How Procera Networks 'ScoreCard' Can Help Operators Become Experience Providers

At a time when operators look for better actionable network insights in order to deliver the right service experience for their subscribers, Procera Networks, Inc., the global Subscriber Experience company, has announced ScoreCard, a new solution enabling improved visibility and measurement of the quality of experience (QoE) that operators’ networks are capable of delivering to subscribers.

The solution reports scores separated into application categories that matter the most to subscribers, providing actionable insights about where QoE issues occur in the network and where to target investments and actions for operators to achieve maximum impact on the subscriber experience, network performance and ROI.

ScoreCard measures activities such as web surfing, streaming video, social media, real-time gaming, uploads, downloads and voice applications and scores each of these seven application categories using letter grades from A to F, clearly showing what level of QoE the network can deliver.

The solution offers different views to visualize QoE by subscriber tier, device or location for operators to fix bottlenecks and prioritize investments. It scores the network by isolating potentially problematic factors including applications, devices, cell towers, latency or throughput and creates value for customer care, marketing, engineering and executive management departments at fixed or mobile broadband providers.

“In most industries consumers have a choice to select the product or service that matches their desires and expectations,” said James Brear, president and CEO at Procera. “However, data services on mobile or fixed networks are usually only rated by broadband speed which is an incomplete measurement of the subscriber’s actual experience. We are changing that with ScoreCard by helping subscribers choose the right product and measure its quality while enabling operators to understand what matters most to their customers.”

“Service providers cannot afford to continue simply throwing more bandwidth at the problem, especially in cases where bandwidth alone isn’t the cause of the customer’s poor experience,” said Sheryl Kingstone, Director of Research at 451 Research. “They need to know what customers are doing and be able to collect and view information with the added context of what’s happening with a specific application or location. With added context, service providers can make decisions regarding the use of technology, business processes and data required to boost revenue and optimize business performance to eliminate customer frustration across sales, service, engineering and marketing.”

“To understand true network performance requires granular, real-time intelligence down to the packet layer,” said Shira Levine, Research Director, Service Enablement and Subscriber Intelligence at Infonetics, a division of IHS. “Putting the right network performance and capable performance metrics in front of the right groups at the right time – including customers – could be a powerful differentiator in several ways as the battle for defining network quality in the age of on-demand services begins to really unfold.”

“More than 15 years of focus on broadband service quality has taught us what network quality conditions impact the subscriber’s experience specific to each application," said Alexander Haväng, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Procera. “Unlike speed tests and other performance rating services, ScoreCard measures all traffic for all subscribers all the time delivering data that is constantly relevant and actionable. ScoreCard enables various departments within service providers to isolate problems and address network shortcomings by delivering actionable insights.”

ScoreCard is an out-of-the-box ready solution for operators to deploy physically or virtually that visualizes scores by application, device, location, and subscriber tier. It gives operators the power to fix bottlenecks and make informed decisions about how to deliver an improved subscriber experience and manage subscriber expectations. Its simplified intelligence enables CAPEX prioritization for improved ROI to justify the cost of network upgrades and build the best network while also benchmarking performance for engineers and consumers to analyze, contrast and compare service levels. This means that operators can avoid over-engineering in the wrong areas, create a more accurate investment plan and clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of any improvements made.