SON Enablement: Comarch Helps Telefónica Germany Automate Network Optimization

In December 2015, Comarch launched the SON Integration Box as an extension of the company’s inventory project at Telefónica Germany. The new solution will help Telefónica to automate the optimization of their multi-technology and multi-vendor radio network, by ensuring data consistency in the network and all the supporting tools.

In 2015, Telefónica Germany appointed Comarch as the business partner to help consolidate their legacy OSS in the service fulfillment domain. Cooperation in this area between the companies started in March 2015, with the aim of supporting Telefónica in managing the consolidation and unification of inventory management for all network domains, including radio access, transport, core and fixed access network.

The ultimate goal was to consolidate network management processes in the network merger project, arising from Telefónica’s acquisition of the E-Plus Group in Germany. The first stage of the inventory consolidation project was commercially launched in December 2015.

As an extension of this cooperation, Telefónica has launched a Self-Organizing Network (SON) project, in which Comarch was responsible for the integration of an SON solution with Telefónica’s OSS environment. The main goal of the SON project is to increase the network quality and to automate network optimization for Telefonica’s multi-layer and multi-vendor radio network.

Comarch SON Integration Box ensures data consistency within the network, as well as between the network and the supporting OSS tools. The Box acts as the central hub to provide data for the optimization algorithms to the SON solution, and to distribute the resulting network optimization events (amounting to tens of thousands per day) to the surrounding OSS environment.

The tool provides capabilities to control network changes and visualize discrepancies in network settings, while also supporting system users in triggering corrective actions. In this way Telefónica can benefit from automated network optimization processes without decreasing its level of control over the network.

Comarch SON Integration Box is based on Comarch Network Inventory acting as a central data hub, with the addition of Comarch Configuration Management, Comarch Auto-discovery and Reconciliation, and Comarch OSS Mediation to integrate with the environment.

The whole project was complete in less than six months, as a fully managed service solution hosted in the Comarch Data Center in Dresden, Germany.

Marcin Dąbrowski, Head of Telecommunications Business Unit and VP at Comarch, says: “We have been cooperating with Telefónica on the consolidation of their OSS environment for years. The merger with E-Plus is a challenging venture and we are proud that we can assist Telefónica in minimizing its costs by helping them improve network planning and optimization efficiency. This is just one of the multiple merger-related OSS consolidation projects that we cooperate on. All of them are of crucial importance, as they will enable Telefónica to manage their consolidated network easily, while saving money. And the success of our customers is our success.”

He adds: “Our partnership with Telefónica has been fruitful so far, and it is also constantly developing. Aside from the project in Germany, we also work together on optimizing the area of configuration management, as well as network planning and design for Telefónica subsidiaries in Latin America.”

Marcus Thurand, VP Network Operations at Telefónica Germany, said: “Comarch has been a trusted and established partner of the Telefónica Group for years. We are glad we can also cooperate on our latest SON integration project. Not only is it very innovative and challenging, but we also expect it to bring real business benefits in the form or decreasing network management costs and improving the quality of service. Thanks to Comarch’s experience and knowledge we managed to integrate the new SON solution successfully, quickly and efficiently. The Comarch SON Integration Box enables us to extend the level of automation for network optimization in a controlled, step by step manner. Now we are able to improve our operational efficiency and network quality all at the same time.”