Deploying LTE is the start of a journey – CSPs need to plan for the whole life-cycle

Inna Ott, Director of Marketing at Polystar Group

This guest post was written by Inna Ott, Director of Marketing at Polystar Group

CSPs are racing to launch LTE networks. The pace of deployment is accelerating around the world as CSPs embrace the latest network technology – innovations that promise to deliver more data to satisfy the ever growing needs of users, better quality of service, and more efficient use of valuable spectrum. Indeed, growth is surpassing expectations. As the GSA reports, nearly 400 CSPs in 138 countries have launched LTE network services, leading it to revise forecasts and predict that a total of 460 commercial LTE networks will be in service by the end of 2015. What’s more, CSPs with LTE networks are beginning to add VoLTE services in significant numbers.

As a result, CSPs are expecting to benefit by cutting operational costs and reducing subscriber churn by delivering a better experience. Besides, the addition of VoLTE will enable them to offer higher quality voice services to their subscribers, enabling them to further enhance customer experience and offer a compelling alternative to OTT voice services.

Optimizing the Mobile Network for Special Events

This is a Guest Blog written by Amdocs. Visit Amdocs at next week’s LTE World Summit in Amsterdam

Special events pose daunting challenges for service providers.  When tens of thousands of people congregate in a small setting, a significant load is obviously put on mobile networks. In fact, we’ve seen traffic surges of up to 10 gigabytes per hour at stadiums. In certain instances, the influx of a large number of subscribers into a city to attend live events, combined with a general rise in chatter from city inhabitants about the event, can increase network demand across the entire city by 20 percent. Service providers must be prepared to deal with the influx of mobile activity at these events and understand the best ways to ensure that their network is ready.

During the time period leading up to an event, voice and data traffic show patterns consistent with the number of subscribers arriving at the stadium and engaging with the mobile network. As the event begins, we start to see second screen behavior. This means that subscribers are not only viewing the event in-person, but are also using their mobile phone screens to view and interact with the event (tweeting about it, posting videos, engaging in social media interactions with friends watching the event, etc.). Voice traffic typically decreases by 50 percent during the live event, while data traffic continues to grow as subscribers increasingly turn to social media and streaming video to enhance their in-person experience.

The Capacity Hiding in Your LTE Macro Cell Sites

This blog post was written by Philip Sorrells, VP of Strategic Marketing, CommScope

Philip Sorrells, VP of Strategic Marketing, CommScope

A fact of modern day wireless networks is that operators have to continue adding capacity to meet subscriber demand. Cooper’s Law states that the maximum number of voice or data sessions that can be supported over a given area doubles every 30 months. Network operators face constant pressure to improve network capacity, i.e. the amount of traffic that can be handled at once, while also lowering their costs. The main question is how to most effectively do this.

The solution to adding capacity varies depending on the type of cell site, its location, the equipment and technologies supported and other factors. The fundamental challenge at any large macro site is adding new technology, frequency bands and/or equipment while not disrupting the current services. In Europe today that means putting 4G on top of 2G and 3G cell sites in a seamless, cost-efficient manner without hurting quality of service.

Bringing LTE Network Performance Monitoring to the Subscriber Level

This guest post was written by Affandy Johan, Senior Product Marketing Manager, InfoVista

As of March 2015, LTE network coverage is now available for 98% of Americans, up from just over half of the U.S. population in 2011. Worldwide, 124 countries now have LTE coverage, with another 18 scheduled to roll out LTE this year. That represents a huge investment from governments and leading operators, which have each poured billions into bringing the speed and bandwidth of LTE to subscribers.

 Most mobile operators would agree that there are gaps in their processes for maintaining a high quality of experience (QoE) throughout LTE networks, though. While their goal is to quickly identify and address LTE network performance issues before they impact subscribers, many lack the necessary insight into subscriber and network data to accomplish this. As a result, LTE network optimization can be very challenging, often leading to subscriber churn when QoE falls short.

But, what if mobile operators could proactively combat this by thinking about performance from the subscriber perspective? What if they could troubleshoot their LTE networks based on data about subscriber QoE, rather than on just network KPIs?