Elevating Mobile Broadband QoE, the Intelligent Way

By Zia Askari | TelecomDrive.com

Vasona SmartAIR is enabling an innovative approach to address the issue of improving QoS for mobile broadband subscribers

The Indian telecom market is going through a very interesting phase now. The country’s green field 4G data driven telecom operator Reliance JIO is almost ready to launch its Pan-India 4G services.

Keeping this mind, operators such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are already engaged towards creating better data driven value proposition for their customers.

In a data scenario mobile broadband will become critical and hence operators would require intelligent means to deliver great quality of experience in order to increase customer stickiness and enhance their value proposition.

US based Vasona Networks is engaged with a number of operators globally in order to enhance subscriber quality of experience without having to undertake expensive and complex upgrades of raw capacity.

Speaking on this issue John Reister, VP of Product Marketing, Vasona Networks explained that there is a rapid increase in the kind of activities that are happening on mobile broadband today.

“What’s been most remarkable about the increasing traffic on mobile broadband networks is the variety of that traffic. We’ve seen usage go from being overwhelmingly browsing and email to all kinds of live chat, gaming, social media updates and streaming - each bringing specific service quality needs.

Think for a moment about video and the particular demands it places on networks. Video is everywhere today. It’s in every social network feed, it’s showing up in more and more web pages. And of course, services like YouTube, Netflix, Hotstar and Eros Now drive demand. Video is also bandwidth-intensive and the experience is highly sensitive to packet delay or loss, as we’ve all experienced when our streams stall. Adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming has helped some, but in general, the earlier tools developed to address video are being made obsolete because most traffic is now encrypted. These legacy solutions can’t see or manage encrypted video traffic,” he adds on.

Video will drive 4G Growth

Whether it is watching live events or video streaming via smartphones, video is going to be one of the biggest driving forces behind the growth of mobile broadband and 4G adoption.

“Video has been a major driver for 4G network upgrades, but these capacity increases quickly become fully-utilized. It won’t be economically practical for operators to immediately upgrade that generation, but there is an opportunity to add capabilities that work more intelligently with the bandwidth that is available based on awareness of live conditions and the QoS needs of various services in the network,” John adds on.

Key to Deliver Best QoS

While operators want to deliver great mobile broadband experiences to customers, they are not keen to invest in costly technology. In such a scenario, how can best QoS be delivered?

“The key to delivering the best customer experience is to establish a vantage point from which traffic can be most precisely assessed and acted upon. Congestion occurs at the cell level, so operators must achieve a cell-by-cell view. When a cell is congested, a solution must consider every real-time factor creating it.

This includes the applications in use, with understanding of varying QoS sensitivities. Positioning solutions at the cell site are costly and impractical, but a location between core and radio access networks makes such detailed assessment and action possible while still being cost-effective and easy to operate.

So if you and I are together in a congested cell, and I’m downloading a large file while you’re watching video, the network should be smart enough to direct your stream, even if it’s encrypted, towards a modest quality ABR profile, even if momentarily. My download should be balanced with the more-sensitive video stream. While my download will go through peaks and valleys of bandwidth utilization, I wouldn’t notice. So overall, we both have good experiences, even in the face of congestion.” He explains.

Enabling QoE driven innovation in telecom networks, Vasona SmartAIR is deployed in major markets around India and worldwide by operators that want to improve QoS for subscribers.

“We are continually innovating our software-based platform. Most recently, this has included Mobile Packet Assurance to more rapidly overcome dropped content from the network edge, and Smart Guided Video Rate to determine the best ABR video profile content providers should use in the moment. In addition, we help ease the eventual transition from hardware-based networks that go through intensive generation-by-generation transitions, to a software-based network with an empowered mobile edge that can evolve towards emerging priorities such as 5G and IoT support,” John added.