Future-proofing prowess

The evolving mobile ecosystem, explosion in mobile data availability and consumption, and the increased complexity in network architecture have given rise to the requirement for network operators to pay even closer attention to the quality of service they offer to their customers. Nokia Networks’ Head of Services for Middle East and Africa, Samir Kumar highlights the strategies and tools available to improve key quality indicators (KQIs) and help network providers differentiate their offerings

Samir Kumar is Nokia Networks’ Head of Services for Middle East and Africa

The growing prevalence of over-the-top (OTT) participants in the mobile telecom ecosystem is resulting in many differential services that network operators provide to their customers. The ‘cocktail’ of applications, mobile devices, and mobile operating systems can significantly impact network performance and customer experience, and there is a growing realisation that solutions aimed at optimising the quality of these services are becoming critical. There is a going trend for operators to focus on service level KQIs in addition to network centric key performance indicators (KPIs).

“Operators have to continually evolve their networks to cope with the growing demand for data driven by the proliferation of smart phones and applications,” explains Samir Kumar. “Network planning and optimisation services help network operators keep pace with this change and maximise the return on their network investments (RoI) by putting the right capacity in place, in the right locations, and at the right time to cope with future demand.”

Kumar also points to the growing complexity of networks and operations where network operators are required to manage networks with multiple domains (RAN/core/transport), technologies (GSM/WCDMA/LTE/WiFi), and layers (macro/small cells/different frequency bands). “Network planning and optimisation services can help network providers to address these complexities. For example automation can help to simplify operations and reduce opex. Carrier aggregation, traffic balancing and other techniques can be used to ensure maximum network performance across all layers,” Kumar says.

Nokia is widely regarded as being one of the leading providers of network planning and optimisation services with a long history of innovation in tools and services.  Nokia was the first technology provider in the industry to launch holistic services propositions to help with the challenges of Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) and OTT management. Other examples of innovation include services to enable iSON automation and these won awards from both GSMA and Global Telecom Business magazine earlier in 2014.

Nokia also boasts a totally different level of delivery scale, capabilities and end-to-end telecom expertise, with more than 3000 experts around the world delivering network planning and optimisation services across more than 1000 projects. Planning and Optimization services have been delivered also for over 60 LTE networks that the company has helped to design and roll out. Nokia maintains optimisation personnel across the Middle East and Africa in order to be closer to its customers as well as operating centres of competence in Egypt, Pakistan and Lebanon.

“Nokia is involved in the design of 100,000 new sites every year, which works out to a new site being designed by us every five minutes, underlining our competence. We are also involved in 1,400 network planning and optimisation projects with operators annually, having gained significantly from our vast global expertise and the Motorola acquisition in terms of quality methodologies.”

Nokia also brings to the table extensive multi-vendor capabilities having assisted to optimise over 350 multi-vendor networks over the years. The company’s global delivery centres and centres of competence have established strong multi-vendor competencies across all major vendors globally and this positions the company strongly to implement projects with tight start-up times.

Looking forward, Kumar believes that surging data traffic means operators will need to optimize the performance of their heterogeneous networks, and that small cells will play a key role in addressing this. “Detailed 3-D maps and propagation modelling help improve the accuracy and efficiency of small cell and backhaul planning. In the future, we see a major part of our network planning and optimisation portfolio evolve towards small cells and further urban densification that will require renewed expertise and planning methodologies. Nokia has already made a concrete step towards this with the acquisition of advanced 3-D geo-location technology in July this year,” Kumar says.