rely almost entirely on network equipment providers for the success of network rollouts – if rollouts are delayed or network quality isn’t up to scratch, the impact to operators can be substantial, both financially and in terms of reputation,” said Bill McHale, Actix CEO. “With operators looking to consolidate their networks, RAN Swaps are becoming commonplace. These carry greater risk to operators, since any degradation of network quality will impact existing customers immediately.”

Using the Actix solution, it’s claimed operators can shorten their network acceptance process by up to 75%, increase engineering efficiency, and drive higher network quality. 

Insight Report: M2M and Embedded

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June/July 2011 Edition

MOBILE EUROPE’S INSIGHT REPORTS are an in-depth report service addressing key issues across the mobile sector.

Produced six times a year in partnership with leading analysts, the 20 page Insight Reports focus on the issues vital to the industry, meeting the research needs of time-poor executives.

M2M Report, written by Machina Research, will include:

M2M ecosystem analysis:

· Technology providers, application developers, service providers, mobile operators.

Business models:

·  How will operators activate, provision, manage, rate and bill for billions of connections?

·  Which business processes are affected, and cost bases need to be redesigned?

M2M use cases and case studies:

·  Automotive, healthcare, metering, transport, others.

Others

· A focus on the end user

· Remote SIM provisioning

·  GSM switch-off

·  Who’s who in M2M

The report will also include results of an opinion survey being jointly run by Mobile Europe and Machina Research.

For previous Insight reports click here

For fuller information on the marketing opportunities including, advertising, thought-leadership articles, webinars, and video interviews please contact Shahid Ramzan +44 (0) 207 933 8980, shahid.ramzan@mobileeurope.co.uk

Deadline 10 June 2011

Distribution – Delivered within the printed edition of Mobile Europe to over 7,500 senior executives within European Mobile Operators and a digital version delivered to 11,556 readers globally.

Web Audience – hosted and promoted online to 24,000 + monthly unique visitors of Mobile Europe www.mobileeurope.co.uk

M2M opinion survey with Machina Research – make your voice heard

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Take part in opinion-forming research into the M2M and embedded mobile market

Mobile Europe has teamed up with Machina Research to gauge opinion on the M2M market and we’d very much like to include your opinion. You don’t have to be working in M2M to take part, in fact we’d like to test wider opinion within the mobile market. If you are working in the market, then of course we’d like to hear your expert views too.

So let us know who you think stands to gain most from the M2M/ embedded mobile market, and what you think are the principal challenges facing this market.

The results will inform part of our next Insight Report, to be published in the June/July issue of Mobile Europe. The Insight Report will look into the M2M/ embedded mobile market, and will be written by Machina Research’s Matt Hatton. You can see more details on that report here.

 

Research identifies eight core LTE bands

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A recent survey conducted by Informa Telecoms & Media of more than 150 operators and 50 national regulators in the world’s major markets, indicates that eight core LTE bands are emerging as the most popular choice for initial LTE launches. These core bands are concentrated around the lower bands at 700-800MHz, the midrange bands at 1800-2100MHz and the high-range bands at 2500-2600MHz.

Operators that are eager to deploy LTE have to make choices based on current availability of spectrum, rather than waiting for new bands to be licensed or for capacity to be freed up. Those planning to deploy in the future have to formulate their plans against a background of uncertainty about spectrum availability and timelines.

“Despite the almost universal commitment to LTE, there is widespread uncertainty about the availability of spectrum and a lack of consensus when it comes to which spectrum bands will be most widely adopted for the technology. The mobile industry needs to address this by identifying a set of core bands for LTE, to focus development of the technology where the greatest demand exists,” comments Julian Bright, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.

Almost half of mobile operators planning to launch LTE networks will do so initially in the 2.6GHz band, although many of these launches are dependent on the licensing of new spectrum over the next two to four years. The bands around 700MHz to 800MHz are expected to be the next-most-widely used for initial launches, and a number of operators in Asia Pacific and Europe plan to use the 1800MHz band.

Spectrum in the 2.6GHz band has been licensed in only a handful of countries in Europe and Asia Pacific, but it is generally expected to be allocated before the digital-dividend bands, which are subject to uncertain timescales in many cases. Early deployments in the lower frequency bands have been concentrated in the US, where the low cost of using the premium 700MHz band relative to the higher bands has suited the aggressive rollout plans of operators such as Verizon.

Interest in the low-to-midrange frequency bands was also apparent in Germany’s spectrum auctions, where some operators placed a higher value on the spectrum bands around 800MHz than on those around 2.6GHz, and in the growing interest in the 1800MHz band’s ability to provide an attractive combination of cost, coverage and capacity.

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