SERVICE QUALITY
Learn how our test equipment can help assure 24/7 service quality for mobile, corporate, VIP, Broadband and MVNO’s.
Common Concerns for Service Quality Teams
Failure to deliver high quality services
Negative press from the media or online reviews leads to customer churn
Enterprise or VIP public complaints
This can be particularly devastating if VIPs are affected and go public with their concerns. Or if an enterprise names and shames the communication service provider involved
Customer demands are changing
Marketing methods now focused on best coverage and speed when previously fixated on price per usage
The Internet of Things (IoT)
Technological advances such as autonomous driving will depend on wireless service availability and high-quality connections
To mitigate these concerns, our solution offers autonomous measurement of network accessibility, service availability, connection retainability and service quality. This is carried out using our end-to-end LIVE test call monitoring solution called Merlin™.
5G Quality of Service Testing
Monitor your 5G network service for accessibility, availability, retainability, speed and quality over your chosen geographical footprint. Use testing to focus on population hotspots or areas where 5G has only just been rolled out. By doing this you can ensure that the mobile network infrastructure serving these locations continues to meet the expected service levels for subscribers.
Our autonomous network monitoring solution Merlin™ actively monitors specific network elements and technologies by automatically performing real events and recording results from the subscriber’s perspective. Live end-to-end visibility of all your mobile services (2G-5G) is available through our Merlin™ solution.
Included with our Merlin™ solution is our unique set of KPIs which can be used to determine the success of your 5G network and benchmark geographically.
Home Broadband Quality of Service Testing
Internet Service Providers have the challenge of delivering reliable, high-speed broadband connectivity to vast numbers of consumers across wide geographical areas. This service quality coverage commonly includes copper, part fibre, or full fibre cable to a property.
One of the complications facing ISPs is proving to regulators that internet services are delivered to consumers in accordance with contractual agreements. It is increasingly required that ISPs provide consumers information on their estimated speeds range in writing at the start of a contract and that this is a guaranteed deliverable.
Regulations also allow consumers to exit a contract penalty free if the service delivered is not at the speeds originally promised by the provider.
- Speeds should match contracts at point of sale, even at peak times
- Minimum speeds should be maintained for both upload and download
- Service availability should be assured 24/7
An independent TCG solution enables control points to be set along the full length of the revenue chain to identify risk points from consumer to invoice. Our TCGs create data usage/upload on the network using real broadband lines in order to replicate consumer behaviour. This evaluation of the ISP allows the QoS to be independently verified and the invoice accuracy to be financially validated.
Corporate and VIP Quality of Service Testing
If you are part of a network team that are responsible for maintaining the service levels of important clients, then we recommend you read this page. Our Merlin™ solution can quickly verify the service quality being delivered at important locations. This SLA verification has many important applications such as providing assurance for: corporations, enterprises, VIPs and special events. This is achieved by performing real events and validating that end-to-end service quality is at a compliant level.
Corporate QoS
Large corporate clients or public sector organisations can represent significant revenue for a CSP, therefore service quality problems at their places of business can be a major issue. This can be particularly problematic with new clients where a site survey may not have been carried out to ensure that an organisation’s key locations have coverage and capacity suitable for what can be a large number of additional subscribers.
Our test call generators can be quicky and easily distributed on site to monitor the service level being delivered. Once the site coverage has been assured, you are able to redistribute the test equipment elsewhere for further SLA coverage.
VIP QoS
Lots of subscribers can fall into the VIP category. Beyond traditional VIPs such as high-profile customers, tech media journalists, CSP board members, and large corporate C level customers there are now also regular subscribers who can create enough social media impact that fixing their issue becomes a priority.
Whatever the reason for an account becoming a priority, it’s important to leverage whatever tools are available to resolve the issue to the customer’s satisfaction. Using Merlin™ you are able to confirm the specific issue, analyse and detail the extent and impact of the issue and provide resolution feedback to the VIP.
Special Event QoS Monitoring
High profile public events can lead to significant increases in subscriber levels and usage on a CSP’s network in a specific location. Issues with the network in that location or limits in capacity can be a lost opportunity for a CSP to generate revenue as well as causing a negative brand impact.
In some cases, temporary infrastructure may be rolled out to cope with the additional expected load or cover areas that were completely out of coverage previously. This kind of rollout is often done at short notice and represents a number of changes that if not validated, could limit the effectiveness of the additional network provision.
If temporary infrastructure is required, once the equipment has been commissioned you can use Merlin™ to verify the service levels both before and during the special event taking place.
MVNO SLA Quality of Service Testing
There are many challenges facing the MNO engineers that are responsible for meeting MVNO SLA’s (service level agreements). One of these challenges is being able to monitor what the MVNO customers are experiencing in real time and whether or not the service being delivered is at the required compliance level.
SLA Compliance
When dealing with MVNOs, MVNEs and even large corporates, it’s not uncommon to have SLAs in place to ensure services provided meet a customer’s expectations. In some cases, it may be necessary to provide active confirmation that SLAs are being adhered to. The Merlin™ system can be used to provide the SLA information required.
Implicit MVNO SLA Assurance
While Merlin™ is being used for other purposes such as network monitoring and change management, it is continuously generating test data that can be used to confirm that MVNO SLA KPIs are being met. This data can be correlated and combined with SLA KPIs to create statistics for SLA compliance reporting. Merlin™ also allows easy exporting of data (results), which can then be added to your existing reporting suite. SNMP alerting is also available.
Targeted MVNO SLA Testing
If customer experience issues are reported in certain locations, our test equipment can be quickly deployed on-site and test data collected for analysis. Test event volumes can also be increased to verify specific SLA requirements to satisfy SLA reporting needs.