huawei communicate€¦ · customer experience management 08 cem: it’s not all snake oil by...

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Enriching life through communication

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Experience-centric operations

Evolving MS from networkefficiency to value creation

Customer experience management: It’s not all snake oil

E2E network planning and engineering

Sponsor: Huawei COMMUNICATE Editorial Board,Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

Consultants: Eric Xu, Ken Hu, Guo PingRyan Ding, Heymans Zhu, Ken Wang

Editor-in-Chief: Sally Gao ([email protected])

Editors: Linda Xu, Jason Patterson, Julia YaoJoyce Fan, Pan Tao, Li Xuefeng, Xue HuaCao Zhihui, Chen Yuhong, Zhou Shumin

Contributors: Liang Hua, Lei Zhankui, Wei Bing, Yao TaoWang Wei, Li Bin, Zhang Shoujie, Sun YanWang Junsong, Li Guojian, Luan Pijie, Liu Feng Yang Dong, Mohammad Hussain, Liao Yingchuan

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel: +86 755 28786665, 28787643

Fax: +86 755 28788811

Address: B1, Huawei Industrial Base, Bantian, Longgang, Shenzhen 518129, China

Publication Registration No.: Yue B No.10148

Copyright © Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 2014. All rights reserved.No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

NO WARRANTYThe contents of this document are for information purpose only, and provided “as is”. Except as required by applicable laws, no warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, are made in relation to contents of this document. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no case shall Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages, or lost profits, business, revenue, data, goodwill or anticipated savings arising out of or in connection with any use of this document.

Telcos face ever increasing challenges & opportunities brought on by rapid ICT development, explosive data service growth, and emerging business models. To deal with these challenges, technologies are being used in the analysis & troubleshooting of network and service problems for the application of customer experience management (CEM) and big data analytics, and the evolving network. Network data analysis enables more precise network planning and CEM, thereby creating more value.

Telco CEM concepts, methodologies, and tools are maturing, but CEM maturity involves the optimization of the organization, assessment system, processes, platforms, and tools. CEM must be aligned with business objectives and carried out in steps. A top-quality network is a prerequisite, and must be supplemented with a big-data analysis platform that can scale down to the Per-Service Per-User (PSPU) level so that real-time monitoring of service quality; timely problem detection, location, and troubleshooting; and assessment of the network quality & management systems can all be realized.

Through IT system reformation, telcos must identify and develop use cases that involve multiple departments and cover the entire customer lifecycle. Awareness, organizational structure, and the human touch are all vital to CEM, and Huawei's experiences show that building a Service Operation Center (SOC) to complement the Network Operation Center (NOC) is a very short route to CEM excellence.

During service evolution and CEM implementation, we have discovered the importance of over 1000 kinds of unstructured data from the lower network layer. Analysis of this data will support telco product/solution design and marketing. Through coordination and opening of applications & contents, telcos can grow and monetize their traffic.

Network O&M efficiency is improving thanks to unified & integrated O&M, particularly the development of automated tools for the operational support system (OSS). The keys to O&M efficiency are modularity, process optimization, experience, and a strong OSS. Managed services (MS) can help telcos balance quality and cost and create more value in service O&M and business operation support.

Network planning & design are of great importance. By collecting, analyzing, and modeling data on coverage, traffic, terminals, user complaints, and revenue, we can accurately identify network hotspots and conduct precise planning & investment. Network planning & design also support analysis and modeling of how network technologies, cells, coverage scenarios (indoor/outdoor), and wireless/bearer networks are coordinated, making for optimized network & service performance.

Huawei will continue to research network planning & design, MS, CEM, and DC evolution. We will further invest in core areas to optimize our methods, modules, processes, and tools/platforms. We will also strive to build top-class expert teams that help you develop experience- and value-oriented O&M.

Experience-centric operations

Liang Hua

President of Huawei Global Technical Service Dept

What’s inside:

13 Real-time billing is on the wayBy Cheng Zhengyu

19 Evolving managed services to

excel in operations transformationBy Richard Wong

Operations Transformation

16 Evolving MS from network

efficiency to value creationManaged services are evolving from a focus on network efficiencies and operational excellence to a new focus on value creation. Although operator satisfaction has been mixed until now, managed services providers (MSPs) are now being asked to aid the business transformationprocess from being network- to service- and customer-centric as strategic partners who help to unlock value in the operator’s business.

By John Darnbrough & Kris Szaniawski

23 Traffic monetization: Key

challenges and countermeasuresBy Qiu Shikui & Liu Di

Customer Experience Management

08 CEM: It’s not all snake oilBy Jonathan Hopkinson, CEM Consultant, Huawei

01 User-centric operational

managementContinuous growth of both revenue and profit has ceased being easy, so carriers must foster a user-centric operational management model that exploits network potential in terms of evolution, operational management, and customer experience management (CEM). Huawei is there to help.

Cover Story

11 Monaco Telecom: Smooth traffic

during race weekBy Liu Ning

Let’s COMMUNICATE beyond technology and share understandings of the latest industry trends,

successful operational cases, leading technologies and more. Based on in-depth analysis of the

matters that lie close to your heart, we will help you stay on top of the telecom game.

26 Get an A+ in LTE with Huawei LTE is being adopted by a very large number of telcos, but no engineer or executive emerges from the womb with a working knowledge of LTE technology, all-IP design, or flat architecture. Huawei offers a training program that can bring the key personnel in your organization up to speed.

By Shen Yang

38 Huawei GNEEC: Assuring

Seamless Network Evolution

By Wang Libin & Qu Song

33 iODN: Definition & application

By Wang Guojun

31 FrontHaul: Solving the

small cell backhaul crunch

By Sameer Ashfaq Malik

43 OTN has taken 100G to the next

levelBy Pan Feng

36 E2E network planning &

engineering: The golden keys to

carrier business successsBy Kang Zhigang

29 Telco business intelligence

evolutionBy Yan Yantao

41 Huawei warehouse-based

DC integration serviceBy Qian Shenxing & Wu Ning

Sustainable Development Network and Service Evolution

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In 2012, the average revenue growth rate for carriers was

less than 8%. Continuous growth of both revenue

and profit has ceased being easy, so carriers must foster

a user-centric operational management model that

exploits network potential in terms of evolution,

operational management, and customer experience

management (CEM). Huawei is there to help.

User-centricoperational management

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From analog to digital communication, from 2G to 3G to LTE, telco networks are increasing in their enormity and complexity. The configurat ion of a

large number of network parameters imposes unprecedented challenges to network planning, optimization, and O&M. Revenue growth is slowing, as over-the-top (OTT) services encroach on carrier territory. To enhance competitiveness, investment is needed that improves service quality and user experience, so that the customer feels satisfied.

E2E Network Planning and Evolution

Carriers must increase the return on investment (ROI) for network evolution projects. Most of their networks are multi-standard, multi-vendor, and multi-type hierarchical networks, with the end-user experience not determined by any one network. Evolution is risky in such a situation in terms of the technical & engineering challenges. During the process itself, unified management of multi-vendor devices, multi-scenario coordination, and inter-department communication and interoperability require experienced project management teams.

As such, carriers need a strategic partner who understands their business strategies and objectives,

and can cooperate in depth, innovate jointly, and plan a future-oriented network. Huawei has the understanding of services, networks, and their construction, to be that partner.

Huawei proposes its E2E Network Planning & Evolution Solution that is smooth and efficacious, in terms of ROI. Based on a carrier’s overall business requirements & service planning, this process begins with a Huawei E2E associational analysis of the traffic, network resources, services, users, and terminal types on a carrier’s networks, with the results analyzed to determine network & investment hotspots so that evolution both starts & remains on the right track. Through E2E planning that can encompass a plurality of vendors, devices and networks, Huawei further breaks up the carrier’s business strategies into workable network plans that cover all stages of the evolutionary process. Huawei tests and verifies key network evolution technologies at various stages to ensure predictability, verifiability, and compatibility, so that processes are manageable and services remain uninterrupted.

Huawei solutions can be applied in different delivery scenarios and for different internal business processes. With its 20 years of experience in establishing standard operating procedures (SOP), Huawei can help carriers undertake projects quickly, accurately, and economically, with quality results.

User-centric operational management

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User-centric management transformation

As telco technologies & services advance, with numerous technologies coexisting, networks are larger and more complex than ever before. Managed services have become the first & last resort for many carriers looking to reduce O&M costs. However, network-centric management operation can no longer accommodate customer requirements, as carriers are now more concerned with service quality, user experience enhancement, revenue growth, and value operation.

Kris Szaniawski, Principal Analyst at Informa, has noted, “Efficiency improvement and cost control are still carriers’ most desperate requirements. To improve customer experience and develop new digital services so as to stand out from fierce competition, managed services is a must.” Carriers must transform to a service- and user-centric operational system with their own operations & organization streamlined in terms of networks, services and business.

Carriers try to improve network efficiency by standardizing, centralizing, integrating, and smartening their hardware. Firstly, carriers must standardize O&M and monitor/manage key performance indicators (KPIs) to improve service. Secondly, carriers must integrate O&M organizations, resources, platforms, and tools to share expertise and centralize the overall process.

Next, they should integrate organizational, process, and employee skills to converge O&M for IT & CT and fixed & mobile networks. And finally, to attain intelligent operations & management, network planning, construction, O&M, and optimization must all be streamlined, with processes & tools innovated and O&M platforms integrated based on service requirement analysis, prepared network resources, and supply-chain management.

Carr iers must transform network O&M into service O&M. They must also change their network operation centers (NOCs) into service operation centers (SOCs) and focus on service quality management in a proactive & E2E manner. By leveraging an SOC’s accurate & timely fault location, the network, marketing, and sales departments can solve problems collectively.

Carriers need partners who can support their data/cloud services and timely service provisioning, and collaborate with global content/service providers. However, to realize this and the other aforementioned goals, a powerful platform (OSS) is needed that implements centralized and automated O&M so that services are continuously optimized. Firstly, the OSS must carry out centralized operation by planning O&M processes, organizations & capabilities, and application systems, to enable the sharing of O&M personnel, data, and experiences. Secondly, this OSS will optimize the O&M rules library, based on industry practices, and automate O&M through

Efficiency improvement and cost control are still carriers’ most desperate requirements. To improve customer experience and develop new digital services that stand out from fierce competition, MS is a must.

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IT platform standardization. Thirdly, the OSS will thoroughly investigate the root causes of O&M inefficiencies and support the benchmarking of real-time management against O&M baselines. This will help carriers smarten their network O&M, which is key to sustainable value operation.

Huawei’s evolving managed services solution is designed to facilitate O&M transformation for fixed/mobile & IT/CT convergence and shift network quality management to service quality management. It utilizes a service delivery platform (SDP) to support single-point access for a large number of CPs/SPs, and the converged management thereof, to deliver true value operation.

CEM across the lifecycle

User experience has a direct impact on both user loyalty and carrier revenue. However, network quality indicators (KPIs) do not necessari ly gua r an t ee u s e r e xpe r i ence ( an ab s ence o f complaints). In fact, sometimes there may seem to be no correlation at all. Key quality indicators (KQIs) are needed that reflect real service quality for voice and data. The Customer Experience Index (CEI) is the closest thing we have to real life right now. After mapping/correlating the relationships between CEI, KQIs, and KPIs in terms of services, user experience can be evaluated & optimized.

Another key component of customer experience

management (CEM) is per-service, per-user-based quality management. Today, most CEM activities merely focus on the siloed management & optimization of individual user touch points. However, genuine user satisfaction is more aggregate, requiring long-term, multi-aspect and multi-channel data. Therefore, CEM must also focus on the entire lifecycle of a service, as this has been shown to be 30 to 40% more accurate than single touch-point measurement. In the future, CEM will transform from a single-point to lifecycle basis, across the entire industry.

Comprehensive CEM also requires carriers to collectively plan networks, IT, services, terminal usage, and business objectives to gain more business value, with probes, software, platforms, and professional services integration into a closed loop also a prerequisite. Innovation is needed of top-down organizations, processes, tools, and platforms, and transformation to service- and user-based O&M is inevitable, with SOC as its engine. The SOC conducts unified management of operating systems (centered on services & applications), helps related personnel better understand service quality, and guides network maintenance and troubleshooting to be more in line with end-user experience. This can significantly reduce both troubleshooting time and complaint rates. It can also finally help break down the barriers to inter-departmental cooperation, making end-user experience the sole driving force and evaluation yardstick.

Customer experience management must focus on the entire lifecycle of a service, as this has been shown to be 30 to 40% more accurate than single-touchpoint measurement.

User-centric operational management

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Currently, Huawei is cooperating actively with global carriers. By integrating platforms & process and focusing on the entire lifecycle of user experience, Huawei has set up a use-case library covering multiple scenarios to effectively improve user experience from end to end.

Huawei professional services for seamless ICT transformation

Challenges and opportunities coexist. With the emergence of SDN and NFV technologies, t remendous chal lenges are brought to the network planning, design, deployment, O&M, optimization, and l ifecycle management of networks. Meanwhile, SDN/NFV inherits IT networks’ advantages in that networks are made more flexible through separation of the control/forwarding planes and the decoupling of software from hardware. After all, what carriers essentially need is a reliable and stable network, which is the very basis of service access. Therefore, new professional services are required for ICT transformation to support IT network agility and promote telco services in general.

Business consultation is indispensable. Carriers need reliable prediction of their network traffic so that network planning & design are effective. For the

planning part, hardware-software decoupling makes the relationships between service traffic, software licenses, and hardware resources more complicated. If we lack sufficient understanding of service traffic and software licenses, planned hardware resources may not be appropriate or accurate, making for a huge waste of time & money.

For network design, carriers need an overall solution that supports reliable service operation. Due to the aforementioned architectural separation, different network layers must be recombined in a structured way to ensure that reliability & stability stay up to par. Issues of multi-level interoperation after decoupling, work arrangements, and inter-layer problems also need to be addressed, as decoupling leads to a growing number of suppliers with complicated dependencies. And finally, for O&M, problems that were once intra-system become inter-system, making fault location and troubleshooting a process that involves multiple contracts, thus requiring synergy of technical & managerial capabilities.

Thanks to our thorough understanding of carriers’ business objectives, customer-centered O&M processes, joint innovation with telcos, swift response to customer needs, and customized solutions, Huawei is destined to become the best strategic partner for carriers in the era of ICT convergence, helping them build service- and user-oriented operations and management processes that achieve true business success.

Editor: Linda Xu [email protected]

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Huawei adopts a holistic approach to customer experience

management (CEM), as demonstrated by its solutions,

metrics, and global best practices, paired with a commitment

to business excellence in the telco sphere.

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Real-time billing is on the way13

CEM: It’s not all snake oil08

Monaco Telecom: Smoothtraffic during race week

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Customer experience

management: It’s not all snake oil

Customer experience management (CEM) is an area of interest in telco, but a lot of vendors have simply repackaged or made incremental upgrades to older solutions so that they can be sold as CEM. A ground-up rethinking is needed if the benefits of CEM are to come to pass, and Huawei has one – SmartCare®.

By Jonathan Hopkinson, Huawei

Clear signals but a lot of noise

Communication service providers (CSPs) are having a hard time at the moment. Fierce competition is constraining revenue, while the need for capital

investment remains high as consumers continue to demand ever greater amounts of faster, high-quality bandwidth. To make matters worse, the growing success of OTT players is not only decreasing demand for the CSP’s own value-added services, it’s also starting to separate the CSPs from their own customer base, moving them to the status of commoditized utility suppliers.

It is therefore not surprising that customer experience management (CEM), with its promise of greater customer loyalty, increased revenues and improved operational efficiency, is garnering so much interest within CSP management circles. However, cynicism is also creeping in. There are a lot of presentations floating around extolling the virtues of CEM, but very little hard evidence showing measurable business benefits.

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The early CEM solutions deployed were not true CEM, but rather existing solutions repackaged for CEM. Unsurprisingly, the same old techniques yield the same old results, so the expected benefits of CEM often go unrealized. Thus far, hard evidence of business benefit is scarce, leading some to doubt the business value of CEM, comparing it to snake oil.

True CEM is not snake oil

In fact, if executed correctly, CEM really can deliver unprecedented business benefits to the CSP. Huawei’s SmartCare® CEM solutions create business value for the CSP via two distinct mechanisms.

First, the new insights & capabilities delivered by our applications & services (which incorporate true CEM) allow a CSP to measure and tightly control customer experience, leading to higher revenue and reduced costs.

Second, the change of mindset and actionable insights that accrue from adopting CEM promote business transformation, leading to more efficient and effective operations.

The customer lifecycle

Accurate, user-centric customer experience metrics are the basis of successful CEM implementation, but what exactly should be measured?

The first step is to identify all the possible activities and interactions likely to occur between the customer and the CSP during the course of their relationship. Together, these form the customer lifecycle.

Each of the activities identified along the customer lifecycle can take place via a number of different channels – online, telephone, or in-shop. An interaction between the customer and CSP over a specific channel is known as a touch point, and each touch point represents an opportunity for the CSP to delight or disappoint the customer.

A given customer activity, known as a journey, may include several touch points , with a l l contributing to the overall experience. For example, the “payment” journey may consist of three touch points – bill receipt by mail, bill query by phone, and bill payment online.

Research shows that touch points should not be considered in isolation. This is not surprising since one touch point will likely influence another. For example, there is little point in providing a Sunday delivery service for a new SIM/mobile if the activation department only works Monday to Friday. Similarly, offering a one-off six dollar upgrade package can be frustrating for the user if top-up vouchers can only be purchased in five dollar increments.

To assure customer experience, the CSP should analyze each touch point in turn and ensure that comprehensive processes are in place to govern every aspect of customer interaction during that touch point and its associated ones. The touch point

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insight given by a calibrated customer experience metric approach shows that there is very little perceived benefit to the customer in decreasing the response time below 2.9 seconds. So, rather than invest scarce and expensive resources in reducing the response time further, the CSP can invest those resources in more appreciated areas.

This approach is very powerful, since it allows the CSP to implement a dashboard to monitor the true customer experience in near-real time. The same metrics can then be used to drill down to the root causes if any degradation in customer experience is makes itself known.

Using this framework, there is no need to drown in torrents of big data. By focusing on the key metrics identified in the use-case analysis, the CSP knows exactly which data elements to collect and monitor.

Evolving to SOC

The per-service per-user experience insights that the metrics deliver allow the CSP to transform its management structure to focus on, and prioritize, those aspects of its operations which have

An overall summary KQI can be generated for each touch point experience, which can then be calibrated with subjective feedback to assess the entire customer experience journey.

a real impact on customer experience. This ultimately leads to the CSP being

able to transform the traditional network operations center (NOC) into a service operations center (SOC), targeting manpower and investment where it is most required, and dismantling organizational silos in the process.

HUAWEI SmartCare® CEM

The HUAWEI SmartCare® CEM solution offers a complete, clear three-layer structure of products & services for network, service, and customer experience assurance and improvement.

It offers multi-channel customer interaction management, enabling customer journey and touch point experience optimization through customer experience use-case development, service modeling, service quality management process construction, and E2E service problem identification.

With SmartCare® CEM, operators can deliver a superb customer lifecycle experience and transform from network-centricity towards service and user-centric operations – a genuine solution, without a trace of snake oil.Editor: Jason [email protected]

should not only meet the customer’s need, and be as fast and simple as possible, but should also truly delight the customer. This requires the CSP to assess all operational services that contribute to each touch point and ensure that all likely use cases (customer needs) across touch points are considered.

Improvement through KQIs

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Therefore, metrics need to be implemented to monitor the performance of the CSP’s operational services against each use case. Where possible, these metrics should be measured on a per-user basis, so that each unique per-customer experience can be determined.

Individually or in combination, the collected metrics can then be used to generate an overall summary KQI of each touchpoint experience. These KQIs, when calibrated with subjective feedback, can then give a measure of the customer’s experience for the overall journey.

In a traditional network management approach, the engineering team will strive to continuously decrease the webpage response time. However, the additional

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Monaco TelecomSmooth traffic during race week

Monaco may be almost synonymous with racing, but there’s nothing routine about a Formula One event, especially when it attracts enough visitors to dwarf the host country’s population several fold. With so many VIPs in town, Monaco Telecom needed some extra help keeping the lines open, and Huawei helped the operator shift to a higher gear.

By Liu Ning

Monaco Telecom: Smooth traffic during race week

Monaco is 37,000 people packed into two square kilometers of glamour. With mountains on three

sides and a harbor full of yachts on the other, coverage there is certainly no walk on the beach, especially when Formula One is in town. Monaco Telecom is the local incumbent, and racing weeks have become a real problem, with data traffic overwhelming its network and destabilizing operations. But in May 2013, Monaco Telecom was ready, thanks to its new partnership with Huawei.

Enormous challenges

On a typical day, Monaco is one of the world’s most densely populated countries – a tight but stylish tangle of yachts, tunnels, hillsides and landmarks. But during race week, it’s something else entirely. The Monte Carlo track is the most beautiful in the world, at least to the spectators. To the drivers, it’s twisty and narrow. Both elements combine to make the Grand Prix of Monaco the most prestigious race on the circuit. The 2013 edition in May saw a peak of 200,000 visitors, six times the number of people who call this enclave home. This density would challenge any

operator, let alone one with so many VIPs to contend with, but Huawei had Monaco Telecom covered.

Close partnership

To ensure network stability and deliver an unparalleled user experience in accordance with F1 requirements, Monaco Telecom collaborated with Huawei to deploy Huawei’s E2E Key Event Assurance Solut ion, which fea tures exper t de l iver y teams, a standardized maintenance process, cut t ing-edge maintenance too l s , scientific methodologies, and flawless project management.

Before the event, Huawei’s project team predicted data traffic volumes based on the Huawei global traffic model library, coupled with an analysis of similar events and historical data volume (data supplied by Monaco Telecom) analysis. The project team then eva lua t ed cu r ren t ne twork resources, identified potential problems in the event of a traffic surge, and proposed corresponding suggestions and solutions. Using advanced network performance analysis software, the team allocated network resources as needed to support the enormous volumes of data traffic during the event, while

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conducting a comprehensive network inspection to identify and eliminate potential problems and risks. As a result, optimal network performance was achieved during the event.

The network evaluation results and event characteristics’ analysis enabled the project team to develop contingency plans to address any issues caused by a traffic surge. To ensure feasibility, the team pre-configured network parameters, simulated scenarios, and trained the Monaco Telecom O&M teams. Taken together, these measures guarantee network stability and improve customer satisfaction. Huawei’s spare parts service builds on this too, through its guarantee of immediate replacements if needed.

Huawei established an expert team and set up a network analysis center to conduct real-time network monitoring, network alarm analysis, real-time modification of network parameters, on-site emergency processing, and remote solutions to ensure a rapid response and continued network security & stability.

After the event, Huawei helped Monaco Telecom restore the original network parameters and prepared an exper ience summary and standardization plan for the operator to improve its network O&M skills for future events.

Outstanding network performance

During that fateful week in May, Monaco Telecom’s voice access rates were only slightly off

from normal. Monaco Telecom CTO Thierry Berthouloux would later speak very highly of Huawei.

“Our cooperation with Huawei has proven very satisfactory, and we will select Huawei again as our partner for future F1 events. They are very experienced at key event assurance and tackling network challenges. Although the data traffic volume was double that of 2012, our network quality was still excellent. When I saw the real-time network indicators, I was extremely impressed by the excellent performance, because there were twice as many users as normal.”

Huawei’s broad experiences and expertise encompasses professional assurance services for short-term events, one-off events, and yearly festivals.

As of 2013, Huawei’s key event assurance solution had served over 200 gatherings around the world, including nine consecutive years of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Toronto Winter Olympics, the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the 2012 Poland/Ukraine European Championship, and the 2012 London Olympics.

Philippe Perrin, COO of Huawei France, would add, “We are happy to witness the success of Monaco Telecom in the F1 event. Huawei is honored to be able to provide professional services to Monaco Telecom and its subscribers, and we look forward to further cooperation with Monaco Telecom in the future.”

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Real-time billing is on the way

Today, over-the-top (OTT) services have become a part of our daily lives. Compared to vo i ce s e r v i c e s , u s e r s

demand even more from data services in terms of accessibility & billing, in that they want something that is real-time, unified and accurate. Carriers have somewhat similar demands, through their need to monitor data service traffic from end to end in real time and adjust it dynamically so that resource allocation is optimal with user needs, network resources and appl icat ion factors balanced. These needs make real-time

There is a lot of hype these days surrounding mobile Internet and traffic operation, and yet the underlying user demand, in spite of all that, is a user experience without lag. Real-time billing is a big part of that.

Real-time billing is on the way

By Cheng Zhengyue

Incentives/upgrades

Incentives have proven effective in encouraging traffic consumption. For example, if a user consumes up to 1GB of data in a month, the reward can be 50 minutes of free voice (within that month), increased bandwidth, or extra traffic.

Carriers can also launch self-help package upgrade services. For example, 1GB can be of fered for USD5.00 (package A). If a user consumes more than 1GB, the extra traffic can be charged at USD0.004 per megabyte. When consumed data reaches 2GB, totaling

billing indispensable if carriers hope to adapt to MBB operational trends for the smart pipe era.

Real-time billing maximizes MBB value

Real-time billing represents user-centric business operation, which is quite different from traditional network-centricity. Providing what users want in real time is what user-centricity is all about; it can maximize MBB value, as seen in the following.

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USD9.00 for the month, the package can be automatically upgraded to package B (USD9.00 for 3GB), which means that he/she can enjoy another gigabyte for free. If the usage exceeds that, the process repeats itself with another package upgrade.

Real-time discount

Carriers can also develop travelers’ packages for road warriors. If a user roams to a tourist destination, a 50% discount can be enjoyed off the original roaming tariff. Holiday roaming packages can also be offered for “golden weeks” such as the Chinese New Year holiday. These real-time reward and discount measures can give customers material benefits, enhance user loyalty, and ultimately increase carrier revenue.

Real-time QoS adjustment

This is basically a more technical name for a Turbo Button feature where a temporary bandwidth boost is given for a small fee. Video streaming may be the ideal scenario, but there are plenty of other instances, such as trying to view large email attachments when out & about, where such a thing can come in handy.

Real-time notification and service delivery

Roaming is a major issue in markets such as Europe, where roaming tariffs are high. The EU now requires all carriers within its borders to be able to provide real-time billing/upgrade services. SFR of France was the first to upgrade its system and implement MBB real-time billing. Through real-t ime user notif ication, SFR developed more preferable packages that can improve user experience and increase MBB revenue.

Online mediation: Billing in real time

Comprehensive real-time billing can be realized, even for carriers with relatively simple billing systems, and it will be worth it as the traditional siloed accounting systems are replaced with real-time IT architecture-based billing (OCS/CBS). However, like a heart transplant, this method is radical and risky, requiring a large investment and a lot of patience. A less extreme method is now available – online mediation.

Online mediation is a medium component

that implements “real-time bridging.” It bridges & converges CT (lower-level network) and IT (upper-level billing and operation system) elements. In the past, for each new network element or IT/service application system, complicated P2P connection is required. Online mediation does not transform billing systems on the current network, but converges network elements of IT/CT and all interface protocol stacks (CAP, SIP, 3GPP, and SOAP). Therefore, carriers need only add another socket to online mediation every time a new IT or CT network element is added. Through online mediation, the delivery cycle is greatly shortened, down to only three-to-six months from contract signing to service cutover & migration. This delivery solution can help carriers create a real-time billing system for all network services in a short time, especially for carriers with multiple billing systems.

Quick realization of real-time billing is only one of online mediation’s key abilities. Even more important is its ability to act as a bridging bus and implement real-time network capability encapsulation to help carriers build a “real-time service enablement bus” in the MBB era.

In the digital economy, we should all be focusing on what we do best instead of trying to do too much and accomplishing little. Online mediation enables this division of labor. It completely decouples CT architecture (communication/signaling/traffic) from IT architecture (business operation/business support/OTT services). It communicates in real time with network elements (NEs) of CT and subtracts & encapsulates NE functions in a container, which can be used by the upper-layer IT application system. This encapsulation of functions and making them available via online mediation shields the complexity of NEs on CT, allowing the upper-layer IT system and various OTT application systems to focus on processing services and features that have higher requirements for flexibility & innovation. When the IT system and OTT application systems require relevant NE functionality, they can simply use the encapsulated API through online mediation. As a result, the carrier’s IT system becomes more flexible, able to develop various packages more quickly. OTT service suppliers can also easily use carrier network capabilities to diversify their services & applications, while carriers can share a percentage of the profits accordingly.

In summary, real-time billing is one of the key measures carriers must take to support MBB service development, and online mediation is a highly-effective way for carriers to realize real-time billing and even a real-time service-enablement bus.

Editor: Pearl Zhu [email protected]

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Telcos are paying attention to not only reducing costs but

also operational excellence and value creation. This is

manifesting as active transformation towards user-centricity.

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Traffic monetization: Key challenges and countermeasures23

Evolving MS to excel in operations transformation19

Evolving MS from network efficiency to value creation16

Evolving MS from network efficiency to value creationManaged services are evolving from a focus on network efficiencies and operational excellence to a new focus on value creation. Although operator satisfaction has been mixed until now, managed services providers (MSPs) are now being asked to aid the business transformation process from being network- to service- and customer-centricity as strategic partners who help to unlock value in the operator’s business.

By John Darnbrough (Research Associate) & Kris Szaniawski (Principal Analyst), Informa

The search for differentiation

Communications service providers (CSPs) are having a tough time, with competition and regulation pressuring prices, customers demanding more in terms of service

features & quality, and heavy investments being made in capacity additions and network upgrades to all-IP and LTE to satisfy an exploding demand for data. With margins under severe pressure, CSPs are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves and generate new sources of income, and this will lead to a greater focus in managed services (MS) on value creation, rather than the usual network efficiencies or operational excellence.

Drivers for a new MS approach

In May 2013, Informa Telecoms & Media

conducted a global online survey of key executives from 59 CSPs, with the results confirming the growing popularity of MS. More than 60% of the CSPs who responded are already engaged in some form of MS, with a further 25% planning to do so within three years. This left only 15% of respondents having no plans for MS adoption, down from 28% in 2011 and 39% in 2009.

The key drivers for MS still center on cost and business focus, but their importance is declining compared with previous Informa surveys. In our 2009 survey, 80% and 59% of respondents ranked cost reduction and predictability as among the most important drivers, respectively, compared with just 55% and 27% in 2013.

The latter survey confirms that CSPs are now also looking to MS to address strategic and top-line issues, and to help them become more customer-focused. What’s more, new value-creation drivers,

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Evolving MS from network efficiency to value creation

such as service quality, customer experience and revenue growth are becoming nearly as important.

These results indicate an opportunity, perhaps even a pressing need, for MS providers to address these emerging requirements early on, to regain trust and demonstrate value, by acting as strategic partners to improve operational efficiency and service quality/customer experience, and to drive new revenue growth.

A deeper partnership approach

The industry recognizes that a strong and trusting CSP-MSP relationship is at the heart of successful MS engagement. However, our survey results indicate that even before this relationship is established and tested, MSPs are chosen on the basis of their levels of investment and innovation in tools and processes, their MS track record, and their ability to support the CSP in an era of rapid technological change. In other words, experience, skills and tools in areas such as all-IP architecture, software-defined networking (SDN), virtualization, IT/telco convergence, and big data/analytics are all critical for success, but just as important is the MSP’s strategic alignment with and understanding of the CSP’s business objectives. Thus, the CSP requirement for a much deeper level of engagement.

Managed service adoption is becoming a strategic rather than tactical decision and will thus need to be led by not just the CTO; the rest of the board will need to be much more closely involved as well. Increasingly, CSPs are looking to their MSP partners to deliver benefits in customer experience, service quality and revenue generation – all responsibilities of the entire leadership team.

The development of a deeper partnership enables both the CSP and MSP to share long-term business objectives based on an agreed-upon roadmap, accept the sharing of risks and, ultimately, share in success, perhaps by revenue sharing derived from the actions of the latter.

CSP and MSP willingness to more fully engage is illustrated by the flexibility and imagination now being displayed with pricing and business models. An increasing number of CSPs are looking to more innovative pricing schemes, such as revenue sharing, with the MSP’s revenue a direct percentage of the CSP’s revenue for specific services. Such commitments encourage the MSP to be innovative in developing solutions to protect against revenue loss while supporting new sources of revenue such as VAS hosting, mobile payment, M2M, or big data.

Converged & centralized operations

Not surprisingly, our 2013 survey shows a continued emphasis on MS adoption for network operations, and a trend towards the further outsourcing of IT & IP network operations and BSS/OSS over the next three years. However, other functions, such as application/content hosting and SQM/CEM, will be increasingly outsourced as well, indicating a broader MS role in CSP business and its greater involvement in the support of customer-facing and revenue-generating activities.

To date, CSPs have tended to engage with specific types of MSPs for specific functions – network vendors for network operations, IT/systems integrators for IT operations and BSS/OSS, etc. However, certain recent deals demonstrate a new trend in integrated MS solutions where a single MSP takes responsibility for the network, service management, BSS/OSS, and IT systems. So far, these converged MS deals seem to be favored by smaller CSP challengers, perhaps because they are less constrained by cultural differences between telco and IT departments and/or because they think that they can more effectively leverage real-time SQM/CEM and operational efficiency benefits due to their smaller size and more entrepreneurial nature.

The benefits of centralized and multi-tenant platforms for MS operations include more efficient field maintenance, optimized workforce management, reduced management complexity, and synergies in sharing & exploiting real-time service quality data.

Service and customer focus

One of the most significant current trends in telco is the transition of the CSP operational focus from network quality to service quality/customer experience, often as part of an organization-wide business transformation process. CSPs are already embracing new techniques and processes embodied in SQM and CEM and are deploying service operations centers (SOCs) alongside traditional network operations centers (NOCs) to monitor and manage end-to-end service quality and customer experience more effectively.

This trend is likely to have a major impact on managed services, as a greater number of CSPs are looking to outsource service operations in the future. This is most likely to be in combination with outsourced network operations. For many CSPs who already have an MS-operated NOC, SOC operation by the same

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MSP makes sense in terms of operational efficiencies and synergies in the sharing of service-related data.

Today’s focus on KPIs as the primary mechanism for measuring and rewarding MS contract success will soon shift towards key business objectives (KBOs) and KBIs. KPIs and KQIs will remain key management metrics, but their relevance and use in the governance of the contracts themselves will diminish.

This emerging trend has implications for MSPs, who must now demonstrate experience, skills, and tools in SQM and CEM, which may require acquisition or partnership.

The ways that MSPs can contribute to CEM are varied, but their ability to manage E2E service quality and deliver real-time analytics across multiple platforms & technologies are expected by roughly 50% of CSPs to be primary factors, and this is expected to be one of the key drivers for fully-integrated or converged MS contracts.

Revenue growth

Surveys and interviews suggest that the MSP’s vision, commitment, and ability to deliver improvement to the top line are becoming more valued by forward-looking CSPs. The most popular view is that this will be achieved through improvements in service quality, customer experience, and time-to-market. However, a few CSPs identified a number of business opportunities that they expected MSPs to help exploit, such as M2M, big data and cloud services.

Many MSPs are already contributing to top-line growth for CSPs by delivering improvements in service quality and reducing service outages, which helps reduce churn and protect against revenue loss. MSPs are also helping maximize ARPU via tariff optimization and flexible charging systems, while getting new services/technologies to market faster. Thanks to IT/telco convergence, M2M, big data, and real-time data analytics, skills, tools and processes were also identified as MS opportunities.

Ultimately, many CSPs will want to see MSPs contribute to both the top and bottom lines, and a commitment to a specific impact on overall business performance, perhaps a certain EBITDA increase over the period of the contract. This will be the point at which the CSP-MSP relationship can be considered a true partnership.

The future of managed services

There is no doubt that the adoption of managed services is accelerating worldwide, although the nature and extent of MS engagements are largely dependent on a CSP’s maturity and market. The industry is learning, and is most definitely evolving into a more sophisticated and innovative force for positive change.

Conclusions & recommendations

Stronger partnerships

Deeper and stronger relationships are needed, based on long-term strategic partnerships, where the MSP can bring unique skills, tools, processes and insights to complement the CSP’s assets, vision and customer relationships. The partnership must be based on a willingness to change the terms of engagement and work together on new shared-risk business models, underlined by flexible but unambiguous contracts with commitments to top-line business outcomes.

Network efficiency

Network quality and efficiency improvements must be built upon by exploring opportunities to drive costs down, enhance service quality, and enable new business opportunities, while exploiting the transition to flatter IP-based architectures and the convergence of telco and IT systems.

Service quality

SQM and CEM techniques and processes must be embraced and developed within the MS proposition, including SOC development and utilization for the management & implementation of SQM and CEM processes & actions to facilitate CSP business transformation towards service- and customer-centric management.

New revenue

A focus is needed on developing the skills, resources, partnerships, and solutions that enable the MSP to add top-line value to the CSP’s business, either by satisfying a current end-user need (improved service quality) or by developing new markets and new revenue sources (M2M, big data, data centers, cloud enterprise services, etc.).

Editor: Jason [email protected]

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National broadband: A complex undertaking

Evolving managed services to excel in operations transformation

CSPs are experiencing intense pressure on margins as a result of intensifying competition and the investments necessary to facilitate data and cloud services, while satisfying expectations for richer customer experiences. Operational management practices, often established over many years and shaped by an emphasis on technology management practices, are no longer appropriate. CSPs must transform their operations from network centricity to service and business (value creation) centricity.

T echnology has always been a major driver of change in telco. The ubiquity of the Internet, enabled by mobile

broadband technologies and the rise of the smartphone, means that the drivers of change for communication service providers (CSPs) in the Internet era will be as much business- and market-related as technology-based, and they must respond to this market dynamism.

Some CSPs are already starting to change their operational management focus from the usual cost controls and management of complexities to improving service quality and customer experience, in tandem with the deve lopment and exploitat ion of new business opportunities. This change in emphasis from cost reduction to service quality and value creation signals a major change in operational working strategy & practice, and in the relationship between CSPs and their operational partners.

Why operations transformation?

There is no doubt that efficiency and

By Richard Wong

cost control are still of primary concern to CSP operational management, but a shift in emphasis towards value creation is evident, with over three-quarters of the respondents to a global telco survey by Informa Telecoms & Media showing businesses/customers predicting that intelligence and new digital service d e ve l o p m e n t w i l l b e c o m e m o re important than cost control within the next five years.

Other areas growing in importance over the next five years include service quality management (SQM)/customer experience management (CEM) and network/IT convergence. Both trends have considerable implications for operational management and relate directly to the key business objectives (KBOs) for operational transformation cited by respondents to this survey.

The integration of customer experience or service quality management techniques and tools into the operational setup is a key element of the transformation to a more user-centric organization, and this was overwhelmingly voted as the most important objective of operational transformation.

Such changes imply signif icant

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organizational and operational changes, and impact company culture, inter-departmental relationships, and customer relationships as well. For example, CSPs that have introduced service operational centers (SOCs) have found that they create new inter-dependencies and improve communications between network-facing and customer-facing functions, with the latter acting as a catalyst for the transition to becoming more customer-focused in operational decision making.

Network convergence promises significant benefits in terms of efficiency, agility, and service quality, while enabling CSP exploitation of new business opportunities in areas such as big data and cloud services. But the integration of fixed and mobile infrastructure, and more significantly, the integration of the previously independent organizational entities, CT networks, and IT networks will also be major drivers of operational transformation.

Some CSPs have already embarked on significant operational transformation (OT) programs, intended to deliver major, and in some cases radical, changes to the way in which they manage and operate. These CSPs are looking to such OT projects to deliver far-reaching business benefits.

What is operations transformation?

The operations transformation process involves the re-engineering of organization-wide operational structures and processes . These tend to be comprehensive organizational change programs, focused on fundamentally changing the way in which a CSP does business. These programs are characterized by a broad scope & depth of change, impacting all aspects of the business across all functional & resource dimensions as depicted by Informa in its Operational Transformation Matrix.

An OT program can deliver cost reductions in network operations through effective reorganization via a managed service contract combined with the introduction of SQM/CEM techniques and the replacement or upgrade of legacy telco or IT platforms.

The customer experience can be improved by changes to service operations through training of customer care agents (people), improving the availability of service performance information (processes) and introduction of powerful & flexible IT systems (platforms) to manage large volumes of

customer data. Shorter time to market for new services can be

achieved by improving business operations through the introduction of new incentives to encourage risk-taking and innovation (people), improving communication processes between development and production departments (processes) and investing in more flexible billing and provisioning systems (platforms).

An OT program can also span network, service and business operations. For example, an OT program focused on converging fixed and wireless businesses into a single entity (network) will impact cost and efficiency (business operations), leading to profitable broadband services.

Different OT approaches and business models

Each OT program is unique and shaped by the scale & scope of the transformation required, the business imperatives driving the transformation, and the nature of the organization itself. However, most OT programs can be categorized along these lines.

Centralization – This is centralization of decision-making, establishing a global network operation center (GNOC) to manage network operations for multiple operators. This type of OT program tends to have a great impact on the entire business – especially the people and processes. It can deliver significant results in terms of reduced operational costs, faster time to market, and revenue stream creation, and is typical of the OT programs used by large regional or global CSPs.

Service-centric operation – This is the transition to user-centricity, where performance is measured on the basis of customer experiences, and this is made possible through implementation of service quality and customer experience management processes & tools (platforms).

ICT (IT & CT converged) operation – Cloud computing and SDN are gradually blurring the boundary between IT and telecom operations. Such a program is particularly important to CSPs in fast-moving, highly-competitive environments that are looking to transform for agility & responsiveness.

FMC (fixed & mobile converged) operation –With continuous development of new-generation wireless and fixed broadband access technology, telecom networks are becoming more and more complex. Convergence of operations across networks can have a profound impact on people, processes

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Evolving MS to excel in operations transformation

and platforms. Improved efficiencies and market responsiveness are the main benefits here.

Network consolidation – Cost reduction, light asset operation and regulations speed up the progress of either in-market or cross-broader network consolidation. Customized transformation programs for each CSP is needed as they have different requirements on SLA, change, complaint and capacity management.

Global service business models for OT execution

Outsourcing – MS is the most common approach for OT, and one which potentially encompasses the greatest level of transformation as it impacts most if not all dimensions of a CSP’s business. The scope of outsourced OT projects can initially be limited to network operations, such as field services, network management, or business operations such as sales/distribution channels, although there is increasingly a broader focus on outsourcing programs as managed services evolve. Major technology-driven OT programs, such as network convergence or network modernization, can be managed successfully through partnership with a vendor.

Consulting – Some CSPs will choose consultancy for OT planning & management due to the enormity of the transformation task or lack of internal change management skills & experience, or perhaps to enable a focus on managing ongoing business until transformation is complete.

Managing operational transformation programsTransformation programs start with strategic alignment

OT programs are highly complex and have great impact on a CSP’s organization and future prosperity.

Therefore, they must start with strategic alignment across the business to help define values to be adopted throughout the change process, to determine shared goals & objectives and ensure that change is coordinated across all business dimensions.

Governance and definition of metrics

Establishing strong governance of the OT program, and defining the appropriate metrics for the change process itself and subsequent transformed organization, are some of the key practical challenges that CSPs will face when embarking on transformation. It is likely that the trend towards use of metrics based on key business outcomes (KBOs) rather than key performance indicators (KPIs) will also apply to OT programs as the operational emphasis shifts from network-centricity to service-centricity. These new metrics could include service quality and customer satisfaction, and financial measures (EBITDA).

Program management & execution

Careful planning is essential. A full understanding of the existing organization, work practices/processes and systems/platforms before making changes is necessary to identify what must change and how, and ensure an established baseline for measuring change.

Because of the scale and consequent timescales of OT programs, it pays to adopt a phased or modular approach to enable the CSP and its partners to respond to market/technology changes as and when they happen, and to avoid culture shock stemming from large-scale changes across the organization all at once. Rigorous program management tools and techniques are essential to transformation success. For example, clear milestones must be established with sufficient flexibility to change direction if necessary.

Indeed, transformational change should be both a strategic goal and at the heart of everyday thinking at a CSP. Ideally, an organization must be prepared to continually evolve, and accept change as part of its culture.

Operational excellence

In order to continuously drive for operational excellence, an expert team that can diagnose operational problems and come up with an improvement program is required. For a continuous improvement program, this expert team can measure, analyze and improve (MAI), and through benchmarking is able to work towards higher operational efficiency. This efficiency management allows CSPs to measure and quantify operational efficiency and analyze problems across the dimensions of time, quality and effectiveness.

Choose partners carefully

Managing OT programs to ensure transformation coordination across all three dimensions of a CSP’s business ( n e t w o r k , s e r v i c e a n d b u s i n e s s operations) and key linkage maintenance between them is highly complex and requires skills & experiences in all three disciplines (people, processes, platforms).

Most CSPs work with partners to plan/execute wide-reaching OT programs in order to exploit specific OT knowledge or experience. The extent to which the partners are intricately linked to program management will vary depending on the CSP’s scale, scope and confidence in its own capabilities.

An OT partner should have the strategic vision, skills, experience and resources in all three dimensions to ensure CSPs objectives. Furthermore, because of the critical and strategic nature of OT programs, the OT partner must be trusted and demonstrate a strong understanding of the business and its challenges. Therefore, existing

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suppliers, especially network vendors or MSPs with telco network, SQM/CEM, and BSS/OSS implementation/management expertise tend to make good OT partners.

Operations transformation through MS

The evolution of managed services beyond simple outsourcing of non-core functions is now well established, with managed service providers (MSPs) taking on far greater responsibility for business-critical functions. The MSP is now far better equipped in terms of knowledge, skills, tools and experience to address challenges on behalf of the CSP across its business and to become an agent of transformation itself. MS solutions are already integral to a number of one-dimensional OT programs, but at Huawei, we believe an MS approach can deliver successful operational transformation across all dimensions.

Managed network operation – This is the original domain of managed services. Transformation of network operations to deliver operational excellence via MS is possible through a philosophy of continuous improvement based on a standardized & consolidated process framework that spans all network domains (fixed, mobile, IT) and allows for full integration across all functional elements of the CSP organization. The ability to converge operations across the aforementioned spectrum of technologies is mandatory for true service quality management across the full subscriber value chain.

Managed service operation – Service-oriented operation that assures service quality and end-user experience can be achieved by unifying different departments such as network, customer care and marketing to quicken service problem-solving, and by moving from network KPI to service KQI management. Only by integrating the SOC into the existing network operation center (NOC) can E2E service quality monitoring & operation and “per-service per-user” problem demarcation be enabled.

Managed business support – This area is important to operational transformation, and is one where MS will play an increasingly important role. MSPs can positively influence CSP revenue by helping to effectively manage applications and content, data analysis & reporting, and content & service provider aggregation – enabling faster time-to-market for each new VAS, including hosting where appropriate, to reduce the CSP investment

profile.Managed planning & engineering – This

area provides the accurate network capacity and implementation planning so that the return on investment can be improved. Work closely with network & IT operation, and network insights can be provided so that network design and plan can be adjusted according to different priority needs.

At Huawei, we have developed a portfolio of managed operations solutions that span the entire spectrum of OT approaches, addressing each of the dimensions of the OT matrix.

Conclusions

T h e s h i f t i n e m p h a s i s i n o p e r a t i o n a l management from cost control towards service quality and value creation is driving CSPs to re-engineer operational structures & processes across all aspects of their business. The emerging trend of CSPs embarking on OT programs is likely to grow as they seek to transition from network- to service-centric business.

OT promises to deliver significant benefits, from greater operational efficiency to greater business agility, and better customer experiences, but the scale, complexity and depth of the necessary changes to transform well-established working practices and relationships carries significant risk.

Successful OT requires careful planning and strategic alignment across the business from the beginning. Strong governance of such high-impact programs is vital, and requires metrics based on business outcomes (KBOs) rather than network KPIs. To succeed, transformation will require CSPs to work closely with partners. MS providers are well placed to support OT programs, and can be agents of transformation themselves.

Strategic objectives are driving transformation projects, making it even more important that there be a trusted partnership at the heart of the CSP-supplier relationship. Suppliers must show their experience & competence in helping CSPs meet strategic objectives. To do this, the supplier must think in terms of business outcomes rather than operations; have the expertise to help a CSP integrate its services and support the rapid launch of relevant services to the target audience; have the right tools to ensure CSP customer- and service-centricity; and understand the correct new business opportunities for its strategic partner. Huawei can do just that.


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Traffic monetization: Key challenges and countermeasures

Complicated markets, demanding customers

Mo b i l e I n t e r n e t h a s n o t o n l y stimulated increased network access speeds, it has changed user behavior. Users’ data consumption behaviors

have become more fragmented, with the time spent per browsing session shortening. It is therefore not surprising that users are also raising more on-demand service requests (as they don’t want to leave things unresolved until the next session), and services & applications have become more intelligent to accommodate them. Internet services and applications are also now more diversified.

The mobile Internet market is a fast-changing business. The landscape of the market can completely change in three years. Nearly 1.5 million OTT companies are established across the globe every year, 500 of which try to go public, but only 300 of which survive (0.02%).

Two types of services, of which one requires more signal usage and the other requires less transmission latency, are changing the user experience – online chatting/instant messaging and interactive services, such as Apple’s Siri or online gaming. For operators, the key to successful traffic monetization is to make the right network policy and develop the right network evolutionary path and strategy.

Traffic analysis and policy implementation

The fundamental purpose of traffic monetization is differentiated management of network traffic, better utilization of network resources, changed traffic consumption habits, increased traffic value, and more resultant revenue generation. To monetize traffic, data insight, precise network planning & policy, and smart network structure are required. But during the process, the following factors must be considered.

First, traffic monetization formulation should employ big data, and be supported by flexible and high-efficiency tools and professional teams. A mid-sized 2G/3G network can generate dozens of TBs of traffic from its Gn ports per week. Network data of that scale must be analyzed along multiple dimensions and sourced from the BSS, OSS, and signaling ports (Gx). Such volume, variety, and velocity of data are definitely in line with the 3 “V’s” of big data analysis.

Second, while all operators definitely need to transform, not all are in the same developmental stage or market environment, so precise planning and policy design, based on in-depth analysis of the aforementioned data, are needed. Data collection and the output of basic reports are only the first step; big data analysis and identification of business characteristics & trends is even more imperative. To achieve this, stronger data analysis capabilities are needed. When it comes to policy planning & design, some leading operators have already formulated successful policies for fair usage (FUP), integrated service pricing, security & behavior monitoring, and bill shock prevention.

However, markets that are apparently homogenous

Traffic monetizationKey challenges and countermeasuresHuawei’s PCC consulting and systems integration service can help operators monetize traffic through in-depth data analysis, more accurate planning, and more strategic marketing. Data mining and analysis helps sharpen business and marketing targets, as does our dedicated team of experts, making for a future where your goals met and exceeded.

By Qiu Shikui & Liu Di

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Editor: Joyce [email protected]

may not be so. In one South China province, low-value P2P traffic accounts for 16% of the total network traffic, while in another province in central China, it accounts for only 0.1%. The lesson to be learned here is that fair usage for P2P traffic is not always the best policy.

As network speed increases and new services emerge, users’ traffic consumption habits are changing accordingly. For example, when China Unicom migrated its 2G users to its 3G networks in a certain province, there was a sudden surge in need for video streaming, boosting video service traffic from ninth place to third amongst all traffic forms. This probably stems from the fact that on higher-speed networks, where the user experience is better, users tend to use bandwidth-hungry services more frequently. Operators need more in-depth data mining & analysis capabilities and customized solutions to guide & transform user’s consumption behaviors.

Virginia Rometty, CEO of IBM, has said, “Decisions will be based not on gut instinct, but on predictive analytics.” This means that, in terms of traffic monetization policy, operators must not just assume that they know what users want just because their markets are often in their own backyard. In-depth data analysis and insight from various dimensions (users, services, networks, terminals, locations, and time) are needed, powered by first-hand objective data, so that the right decisions are made with the right needs met. This requires long-term real-world telco experience in terms of personnel, methodology, and modeling.

The third and final factor is that a PCC-centric intelligent network is fundamental to refined traffic monetization, which must have feasible and pragmatic policies that set business success as the ultimate goal. Currently, operators’ core assets are still their networks. Intelligent networks, c en te red on po l i cy and cha rg ing control (PCC), are fundamental to the implementation of traffic monetization and continuous traffic value creation.

According to a TM Forum survey from 2012, 76% of all operators were planning to or had deployed PCC-

Hu a w e i ’s P C C c o n s u l t i n g & integration solution provides policy consultation, network analysis and policy integration services that deliver business success. During the policy consultation and network analysis stage, Huawei conducted professional analysis of bulk data from China Mobile Tianjin (Tianjin Mobile) concerning services, access, user location, heavy-traffic users, roaming users, t ime, terminals, and tariffs , while identifying the relevant network characteristics, which are critical to the next stage – policy formulation.

Huawei carried this out after analysis of those a forementioned network characteristics and user traffic consumption behavior. Specific policies included wireless resource optimization, differentiated management, differentiated services, and traffic control.

In May 2013, after completing policy verification and deployment, Huawei and Tianjin Mobile evaluated their traffic monetization measures. In the pilot area, policies targeting different user groups were implemented, including service recommendation, high-value service assurance, VIP user guarantee, and roaming traffic control. Results showed a 10% increase in overall data traffic, with traffic for VIP users also up. By guaranteeing user experience for high-value services in areas & scenarios where resources are limited, service usage frequency and traffic consumption increased significantly.

This joint innovation project was highly praised by Tianjin Mobile. “Huawei conducted a thorough analysis of our network. The depth & breadth of the analysis was unprecedented, and it will bring tremendous value to Tianjin Mobile’s business operation,” said the manager of the carrier’s network maintenance department.” The general manager of its marketing department would add, “Huawei has done a good job in assessing policy effectiveness. We can learn a lot from the assessment methods and related algorithms applied for this analysis.”

centr ic inte l l igent networks, thus enabling user-level and service-level policy control. Especially in the LTE era, PCC-based intelligent networks can offer flexible billing and differentiated services to implement refined tariff policies and meet diversified market demands. Compared to business intelligence purely based on IT/BSS and near-real-time post-event handling systems, a PCC network enables real-time, flexible, and efficient service-level and/or user-level policy control.

PCC integration empowers traffic monetization

Huawei’s PCC consulting and system integrat ion service offers a traff ic monetization solution based on in-depth data mining/analysis. Leveraging intelligent analysis platforms & tools and expert teams with global experience, Huawei helps operators carry out such analysis from various dimensions, gaining insight into user behaviors in different areas (service, time, location). This enables precise marketing strategies & suggestions, policy implementation, and the building of monetization-oriented KPI systems. What’s more, Hu a we i h e l p s o p e r a t o r s b u i l d a comprehensive assessment mechanism to evaluate policy effects, based on service and user behavior changes, so that network planning/deployment, traffic monetization policies, and customer satisfaction are optimal.

Huawe i ’s PCC consu l t ing and system integration solution has been used successfully by over a hundred operators. In 2012, China Mobile and Huawei jointly established a traffic monetization and Smart PCC pilot project in Tianjin, with the aim of accelerating traffic monetization policy implementation through PCC, FUP, WLAN hotspot notification, and value service recommendation functions, so as to increase the average revenue per bit.

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Operators are seeking to enhance operational efficiency &

profitability, in concert with their sustainable development

plans, in the areas of talent development, business intelligence,

FrontHaul, and iODN to meet their business requirement needs.

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Get an A+ in LTE with Huawei26

Telco business intelligence evolution29

FrontHaul: Solving the small cell backhaul crunch

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Get an A+ in LTE with HuaweiLTE is being adopted by a very large number of telcos, but no engineer or executive emerges from the womb with a working knowledge of LTE technology, all-IP design, or flat architecture. Huawei offers a training program that can bring the key personnel in your organization up to speed.

By Shen Yang

Challenges to LTE expertise

LTE is now taking hold worldwide, but the technology itself inherits little from its 2G/3G predecessors, putting the telecom senior personnel at a disadvantage, and

the problem does not end there; all-IP architecture is a prerequisite for LTE that requires inter-network managerial & technological expertise if O&M is to be effectively supported.

With a flat LTE network in place, the boundary between the core and access networks dissolves, making service coordination between these two entities more demanding and increasing the need for cross-field O&M expertise.

As LTE is designed for data traffic only, this places urgent demands on telecom engineers for

data traffic control and operation. The higher QoS expected of an LTE network and the diversity of services also raise the bar for its O&M, with a deeper understanding of E2E service quality assurance, dif ferentiated services, and user experience guarantees all musts. Additionally, many LTE carriers employ both FDD and TDD technologies, which differ greatly in terms of their wireless interface features, and this makes planning & optimization not an easy business. With BTS concentration being what it is now, LTE networks are more complicated and fault-prone than previous technologies, making the O&M process less like troubleshooting and more like an endless game of catch-up.

Thus, carriers need a systematic solution for talent training and cultivation, with modular training programs that cover different stages

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Get an A+ in LTE with Huawei

of deployment and levels of experience, from preparation, to trial; from commercial use, to advanced optimization, via a flexible combination of face-to-face, online, and mobile training.

Huawei solution for LTE expertise training

Huawe i p rov ide s a mutua l l y - exc lu s i ve collectively-exhaustive (MECE-based) training solution that ensures that telco staff in LTE-related posts at all levels receive the proper training. This systematic solution helps identify the gaps that carriers need filled in terms of LTE, and can be primarily broken down into the following elements.

Complete competence hierarchy

Based on standard business processes from the enhanced telecom operations map (eTOM), Huawei identifies key capabilities required to complete tasks recognized by carriers and adds its own LTE equipment application experiences to culminate in a complete competence hierarchy for different levels and across areas of strategy, network planning, optimization, construction and O&M; distinctly different from those for 2G/3G technologies.

This hierarchy covers network evolutionary stages and the technological fields of optical transmission, data communication, and access, focusing on four major areas of LTE expertise.

The first is O&M and self-organizing network (SON) application, where the focus is shifted from traditional network performance to service quality and customer experience. The second is data communication and E2E fault location, as required for flattened, all-IP LTE networks. Third is coordination between LTE networks and current networks, including coordinated network planning, optimization, interoperation, and VoLTE, across different networks and technology fields. Last but not least are LTE service features such as streaming media interaction and augmented reality (AR), which are specific to LTE network services and KPIs.

Comprehensive training based on job position

Composed primarily of UMTS-LTE, CDMA-LTE and LTE TDD categories, these training programs serve as a training resource repository, catering to the needs of various postings. For management domains, programs on industry trends and strategic analysis are offered, including courses on LTE development trends and challenges. For

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training content for business needs on site. For a certain Asian incumbent, Huawei analyzed

its LTE network deployment progress and the potential problems that might arise with the operation and wireless, core, and bearer network elements. Huawei identified the carrier’s LTE expertise requirements for various posts regarding network planning, deployment, O&M, and network optimization across different stages of network preparation, construction, commercial use, and commercial maturity. Based on that, Huawei delivered post- and stage-based modular training programs to the carrier, with satisfactory results.

Trainees spoke highly of the training regarding LTE construction planning & solutions. They have indicated a better understanding & knowledge, and deemed the training effective guidance for future deployment. Carriers have also expressed a wish to cooperate further with Huawei for network planning & optimization pre-deployment to build better and faster LTE.

Since the debut of Huawei’s LTE training program, which covered LTE eNodeB O&M for ten trainees from Sweden, Huawei has successfully trained LTE talent for a dozen carriers around the world, at both the technical and managerial levels, providing a strong boost to carrier LTE evolution strategies.

technical experts, programs on skill transformation and evolution, including LTE network planning, LTE site solutions, engineering solutions, and LTE IP bearer network solutions, in tandem with network knowledge for engineers and LTE basics for all staff are also available.

Global e-Learning platform

The Huawei Academy Online (HAO) (http://e-learning.huawei.com) is a comprehensive online learning and management platform, integrating learning modules such as web-based training (WBT), live virtual classroom (LVC), eLab, LTE simulation software (LTE Star), mobile learning (m-learning), online testing (OLT), and learning communities. It is a great complement to the existing face-to-face platform that enables LTE network O&M personnel around the world to experience both theory and practice. The flexibility of this platform is key, as learners can move at their own pace, anywhere and anytime.

Customization based on business needs

By analyzing service needs; sorting out roles & responsibilities; competence modeling; and planning, implementing and evaluating training programs; Huawei adopts standardized approaches to customize Editor: Pearl Zhu [email protected]

Huawei Academy Online is a comprehensive learning & management platform that integrates web-based training, virtual classrooms, eLab, simulation, mobile learning, online testing, and learning communities.

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Telco business intelligence evolution

Telco business intelligence evolutionA digitized enterprise has a large amount of data that can refine both management and production; so do telcos, who need to mine & exploit this data to transform their business models from product-centric to user-centric Internet-based operation. Business analysis systems are key to this transformation. Telcos should pay great attention to the impact of big data on a business analysis system and determine what type of business analysis system they need to build.

Business intelligence (BI) helps e n t e r p r i s e s t u r n d a t a i n t o knowledge, which is then leveraged to make business decisions. BI

technologies provide the tools and mechanisms to analyze data (data collection, management, and analysis) and transform it into useful information for all departments.

The key for BI is to filter the data from an enterprise’s various systems to obtain useful & accurate information. After extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) into an enterprise-level data warehouse (DW), a comprehensive view can be had. Through tools such as query, analysis, data mining, and online analytical processing (OLAP), the data can be analyzed and processed into information helpful to the decision-making process.

Telco demands for BI

To meet different business needs, telco BI has evolved from basic business intelligence to business analytics (BA), and now big data analysis. Initially, telcos utilized BI to solve problems with data management, such as scattering, index & standard inconsistency, and slow response times, enabling enterprise managers & analysts to make better business decisions. A first-gen BI system involves an enterprise-level data warehouse and BI-directed decision-making. At this stage, the benefits to telco management were along the lines of, “We once receive two reports with different data regarding the same service both from the marketing and data business departments. There was also market data on subscriber adds and churn rate, but only after one week. Now we have accurate data, even for the previous day, by 8:00am the next morning.” With their decision-making now more refined, telcos expanded digitization efforts into daily work, with timely & accurate analysis available to all employees.

As telco transformed from voice to value-added service (VAS), and from developing new subscribers to increasing customer value,

second-gen BI (BA) was born, with the purpose of helping telcos analyze services, customers, tariffs, and channels, culminating in refined operation. BA focuses on data mining, precision marketing, process evaluation & optimization, and comprehensive user insight. Telcos use it to improve value for existing users, retain valued subscribers, operate long-tail VAS, improve the marketing success rate, and enhance production & operation efficiency.

In the future, telcos’ business transformation will strive for Internet-based operation, traffic monetization, and cross-industry cooperation. They need to build smart networks, employ smart experience-oriented operation, and transform themselves into smarter enterprises that integrate online & offline operations. A customer-centered real-time operation system will integrate internal data (including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data) and external data such as SNS data and third-party evaluation data. Given the sheer scales involved here, telcos not only must tame the relevant construction costs, but also build a big data processing platform that extracts the rules and business values of data, thus improving their own operation & production and benefiting from sharing said insights with business partners.

However, Internet companies (the primary disruptors of the telco world) have a headstart in big data. Tencent has built an open internal platform that provides big data computing, aggregation, and application openness capabilities to support its high-efficiency operations. Through this platform, Chinese e-commerce hub Taobao sells data to its sellers, who use the data to enhance their operational & marketing efficiency. For the Internet hubs (and presumably telcos), big data processing can really live up to its name, to the tune of 100,000 terabytes a day for a company like eBay.

Mainstream BI solutions

Telco BI solutions are usually oriented

By Yan Yantao

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around enterprise management, operation & production, or data service, depending on their current stage in the transformation process.

Enterprise management

This solution can be thought of as a decision-making management solution, as it provides comprehensive, rapid, and high-quality data services to help managers and decision-makers understand an enterprise’s operation situation and make rational choices.

So far, most telcos have built primary decision-making systems. In the future, as digitization unfurls, these systems will cover the entire organization to provide customized services for users in different positions who have different demands. At this point, telco data will not only come from the BSS and financial systems, but also all other systems as well. System construction for this will be centralized, as opposed to the independent builds carried out in the past by subsidiaries.

Operation & production

This is basically a smart operation solution, and represents the second stage of business analytics evolution. The goal here is to give a telco’s operations and marketing personnel a deeper look into customer requirements and operation & production processes so that operation efficiency and user experience are improved; with intelligent marketing through customer, service, and operation process analysis another goal. This solution is pivotal to business operation, as real-time customer & service analysis results are sent to production units who utilize them. In other words, a smart operation solution analyzes customer requirements and service usage so that timely and customized products & services are delivered.

The key to smart operation is real-time data analysis and modeling capabilities, and the use of analysis results to drive operation process optimization. As telcos move towards Internet-based operations, they will gradually upgrade their smart operation solutions to include intelligent marketing, traffic monetization, and user experience improvement.

Data service

Open data is the foremost prerequisite of big data service development; this makes open data service the future of analysis systems, where data value is boosted

through this open flow. Open data solutions are primarily developed for enterprise users. They fall into two types. One enables an enterprise to share its data with a third-party analysis platform; the other allows third parties to provide data services directly to enterprises that support decision-making and production.

User privacy protection, data security, and an open ecosystem are essential to an open data solution. Some telcos have already experimented with data openness. Telefónica has shared its data with third parties to aid their shop site selection process, and China Mobile Henan is working with the Henan Provincial Tourist Administration to monitor visitor traffic at tourist attractions.

Evolution of Huawei BI

For BI, Huawei does not vend mere middleware in a box; we provide comprehensive telco solutions. In light of what has been mentioned already, it is not surprising that this process has gone through three stages in the last ten years.

Stage one (2002 to 2007) – In 2002, China Mobile started to construct its first operational analysis system, which used BSS data to facilitate decision making. As the system integrator, Huawei provided customized services to the operator. After five years of development, China Mobile built a unified data warehouse and a number of applications to support its marketing operation and decision making.

Stage two (2008 to 2011) – Huawei built the operation platform (OP) for China Mobile, including the VAS analysis system for the data business, the service operational system for enterprise, the comprehensive network analysis system for the network department, and the precision marketing system for the marketing department, with special data warehouses built for different departments to support their operation & production.

Stage three (since 2012) – As telcos transform for In te rne t -ba sed opera t ions and t r a f f i c monetization, Huawei has built a big data-based smart operation platform (SOP) for its BI, creating Internet-based SOP (ISOP) and smart marketing solutions. ISOP is the core of Huawei’s value growth solution (VGS), which helps telcos formulate strategies for business, marketing, and operation, while enabling better customer understanding, improved data visualization, real-time marketing, and an enhanced user experience.

Editor: Joyce [email protected]

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FrontHaul: Solving the small cell backhaul crunchMobile operators are struggling to find physically feasible and economically promising methods for keeping their network capacity up to par, now and into the future. Small cells promise seamless coverage, but conventional backhaul for them has proven impractical. Huawei offers a solution – FrontHaul.

By Sameer Ashfaq Malik

So what is FrontHaul?

Macro base station deployments are becoming increasingly dense, with spacing between stations now in the 200-to-250-meter range in some

cases. However, obstructions, coverage holes, and capacity inadequacies remain. Huawei answers with its FrontHaul solution, a key part of its LTEHaul family of solutions

FrontHaul helps cover up the Achilles’ heel of small cells (their backhaul), but that isn’t even the best part, as FrontHaul excels in terms of diversity. Variants can handle all practical media onsite today, fixed or not, making it the final and perhaps most crucial piece of the HetNet puzzle. Also of note for FrontHaul is its cloud-RAN (C-RAN) architecture, where a “cloud BBU” is shared by various stations, making for improved operational efficiency, TCO, work parity, handoff, and, traffic offload from any & all caliber of small cell. However, careful

planning is needed here, or user experience & SLAs will suffer.

Any media, any topology, any place

FrontHaul extends network connectivity to service small cells, and will enable GE-to-10GE uplink access in the future. Its versatility enables the reuse of existing resources on site for the carrying of GE traffic to the collector node, whether they are GPON, copper, coax, cable, fiber or microwave. This any-media, any-access-technology support is its key attraction, as telcos need a solution for GE access over any media and any media phase synchronization (P2P Ethernet, PON, copper, microwave, cable) from GE to 10GE access in indoor and outdoor areas.

Wireline FrontHaul

With fixed FrontHaul, small cell sites are directly connected to a macro cell via fiber, copper,

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PON, DSL, cable etc. If a mobile operators lacks fixed resources on site, it can always rent/acquire/share those of a third party, though this will mean that the connection to the network will be made at a different point.

Moreover, MBB traffic is increasing rapidly, with small cell deployments expected to pick up significantly over the next five years, but s i te acquis i t ion and backhaul are s t i l l rea l challenges, and could delay those aforementioned deployments. However, for MSOs, site acquisition & MS experts & surveyors will be effective in filling this chasm. MSOs are flush with last-mile cable or HFC resources in many parts of the world, and will play a major role in the backhaul of small cells and Wi-Fi. They are striving hard to get a large portion of the backhaul transport market, as they hope to provide smooth & reliable transport of sensitive voice, video and data traffic without jitter or delay. FrontHaul now extends its versatility and provides a one-stop solution for all-IP based HFC networking in fast and economic deployments, whether aerial, pedestal, or cabinet based-, that overcome the challenges of delay & jitter of traditional CMTS. It also synchronizes frequencies and reuses frequency spectrum with higher efficiency modulation for backhaul, with high bandwidth support. D-CMTS connects to OLT over GPON to save fiber for fast & economic deployment while enabling true FMC that lowers cost and quickens the time to market.

FrontHaul for indoor coverage

Indoor spaces isolated from macrocell coverage may have peak traffic at different times than those that occur outdoors, especially weekends and evenings. Examples of such areas are usually indoor stadiums, shopping centers, cafés/bars, convention centers, and government offices, covered by indoor lampsites, hotel BBUs, etc. Indoor small cells placed on ceilings or interior walls can use existing FTTx or Ethernet resources as per the availability.

However, wired solutions can play a useful role in small cell backhaul, and of course, the overall backhaul solution can be a hybrid of wired and wireless (such as short-length microwave connectivity).

FrontHaul for outdoor coverage

For outdoor FrontHaul coverage a reas ,

microwave technologies, including E-Band (71 to 76GHz), V-Band (60GHz), and Sub Link (Sub 6GHz) are usually best for supporting the LOS/n-LOS/N-LOS terrains. This accelerates rollout and makes O&M quite a bit easier, while enabling full outdoor assembly and unified NMS solution. It is more adaptable in terms of site location (walls, rooftops, poles, etc.). PMP application is useful as it eliminates the need for line-of-sight, making it useful for hotspot areas, while PTP application, with its longer transmission distance (though line-of-sight) can connect PMP hub modules with macro sites.

FrontHaul cloud RAN-BBU centralization/sharing

Cloud-RAN BBU sharing is another effective method for small cell integration with macros in HetNet scenarios. P2P, chain, tree, and ring topologies are used in this integration scheme. When the RRU and BBU are not in the same building, BBUs are centrally deployed at the remote site, with rHUB used inside each building for CPRI convergence. In this case, the small cells backhaul to the macro cell, which then reuses the bearer resources from its BBU. The common packet radio interface (CPRI) plays an important role here. End-to-end O&M and management, coupled with reliable alarm protection mechanisms and macro-micro backhaul synchronization can effectively reduce TCO. Huawei’s OSN 1800 provides full service backhaul with an option for CPRI over OTN and maximum distance of 37km. It’s a smart, full-service piece of metro edge equipment, and supports the CPRI option 1 (0.6144 Gbit/s), 2 (1.2288 Gbit/s), 3 (2.4576 Gbit/s), 6 (6.144 Gbit/s) and 7 (9.83 Gbit/s). An rHUB will be used whether the pRRU and BBU are in the same building or not, but if they are not, OSN1800 will be included.

Different levels of PTP and PTMP topology for microwave E-band deployment modes between the RRU and BBU and between RRUs, as well as the chain topologies for the same.

Promise fulfilled

Small cells have been touted for years as the solution for seamless mobile coverage. FrontHaul, with its ability to leverage any media in any scenario, keeps that promise.


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Intelligent ODN: Definition & application

Intelligent ODN: Definition & applicationAutomation of optical distribution networking (ODN) certainly makes O&M a lot easier but this, in and of itself, does not make it intelligent. True intelligence means that operators can unleash their business potential through their improved passive fixed infrastructure, and Huawei’s iODN makes that possible.

By Wang Guojun

Operators who invest heavily in fiber infrastructure are very concerned about its operation and maintenance

(O&M), especially considering the sheer number of fibers that can be involved and the proportion of that work that is usually done manually. It is vitally important that the process be automated as much as possible if maximal efficiency, minimal human error, and better business operation are to be achieved.

True iODN intelligence

Since the debut of Huawei’s very first iODN solution, interest in the industry has been high, with iODN solutions coming out one after another from different vendors. All offer intelligence regarding the basic functions, including intelligent device ports, electronic port information & identification, visualized device management, and visualized operation instruction.

But, this is far from enough. True

intelligence goes one step further, through facil itation of value-added feature development via the very accurate resource data that iODN enables, benefitting service operation and long-term growth; in other words, true intelligence unleashes a network’s business potential. Huawei iODN, by providing service capacity assessment, rapid optical route scheduling, and real-time link monitoring, helps operators expand their services, reduce customer complaints, and sharpen their competitiveness.

Service capacity assessment

Edge devices, which do the heavy lifting in terms of user service provision, are crucial to optical routing for the end user. With Huawei iODN, operators can obtain accurate resource data and use it for subscriber capacity assessment of edge devices, and determine resource availability in real time (with alarms sent out automatically if resource usage exceeds a threshold), and this makes service expansion a bit smoother.

Fiber access terminals (FATs) are the typical edge devices, and they are deployed in

the tens of thousands on the average ODN. Usually, operators delegate FAT operation to responsible parties for each community, with port data recorded on paper tags on site and later entered into the resource management system (RMS), a process that can hardly be considered accurate or even current. A lack of current resource data should not be underestimated, as a lacking operator might not be aware of a capacity shortage until KPIs start to sag and complaints start coming in. And what’s more, with traditional ODN, a subscriber will need to interact with the telco at least twice to find out whether a requested service can be activated, as a site visit will be required by the responsible party to confirm the availability of resources. This whole process could take days – hardly a good user experience, especially if it is the subscriber’s first impression.

Huawei’s iODN solution uses electronic identification (eIDs) for the relevant ports. Smart handheld terminals are utilized for maintenance that automatically record operational data and update data on the U2000 ODN NMS and RMS in real time. The NMS runs periodic

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the weeks or months of yesteryear) and involves no chance for human error.

The NMS splits an optical route activation order into multiple site-based work orders, which are then sent to the mobile smart terminals of operation engineers. After completion, the implemented orders are sent back to the NMS automatically. This automatic c losed- loop management process also has no chance for human error, while enabling fast & accurate route activation. In one operator’s case, the entire activation cycle is only two days, compared to 25 days before.

Real-time monitoring of optical routes

Huawei iODN also enables real-time fiber link monitoring to ensure stable fiber-optical operation and reduce customer complaints.

• Real-time PON branch route monitoring

Optical splitters, as key ODN devices on a PON, split an optical signal into numerous branch routes that are hard to identify, monitor, or manage. In fact, no effective method is currently available to monitor the status of an optical branch route. When a customer complaint comes in, maintenance personnel have to check optical routes one by one – a slow, tedious process that leaves plenty of time for even more complaints.

Huawei iODN solves this problem by using intelligent optical splitters, which use multispectral reflectance information from splitter output ports to identify each branch optical route, enabling the optical link monitoring system to monitor branch route status in real time, a vast improvement over what came before. If branch optical routes are all of similar lengths (as they often are), the reflected beams on an OTDR may overlap, leaving the OTDR unable to distinguish the branch optical route from which the reflected beam originated.

With an intelligent optical splitter, the exact position of a fault on a branch optical

route can be determined. The system can also analyze the quality of optical routes in real time based on the optical power attenuation, and update the optical splitter status in the NMS accordingly, with alarms generated in advance so that faults are avoided as much as possible.

• Idle fiber-optic monitoring at lower cost

On a metro optical network, route quality will deteriorate continuously due to environmental or human factors. Given the costs involved, it is impossible to use OTDR to monitor the status of all links in real time. If the status is checked manually, before service provisioning, the rate of rework due to deterioration or interruption could reach as high as 30%, making for very laborious and time-consuming O&M, and a greatly compromised customer experience.

With Huawei’s iODN solution, optical power monitoring boards are deployed in iODFs, in connection with one or two idle fiber cores. Optical power reports for connected routes, from these boards, can give NMS personnel a picture of the availability and performance of all optical routes on the metro ODN. This greatly cuts down on that aforementioned rework rate, trimming both OPEX and CAPEX in the process.

In an emergency such as a fiber-optic breakdown, the optical power monitoring board can detect and report it immediately to the NMS, which will in turn initiate an ODTR test to determine the exact location of the fault, with a troubleshooting order dispatched to maintenance personnel. This closed-loop work flow enables accurate, efficient, and in-time O&M, a vast improvement over the process before.

With its support of future-oriented intelligent fiber infrastructure, Huawei’s iODN solution provides various scenario-specific value-added features through accurate resource data, helping operators to expand their market, cut down on customer complaints, and sharpen their competitive edge.Editor: Jason [email protected]

maintenance inspections (PMIs) to ensure consistency between the NMS data and that taken in the field; combine them with the aforementioned automatic data collection and manual data entry is no longer necessary, making for significant improvements in both data accuracy and operational efficiency.

With accurate resource data, the NMS can carry out precise service capacity assessment by analyzing maximum subscriber capacity for the specified area, installed subscriber capacity, and fiber core usage rate. Based on remaining resources and consumption rate, the NMS can generate resource alarms and prompt capacity expansion in a timely fashion. Subscribers who request activation only need to interact with the telco once instead of twice, as operator personnel can use GIS information and the user’s address to check resource availability in real time.

Automatic route scheduling & closed-loop activation management

Optical route scheduling is also a vital link as its efficiency determines that for service provisioning. Huawei’s iODN solution enables automatic E2E optical route scheduling based on accurate resource data and automatic closed-loop management of optical route activation, which helps speed up service provisioning and thereby improve customer satisfaction.

Traditional optical route scheduling is highly dependent on the experience of scheduling personnel. When an urgent request comes in, some resort to the “reverse provisioning” approach, where service provisioning precedes resource allocation – a process entirely reliant on field operation personnel experience & judgment, with improper allocation making future management all the more difficult.

Huawei iODN uses core algorithms and accurate data to achieve automatic optical route scheduling. The NMS selects the optimal optical route by analyzing the distribution and usage rate of inventoried resources – a timely process that can be completed in one minute (as opposed to

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Operators need E2E network planning solutions

to realize seamless network & service evolution,

shorten TTM, maximize legacy utilization, and

improve investment efficiency while reducing costs.

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Huawei GNEEC: Assuring Seamless Network Evolution38

OTN has taken 100G to the next level43

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E2E network planning & engineering

The golden keys to carrier business successUnder fierce competitive pressures to integrate their IT & CT, carriers are partnering with device and OEM vendors to launch joint innovation programs, and share their networks and experiences. In so doing, carriers have shortened their TTMs and positioned themselves well to focus on strategic planning and service evolution, while retaining their networks' core competitive edge, thereby achieving business success.

By Kang Zhigang

Carriers are shifting their focus from technology to strategy, through cooperation with strategic partners. Several European carriers have outsourced network

planning, design, construction, and maintenance to partners, enabling them to focus on core services related to customers, markets, and revenue, while integrating resources for more effective execution of strategy. Carriers are more successful due to this collaboration with vendors in terms of joint innovation and faster TTM.

Joint innovation to improve competitiveness

Carriers are often faced with misal igned upstream & downstream roadmaps, lack of control over planning progress, and high operating expenses (OPEX) due to lack of comprehensive planning and global industry experience.

A few leading carriers are now deepening

their partnerships with equipment vendors for joint strategic innovation that accelerates service innovation and network evolution. For example, a certain carrier in Europe had been thinking about future-oriented network evolution for a long time. However, it faced many internal challenges including, but not limited to, lack of key expertise, a unified service optimization & management system, and global industry experience that prevented it from moving forward on its strategic plans. After many rounds of discussion with Huawei, a joint team was established which focused on strategic planning and leveraging Huawei’s leadership in technology and global project experience.

Joint innovation also extends to network development & design with a comprehensive and end to end scope ranging from service innovation, network integration & evolution, to operational excellence, including new service & technology development, and service delivery.

Numerous practices have proven that through

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joint innovation with equipment vendors, carriers can strengthen their competitive edge while accelerating innovation.

Time to market advantage

Carriers, especially fixed network operators, are under enormous operational pressure. Traditional voice services are shrinking. Fiber-to-the-curb and fiber-to-the-home (FTTC/FTTH) construction are being extended to low-value suburban and rural areas. Traditional lease services are also weakening due to IP-based technological innovations and the fact that more & more mobile carriers are building their own networks. At the same time, new architectures based on ultra-broadband, IP or the Internet are being developed, raising further demands on carrier networks. Building an appropriate network architecture that provides more flexible network solutions to accelerate service provisioning is of utmost importance if carriers want to seize the market.

Another European carrier once had an average t ime to market (TTM) of 60 weeks due to challenges with technology introduction and its traditional delivery methods, and this slow-footedness eventually lost the carrier its market leadership. Though aware of its own problems, process complexities and internal restrictions made cross-functional planning difficult. Reversal of this situation was not possible without outside help.

This is why more and more carriers plan to partner with vendors who are competent and experienced to provide primary integration services and serve as a single point of contact, so that management & operational costs are reduced. This arrangement allows vendors to directly obtain service requirements from carriers' marketing departments, guarantee a provisioning time for new services, and conduct network planning and forecasting in advance to speed up service provisioning.

Huawei E2E network planning & engineering

Huawei can provide E2E network planning and engineering solutions that cover the entire lifecycle of network planning & construction, including service requirement analysis, network resource preparation, and supply chain management. In

addition, Huawei’s expertise is global with over 30 senior system architects (SAs), 1000+ SAs, and more than 8000 professional service engineers around the world who provide technical support for network planning & project implementation.

Proven network planning solution – Huawei uses field-proven network planning, development, implementation, and evolution based on carrier requirements, technical standards, management methods, and return on investment (ROI).

E 2 E p r o c e s s o p t i m i z a t i o n – Hu a w e i optimizes the joint innovation process through standardization (service model/site model/order model), simplification, and balanced supply so as to expedite material supply and service delivery speed, resulting in simplified operations.

Coordinated cross-domain planning –Huawei's cross-domain network planning platform implements coordinated planning across wireless/microwave/IP-based/optical networks, creating a robust, amply backed-up network. Network planning is aligned with device design/supply plans and network implementation plans to coordinate the entire delivery process, making for improved planning and supply efficiency.

Fast & vis ible del ivery management – During network implementation, results are matched with the network plan, and a rollout prediction mechanism for network implementation requirements is set up, enabling timely supply. Rapid deployment is achieved by setting up standardized service & site models. The order-based delivery model enables a standardized delivery process and quality monitoring for the entire process. Two regional spare part centers and 36 national spare part centers can meet carriers' delivery requirements, improving delivery efficiency.

Unified comprehensive capability platform –Leveraging its strong expertise, project experience, standardized processes, IT tools, and Global Network Evo lut ion & Exper i ence Cente r (GNEEC), Huawei provides a variety of platform resources to enable highly-efficient delivery around the world, including three technical support centers that provide 24/7 services and six multilingual training centers. Huawei also has powerful professional tools, including the Unistar Planner, MBB designer; combine this with the aforementioned GNEEC, and you have accelerated network construction with project quality and timely delivery assured.

Editor: Pearl Zhu [email protected]

E2E network planning & engineering

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By Wang Libin & Qu Song

Smooth network evolution is critical

Faced with the numerous complexities of today’s networks, carriers constantly strive to provide service solutions that satisfy increasingly demanding subscribers while

minimizing financial risk and improving the return on investment (ROI). During network evolution, carriers must pay special attention to the following three aspects.

Multi-vendor integration capability – Many current networks involve multiple vendors, and this is unlikely to change in the years ahead. Telcos also have to consider problems such as surveillance system migration and operational support system (OSS) integration when new equipment is added, creating a need for smooth network O&M solutions where evolutionary processes & risks can be controlled, with time-to-market (TTM) shortened.

The early stages – More and more carriers are participating in the early solution discussion & verification process so that project quality and first-time success are ensured. Remote connection to the vendor’s laboratory & platform for verification, discussion, and simulation is a must.

Evolution efficiency – Carriers need their

ver i f icat ion tool s & plat forms to actua l ly accommodate their requirements. They also need accuracy from their algorithms and network service simulations so that network problems are nipped in the bud.

GNEEC Meets Customers' Expectations

Along with solution maturity, rich experiences, strong support teams, and automated tools, succ e s s fu l ne twork evo lu t i on re l i e s on a professional testing environment that simulates networks accurately, verifies integration solutions, manages the evolutionary process, and guarantees user experience. Such reliability can mitigate the risks inherent to network evolution, and improve its efficiency to boot.

As such, Huawei has established its Global Network Evolution and Experience Center (GNEEC) in Beijing. This state-of-the-art facility covers an area of 1,500 square meters and is equipped with an array of multi-generation E2E network systems with more than 200 sets of equipment supplied by eight mainstream vendors who specialize in all domains of network infrastructure. Multi-vendor interoperability tests can be performed for over 30 kinds of network

Huawei’s Global Network Evolution & Experience Center (GNEEC) is a comprehensive user-centric solution that provides consultancy, laboratory test resources, and system integration services. It allows carriers to experience the entire network evolution process, enabling predictability, verifiability, manageability, and service guarantee. In other words, GNEEC enables smooth network evolution on the first attempt.

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evolution plans, while independent testing and professional services areas can be configured to ensure simulation & support for all the major network evolutionary paths in use today. This center also interconnects with other Huawei lab resources to form a GNEEC cloud platform.

Predictable evolution

Huawei can provide an operator-specific n e t w o rk e vo l u t i o n a r y p l a n t h ro u g h o u r consultation and system integration services, based on customers’ strategic business plans & requirements. The GNEEC can simulate both current and target networks, and carry out network traffic simulations, enabling accurate planning of each phase of the evolutionary process, as well as the analysis of subscriber behaviors, traffic volume, and services carried over the network during implementation. This information is further enhanced through in-depth ROI analysis to ensure accurate network construction simulations for, perhaps, traditional models or on-demand integration models. Armed with these measurable & predictable insights, Huawei can guide operator selection of the best possible evolutionary plan, based on current conditions.

Verifiable solutions

At the GNEEC, carriers can participate in the

verification process, determine the testing scope, and even build test beds together with Huawei, either remotely or on site. Data can also be shared securely by different customers through rights- and domain-based management with access control listing (ACL).

The center can also readily verify proposed solutions for more than 30 evolution plans through a proof of concept (POC) capability – a single-node confirmation process that ensures system compatibility from an E2E perspective and can validate the accuracy of integration plans while mitigating the risks of service-impacting issues during later implementation. Testing models include:

POC testing – Verif ies the feasibil ity of important technical features in the design plan to ensure that the architecture and main functions are achievable.

Single-node system testing – Primarily a series of tests on function, performance, stability, and operations, administration & maintenance (OAM) to determine equipment limitations and performance under abnormal circumstances.

Compatibi l i ty test ing – Protocol- leve l interoperability problem (IOP) testing and interface-level IOP testing for equipment from multiple vendors to ensure smooth interoperability and prevent network interruption.

E2E testing – A series of tests on E2E function, performance, reliability, scalability, stability, OAM,

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and exceptions, which finds undetected issues with the IOP and verifies service operations.

Manageable processes

Each operator’s challenges are unique, and so must be each network’s evolutionary process. Huawei’s GNEEC is capable of developing a highly-customized migration strategy that includes detailed handover steps for each phase of the plan. To determine the advantages & drawbacks for the various migration strategies for an operator’s IP bearer network, the GNEEC first simulates the current network and then compares the individual migration strategy with the post-construction migration model. Based on the results, the center identifies five potential handover scenarios, each of which is individually simulated in the GNEEC facility to determine the best possible implementation option. An added benefit is that this process can also accurately provide a recommended inventory of tools & applications for field activity support. This exercise has been proven to increase migration efficiency and reduce TTM for services by at least 30 to 50%.

Moreover, the GNEEC can launch a GNEEC Portal, where customers can log-in to learn more about solutions and monitor project progress. They can ask questions online to which GNEEC engineers will respond promptly, making for greater project transparency and more effective management.

Guaranteed services

Huawei’s GNEEC can accurately simulate and address both fixed & mobile network service migrations. Its network evolution simulation uses a Huawei analysis platform to monitor the real-time service quality changes across the various network domains during each phase of implementation. By analyzing these changes along different network domains, the center can determine the critical points of change for each phase of implementation to ensure that maximal service coverage is provided with user experience improved during actual network evolution implementation. Furthermore, the GNEEC will also develop a highly-optimized fau l t loca t ion proces s , ba se l ine da tabase , and management platform for quick & easy troubleshooting while user experience assurance.

One year post-launch, Huawei’s GNEEC has had over 100 customer visits, with over 40 projects tested & verified. For example, GNEEC helped China Telecom Shanghai complete the IPv6 reconstruction of its MAN, IDC bearer network, user authentication/authorization/accounting systems, domain name system (DNS), network monitoring system (NMS), and source tracing system in a certain target area, after dozens of cutovers. Thanks to integration verification, six major potential risks were prevented, accelerating the progress for the entire project.

Huawei’s GNEEC can accurately simulate and address both fixed & mobile network service migrations. Its network evolution simulation uses a Huawei analysis platform to monitor the real-time service quality.

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Huawei warehouse-based DC integration service

Huawei warehouse-based DC integration service

By Qian Shenxing & Wu Ning

With the advancement of information technology, cloud investment and data center construction will continue to grow. However, the long & costly construction cycle and high TCO for data centers remain problematic. A sustainable model based on supply & demand is needed as enterprises transform for ICT.

From modular to warehouse DC

Du r i n g t r a d i t i o n a l D C construction planning, builders and integrators p a y s p e c i a l n o t i c e t o

the availability, stability, and security. However, in some cases, availability is overprioritized, leading to one-off planning & construction, excessive investment , id le asset s , and s low dep loyment . What ’s more , poor scalability can be a real problem, but not if your DC is modular.

DC modules can be all-in-one or specialized, with the most common form factor in this case being the freight container – a cheap and easy form factor to be sure, but less so if the environment is indoors. Huawei has launched the first indoor solution in this vein – a modular data center best suited for warehouse spaces. It is specially designed for traditional buildings, with its modules housing either cabinets, power distribution, or cabling, supplemented by an independent fire suppression system.

Hot and cold air flows are separated, with in-row air conditioning (AC) supported. Combined, these measures can effectively improve both the power density per cabinet and overall energy efficiency. But of course, the big feature is that this solution can utilize a business’s idle spaces, with minimal modification, or perhaps none at all.

Huawei warehouse-based DC service solution

Carriers cannot transform traditional DCs on their own; they must cooperate with strategic partners over the long term if they hope to keep the pace & efficiency high. Huawei’s warehouse-based modular DC integration service solution encompasses professional consultancy & planning, E2E integration/design, delivery by contract, and intelligent & highly-efficient O&M, making for rapid construction, smart management and flexible expansion.

Professional consultancy & planning

This process encompasses business

& strategic consultancy, network & technology consultancy, and operational consultancy, spanning the entire DC course of transformation. Huawei has accumulated substantial DC statistics from over 1,000 samplings worldwide spanning 32 different industries, giving us an in-depth understanding of market trends and user behaviors/preferences. What’s more, Huawei has established a database for global DC site selection and designed 20 site selection assessment models that take into account 39 different factors, such as local economics, power supply, weather & landscape, and technology levels.

E2E integration design

Huawei’s warehouse-based DC architecture consists of four layers – base,

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hardware, isolation, and top coverage. The base layer is the foundation and load-bearing platform, on which the AC piping is installed. It consists of a rack-sized equipment base, a water pan, and a raised floor, while the hardware layer integrates most of the DC’s equipment, including the server cabinets, power distribution cabinets, air conditioning, and fire suppression systems.

The isolation layer separates hot/cold air flows and prevents airflow short circuiting. The top of the contained cold air channel is made of tempered glass, allowing in natural light. LED lighting is also deployed in the channel. This design of contained hot/cold air channels ensures power efficiency.

The top coverage layer is the outside shielding for the modules and protects DC gear from external damage. In many cases, a warehouse-based DC container will be installed in an old and/or renovated building which may have leakage or standing water, but the shielding of our solution keeps it essentially waterproof.

A proper DC requires a unified top-down design, from the service and IT layers to the infrastructure layer. Huawei can coordinate and unify E2E design thanks to the concerted efforts of our IT service team, infrastructure team, and construction team, ensuring IT sustainability. As an APAC founding member of the Uptime Institute, the DC branch of market analysts the 451 Group, Huawei boasts many Accredited Tier Designer (ATD)-certified experts and DC designers who enjoy over 15 years’ industry experience. Huawei introduces computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools into DC design to visualize the design in three dimensions, making for greatly improved design & communication efficiency and enabling design verification by sight. In December 2012, Huawei’s desktop cloud project won the Data Center Blueprints award (the Oscars of the DC industry) from Datacenter Dynamics, while receiving tier-III certification by the Uptime Institute.

Contract-based delivery

As of September 2013, Huawei successfully delivered over 330 DC projects and developed a four-stage quality project management system (planning, assurance, control and evaluation) covering 16 steps. This system enables efficient monitoring of the entire delivery process, which guarantees timely, quality, contract-based project delivery. Thanks to our thorough understanding of industry standards and project implementation,

Huawei can fully satisfy customer needs and avoid unexpected work, realizing timely and high-quality delivery of the entire project and its subsystems (power distribution, AC, waterproofing, etc.).

New technological elements are pre-integrated and pre-tested by Huawei’s professional integration & testing lab. Project materials are also tested by Huawei’s Global Compliance and Testing Center (GCTC), which is certified and authorized by over 18 international and domestic standards organizations, including the FCC and China’s National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS), in over 20 fields, such as EMC and security.

Huawei’s DC delivery team is composed of over 1,000 experts, accredited by the likes of ATD and VMware, as well as over 400 excellent global partners to ensure quality project implementation. Huawei has also partnered with over 60 top-tier suppliers, and our six supply chain platforms, distributed worldwide, can guarantee timely product delivery.

Intelligent and efficient O&M

Da t a c o l l e c t i o n a n d a n a l y s i s s y s t e m s , integrated within each DC module, enable precise management with real-time system data collected while conducting unified management, remote monitoring, and unattended operation, with reports generated automatically.

Success in the field

A Chinese operator set out to transform two warehouses (5,600 square meters in total) using Huawei’s warehouse-based solution. Over 1,000 cabinets were to be deployed, with all components pre-fabricated and pre-engineered.

Over the span of three months, Huawei completed the low-level design (LLD) and pre-integration of machinery, sampled finished products, assessed factory targets, and successfully manufactured, delivered, and deployed these DC units on the aforementioned scale, totaling some 48 DC micro-modules and 1,100 cabinets.

On the whole, this solution enables on-demand planning, deployment, and expansion, with onsite assembly, timely deployment and delivery, and operation all included, helping carriers fully utilize their assets and take a stronger hold of the market.

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OTN has taken 100G to the next level

By Pan Feng

Optical transport networking (OTN) technologies, working in tandem with high-speed transmission gear, have made 100G transport a far more versatile and practical solution than its origins had indicated, and its commercial takeoff is already underway.

OTN has taken 100G to the next level

OTN: A technological engine

Optical 100G transport sounds impressive, but it was once a costly underachiever. Access rates for this technology are

usually 10G/10GE, with 100G normally achieved in transit as 10G streams are aggregated. However, the real problem with 100G WDM is its inflexibility, which makes itself felt in three different areas.

Firstly, access is inflexible. You cannot simply “cup your hand into the river and start drinking.” Streams and branches cannot be shared or changed without great effort, and the adding of branches requires careful wavelength design on the line side, or the procurement of additional gear.

Secondly, intermediate node scheduling is also inflexible, as these nodes are fixed after service deployment. If adjustment is required, the tail fibers for these nodes have to be changed manually, with additional hardware possibly needed; both require time and money.

And finally, 100G pipe utilization is inflexible, as transmission is point-to-point (P2P), with the direction fixed, so idle bandwidth cannot be called upon to supplement more stressed parts of the network – a tremendous waste.

In the era of cloud computing, streaming media, and network overload, traditional P2P transmission just doesn’t cut it. OTN technology is here to help. Its essence is the decoupling of pipes from services, and lines from branches, to realize service flexibility and resource sharing. In short, OTN changes the game.

switching than originally anticipated. During the 10G era, WDM networks

were P2P networks that aggregated services from the synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) and router system with the WDM technologies for long-distance service transmission. Now, with 10G and 40G, OTN technologies are used in the WDM system, expanding functionality to facilitate switching of certain services. In the 100G era, OTN technologies will mature to closely integrate with 100G network technologies, making for refined management.

Swisscom is always at the forefront of network innovation. Since 2008, the operator has been deploying OTN platforms across its entire network, with said platforms deployed in the core and aggregation layers, as well as the access edge, making for greatly improved bandwidth capacity, availability, and flexibility, as the latter can be adjusted through simple network configuration. This network deployment is a one-off investment, but it can sustain Swisscom’s broadband development for the next ten years.

As the largest 100G network builder in the world, China Mobile is also employing OTN in its 100G deployment. By integrating 100G WDM transport with OTN switching capability, the operator can guarantee both transmission speed and service flexibility. The super-large capacity OTN switching matrix enables the configuration, switching, and protection of services. In the future, China Mobile will gradually implement automatically switched optical network (ASON) technologies on its 100G OTN infrastructure, enabling further sharing of network resources and improved network bearing efficiency & reliability.

Optimized network cost

OTN technology integrates optical and electronic technologies into something completely different from traditional P2P wavelength-division architecture. In times past, operators were preoccupied with cost reductions for each & every network element (NE); they now tend to concentrate on optimizing costs for the entire network. OTN accomplishes this through a tremendous simplification of WDM service logic, enabling flexible allocation and greater management of pipe resources, including multi-service access and switching.

Compared with traditional WDM devices, OTN devices only require electric cross units (ECUs) and a backplane bus; taken together, their cost exceeds that for traditional 100G line cards and optical-layer modules by a modest two percent. Pair that with over-30% improvements in bandwidth utilization and service delivery efficiency, and you have spent a little to save a lot in terms of resource deployment and O&M.

100G is getting bigger

In recent years, OTN technologies have won universal recognition in the industry. In 2013, both Ovum and Infonetics believed OTN technology to be vital to 100G rollout, with the latter pointing out in May that by 2013, 44% of global carriers employed OTN technologies for WDM deployment, with this number expected to hit 89% by 2016. Infonetics also emphasized that the OTN switching and WDM transport markets are in the process of merging, resulting in an even larger potential market for OTN Editor: Linda Xu [email protected]

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