5G and mobile service assurance

5G service assurance: a new network and new services demand a new assurance paradigm

5G standalone brings with it a highly dynamic and scalable cloud and microservices-based network, delivering enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low latency and massive machine type communications. Managing and monetizing these services demands a new approach to mobile service assurance—one that's kept pace with the advances of 5G.

Challenges

Customer quality of experience

5G services demand tighter specifications, at least 5-9s availability and an ‘everything-everywhere’ mantra.

These new demands, along with competitive pressure means mobile network operators need dynamic, instant visibility of 5G network and service quality for every user. Without this, most issues impacting customers will never be detected and fixed.

Unhappy customers threaten 5G revenue.

Overwhelming complexity

Network virtualization is an essential part of reducing CAPEX and increasing service delivery flexibility.

But virtualized networks also bring highly dynamic and scalable network and service topologies along with a rapidly changing service and technology mix.

Getting control of this dynamic environment requires assurance solutions that support adaptive network and service automation.

Controlling costs

MNOs engaged in network transformation must balance the often-competing priorities of ‘making money’ (revenue) and ‘saving money’ (CAPEX/OPEX).

How can they remain profitable under challenging conditions while still delivering the innovation and service quality their customers demand?

Massive scalability

Billions of new devices and services, Gbit/s to the handset and machines outnumbering people—all this leads to operations headaches.

How can MNOs provision devices at scale or instantly adapt network capacity to match these demands without impacting network or service performance?

Change drivers

The evolution to 5G is changing the customer, business and operations landscapes. New services, virtualized networks and a greater focus on customer experience are challenging the operators’ ability to adapt as quickly as customers demand—potentially opening the door to new competitors.

More than ever, being proactive and responsive to the customers’ service needs will be essential to success.

Impacts

Service agility
Network scalability
Customer quality of experience
Need for automation

Leverage and enhance

Impacts

Leverage existing tools and solutions
Invest to fill in the gaps
Extract actionable insight from big data
Orchestrate for adaptive assurance

Declining margins caused by competitive pressure and low-margin IoT services will severely restrict the free cash available to spend on 5G service assurance. MNOs must invest strategically to address the changing needs of 5G networks and services. The most significant challenge is supporting northbound API requirements for automation and real-time KPI delivery.

Leverage existing assurance solutions where possible and purchase 5G solutions to fill the gaps.

The path forward

Mobile operators are being squeezed from many directions. Demands for new services, competition from traditional and emerging service providers along with shrinking budgets is forcing them to rethink everything.

Automating to deliver services faster along with adaptively monitoring and troubleshooting are key to winning this battle.

Impacts

Better data quality
Actionable insights
Service focus
Network focus

Benefits

5G promises to deliver a better UX via networks that automatically adapt to meet demand and can fix themselves. EXFO’s Adaptive service assurance platform delivers the right data at the right time, in context, to enable operators to meet this promise.

Better insights

EXFO’s 5G monitoring solutions provide high-resolution visibility into domain-specific and end-to-end 5G service performance. Utilizing machine learning and analytics, these solutions extract the actionable insights needed for effective management and optimization of 5G networks and services.

Visibility for automation

EXFO’s 5G monitoring solutions are purpose built for cloud-native, virtualized networks. The ability to rapidly deploy and scale up service assurance means these solutions are ideal for advanced automation and orchestration systems. EXFO’s assurance solutions deliver the right information, at the right time, in context.

Lower risk

EXFO’s monitoring solutions address the uncertainty around the introduction of 5G. By building on existing 4G/LTE and 5G NSA assurance solutions, EXFO’s 5G SA assurance solutions guarantee complete visibility of existing and new services as this transformation happens. And being cloud native, scaling for success is not an issue!

Customer-centric

EXFO’s 5G monitoring solutions are built to detect and troubleshoot, or predict and preempt, network & service issues that impact customers’ experience. Putting QoE in the spotlight ensures the right issues are addressed in the right order—minimizing business impact to both the customer and the operator.