Preparing Your Business for the Next Mobile Evolution

Copyright 2010 by Virgo Publishing.

http://www.billingworld.com/
By: Peter Briscoe
Posted on: 03/02/2010



Until now, most of the industrys focus has been on the technologies of long-term evolution
(LTE); however, technology itself does not generate profits. Understanding the impact of LTE on
your business and selecting a way forward that matches your business model is critical to
ensuring your success in the future market.
Why LTE?
There are a number of drivers for operators that shift them toward LTE, but they mainly break down into two
categories: market demand and costs.
Over the past 12 months the use of mobile broadband has led to very high growth in mobile data traffic, and
this level of demand further drives the need for more bandwidth. The surge in bandwidth consumption will
provide operators with a huge revenue opportunity for mobile data services, with some regions seeing
massive increases in mobile data ARPU. A major challenge for operators will be ensuring they capture all of
the demand and turn it into revenue.
One of the main issues is that todays mobile networks were designed to carry more voice than data. If
existing technologies were used to support the level of projected demand long term, the amount of additional
equipment both in the numbers of cell sites and backhaul network devices would make the service
uneconomical. Therefore LTE technology aims to address this through the combination of simplifying the
backhaul network, removing the need for complex and expensive control functions, and the use of cheaper
transport technology (IP and Ethernet) that reduce the price-per-port for connections from the cell sites to
the core.
The move to LTE will be a fine balance between the cost of an additional new network against the ability to
deliver more capacity and satisfy the demand of users.
What Impact Does LTE Have?
LTE will provide operators with methods to deliver a new level of tailored services to their customers, with
quality of service (QoS) and application-based performance. However, being able to deliver this will require a
finer level of control within the access data network, not currently in place.
In addition, customers will move a step closer to full Internet on their phone with the ability to turn the
handset from a terminal to an active component. It will no longer just be a way to view content hosted
online, but will provide direct peer-to-peer capabilities and enable a new wave of social networking between
people.
With such promise, operators will need to take a holistic view of the technological impacts LTE will have on
their business process and their support s systems. This analysis allows operators to identify what parts of
their business will be affected and build a unique plan to address these changes.
Technology Impacts
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Within the deployment of LTE technology, the majority of focus is in the radio interface. LTE requires, in
many cases, new equipment due to the mixed time and frequency multiplexing (orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing) that is introduced. This new technology, in combination with signalling protocols, allows
much more efficient use of cell capacity. In addition to the radio interface, LTE simplifies the access network
by removing layers (radio network controllers but at the same time increases the complexity of the enhanced
NodeB by making it responsible for call hand-offs between cells.
However, in many ways these radio changes are isolated from the rest of the network. The use of IP protocol
all the way to the cell site is an indirect impact of LTE, so before an operator can deploy a new LTE cell site
they will need to extend their IP network. To do this requires a complex audit of every existing cell site
location to understand what changes are needed. This non-trivial process for thousands of sites has already
begun in most of the larger operators today and it is the first true step to the technology impact assessment
of LTE.
An additional area of focus for LTE will be the management of cell-to-cell communications. The optional X1
interface of the standard could change the topology of the access network, requiring all the leaves of the tree
to have logical connections between them. This further complicates the management of the access network.
Finally, the use of policy servers to control customer quality, although not restricted to just LTE networks,
becomes a main feature in the future. Bringing these functions in early alongside existing control methods
will ensure better transition for the customer experience and can be used to generate additional revenue for
the struggling "all-you-can-eat data services.
Business Process Impacts
IP in the access network in combination with new topologies will have the biggest impact in the planning and
assurance processes, as seen from the technology changes discussed earlier.
Within the planning processes radio planning will need modification to support the potential volume and high
frequency of optimization. The impact of femtocells alongside LTE will require greater planning and,
ultimately, be an automated process to ensure timely network management. The current methods of drive-by
radio monitoring will not scale to the number of cells and rate of change predicted.
The other main planning impact area is within the backhaul planning. There will be a greater need for any
backhaul planning processes to be very closely linked to the radio planning process, as increases in cell
capacity need to be coordinated with backhaul capability. Therefore, changes in the planning groups to
provide better cross network topology interoperability will need to be further introduced.
Even when using leased or rented backhaul delivery, bad planning can increase the price of services between
10 and 20 percent for facilities, based on some of our customer experiences. Therefore, no matter what
backhaul technology is used, ordering with lead times in mind will make a large overall impact.
Within the trouble-to-resolution process, there are some obvious changes related to the use of IP within the
access network. These changes require additional processes to monitor and manage the quality and policies
that have been applied. In many cases processes will exist for doing this within the core IP network; however
the scale of the access network will require different methods to support the volume of connections to be
monitored.
In addition, the service-to-cash process will also need changes to handle location, quality, time of day and
multiple suppliers. It is likely that a single service will be comprised of multiple suppliers. This starts to
introduce more multi-sided payment models that split charges between many parties. This will be further
complicated with service level agreement (SLA) management between parties and any forms of rebates that
may be set.
Support System Impacts
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The majority of the changes within the radio planning processes will be supported by the existing platforms;
however, these systems will require new algorithms and rules to support the new frequencies and limits of
LTE technology. Backhaul planning platforms will also need upgrading to support IP configuration and QoS.
Interfaces directly between radio planning, logical demand and build out functions will be required to reduce
errors in handover. This will require speeding up the planning cycle time in support for new equipment
rollout.
The introduction of policy platforms (such as policy and charging rules function [PCRF]) prior to LTE is
expected as a method to make the transition for the user as smooth as possible. Therefore, there will be the
need to move from protocol based charging (used today) to more flexible dynamic charging model with
location, time and service being used (for example) to determine the rate for the service. This will require
upgrades or replacement of the pre-paid and rating platforms used today.
Also the use of IP will require the extension of fault and performance tools from the core to the access
network. Some of these tools will need to be enhanced to support of the number of and type of connections
within the LTE network. The wide definition of a service will further increase the need for true service quality
management. This shift will increase the need for trend and predictive functions to enable proactive early
warning of service issues within a region prior to a full service impact occurring.
What It All Means
The introduction of LTE will require operators to make careful investment in new equipment to enable the
cost savings of this technology to be fully realized. The existing systems used today to plan and manage the
service quality will need specific focus and improvement. These changes will need to ensure maximum
service quality and cost reduction and will need to be undertaken in combination with improved common
processes across the business.
Telcordia is continuing to invest in consultancy, systems and partnerships to further simplify and maximize
the return operators will obtain from the deployment of LTE technologies.
A full copy of the White Paper upon which this article was based on can be found here.
As executive director of innovation and solutions in Telcordias strategy office, Peter Briscoe directs new
programs aimed at addressing evolving priorities in telecom operations support. Briscoe has spent more than
17 years working in telecom operations support with experience in consulting and software creation spanning
fault management, service fulfillment and planning. He has worked on a number of large deployments around
the world and has built specialization within new network technologies and working with network partners.
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