SD: The solution is staring us in the face – the subscribers themselves. The subscribers understand their experience of the network and how much they use the network over time. No amount of drive testing or probes will provide that granularity. Every device in the network is providing vast amounts of data back from the end user which basically gives the CSP a very rich source of data that is specific to every single subscriber about when, where and how much bandwidth they are using. This should be at the heart of every CSP’s business decision. We think this is so critical because being efficient about the capital a CSP deploys is a core issue. If a CSP doesn’t put capacity in the right place it has been inefficient, so you have to have an intelligent interface. Old-fashioned approaches are incomplete and they’re not going to give you the whole picture, they’re old school and they’re out of date. Understanding how the customer demands capacity from the network is absolutely critical. You can use that in real-time for marketing, for assuring the customer experience and to gain a deeper understanding of corporate customers, for example. We were the first to realize this and we’ve worked on this for a very long time. This is a problem that is not unique to particular operators and geographies; it’s everywhere. In developing countries even more focus is required because fixed data infrastructure isn’t there so users have to use mobile. We see a lot of opportunity in those markets. VP: What business cases can be constructed in support of systems such as Arieso's? SD: We’ve dealt with many established tier one CSPs, and CSPs that have grown to become tier ones. You have to prove your worth. We helped mobile operators to sweat their assets – we’ve improved key performance indicators by 20% without adding hardware. We add value through creating efficiency. We make use of the engineering team’s time and cut drive test costs. You don’t need to do it because every device is doing it for you. Finally, we present a 20 times return on capital invested in small cells. The business case is obvious.
"Understanding how the customer demands capacity from the network is absolutely critical".
VANILLAPLUS AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2012
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