As the telecom industry prepares to move to the 5G, it will look forward to the benefits that come with the technology such as faster speeds, low latencies, seamless connectivity, besides the possibilities of opening new business revenue streams for CSPs. 5G will bring with more unique use cases in areas beyond the consumer realm, with enterprise being a key focus area and a new point of entry for CSPs. However, while 5G does hold this promise leading to CSPs gearing up for this new technology, are they getting 4G right? Are their existing tools for 4G Capacity Planning and Network Capacity Optimization helping them make the most out of their 4G network investments done in the past?
Most CSPs may not have a standard 4G Network Capacity Management tool in the first place, and those that do, may not be able to realize the return on their network investments recommendations generated in the past. One potential reason could be the limitations that come with their existing tool to ingest, process, and correlate data flowing from different domains.
Another could be their current Network Capacity Management Process does not offer flexibility to network planners to run multiple iterations and simulations before zeroing on a final plan. Along with it, network capacity planning best practices often get lost because of lack of capability of a network planning tool to take feedback from past actions and record it for future usage.
Traditionally, network capacity management metrics focus on technical KPIs as the only set of parameters used for network capacity planning. Though the approach worked fine a few years back, the drawback of this method is that the network capacity planning process outcome only generates a list of network elements required for capacity upgrade and augmentation. It doesn’t provide any priority-based investment decisions which can help a CSP invest in the areas capable of generating quick revenue while ensuring the customer experience is not compromised. All this can be achieved only with advanced analytics-driven network capacity and performance management systems built on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Such systems would be capable of providing meaningful insights from not just technical KPIs but millions of records flowing in the form of business and customer experience metrics, which otherwise gets missed.
To know more about how advanced analytics can redefine what is network capacity Management for the 4G era.
Sandeep is responsible for Product Marketing of Subex’s Analytics portfolio. In addition to this role, he also looks after Public Relations and Analyst Relations for the company. He comes in with 9 years’ experience in the Marketing domain.