Bangkok--12 Feb--Weber Shandwick
Why SON?
By Neil Coleman
Director of Marketing
Amdocs Network Solutions
The business case for self-optimizing networks (SON) solutions is clear: the demand for mobile data is continuing to skyrocket, placing more and more pressure on mobile operators’ networks, while average revenue per user (ARPU) is barely rising.
According to some estimates, users will consume up to 12 times more wireless data by 2018, requiring massive increases in network capacity, but at the same time ARPU will rise by only 2.5%. Furthermore, service providers also need to address the issue of customer experience on their overburdened networks, given that more than 40 percent of customer problems, such as dropped calls, are network-related.
But the fear of undergoing a business transformation is holding many service providers back. A SON solution replaces manual processes and tools with a much faster, more highly automated processes for tuning and optimizing the network to allow service providers to deliver the right customer experience and the right capacity to the right location. Instead of monthly or quarterly changes to the network, a SON solution introduces daily, hourly and by-the-minute network changes, a truly dramatic change of pace.
This is why mobile operators are seeking trusted third-party partner to give them the benefits of SON while, at the same time integrating it with their business processes to make sure there is no risk to the business as they transform the way they manage their network.
And to ensure this highly automated network environment delivers a superior customer experience, the network needs to be closely aligned to the customer and business sides of the mobile operator’s operations, driving a convergence of the network and IT. The effectiveness of this convergence will depend on the operator’s ability to closely tie business insights in the business support systems (BSS) domain to granular network control in order to maximize customer experience and revenue impact.
Amdocs’ new Self Optimizing Networks (SON) solution is designed to address these requirements. Amdocs SON uses subscriber location and value to ensure that the mobile network is optimized for the service provider’s most valuable customers. If there is heavy network congestion in one area, for example, a service provider wants to ensure that a high-spending business customer is not suffering from dropped calls as opposed to a lower-revenue subscriber.
With Amdocs SON, a service provider can automatically optimize its highly complex networks to improve customer experience, delay capital expenditure and reduce operating expenses in their radio access networks (RANs), thereby answering the most pressing challenges facing mobile operators today.