Innovating in Service Assurance and Customer Experience Management through New Use Case Scenarios

Let’s start with 5G, which brings several unique challenges. There’s the obvious one that 5G propositions raise customer expectations – after all, much is made of the promise of 5G connectivity. But there are some subtleties.

For example, most operators are at different stages in the deployment of 5G. As a result, they have a mix of 5G NSA and 5G SA, with the SA and 4G core managing sessions. Since 5G SA may not be available across your entire network or country, your customers may access what they perceive as 5G through different radio networks and move between control planes.

Similarly, there will be a mix of devices in your network, with different capabilities. All of these must be configured correctly, so that your customers can access the services they think they should be using. And, users may make changes by mistake, which leads to a disruption of their expected services and the experiences delivered.

Understanding these kinds of issues helps you to ensure that the largest possible number of users are able to enjoy optimum services for the subscriptions they consume – and to use your network resources more efficiently.

5G Provisioning Issues

Even when 5G coverage is available, some users are unable to take advantage. One common issue is that a 5G-capable device may not be configured correctly. One of the use cases enabled through collaboration with our Professional Service team involves the detection of devices listed by the GSMA as having 5G support through Kalix Analytics functions.

Additionally, DCNR settings can be checked through the “Attach Request” message. DCNR, or Dual Connectivity for New Radio is an information element that essentially tells the network that the device in question can access 5G NSA as well as 4G – which is essential if the user is to be permitted to access 5G services.

If this field is set to restricted, then the device will not be able to attach to the 5G NR cells available. So, by correlating public data (the GSMA list) with data collected from the network (DCNR restricted or not), we can detect whether a device that should be able to connect to 5G services can actually do so – which, when launching 5G is key to driving user adoption and enhancing their experiences.

At the same time, users may inadvertently switch off 5G network settings. To detect such cases and to help them discover the new capabilities to which they have access, another use case we worked on sets up routines through which the Type Allocation Code (TAC) of a phone’s IMEI can be captured.

This data tells us if the device can support 5G, but we can also apply the same filtering process as in the previous example to see if the DCNR is set correctly. If not, customer care can inform the affected users, so they can make appropriate adjustments, or more general marketing campaigns can be launched to drive awareness and increase adoption through simply guides.

Other data can also inform the situation. For example, user data consumption. Those same users that cannot access 5G will be sending data over 4G resources – but it would be more efficient to use 5G layers. So, once it is known that the user cannot access 5G, by rectifying this, the data flows can be moved, delivering both a better outcome for the user as well as for you.

5G Site Analysis

With 5G NSA, gNodeBs are added to your existing eNodeB infrastructure. In this case, the 4G nodes act as the master, handling control plane signaling, while the user plane is connected to the 5G nodes.

As a result, all 5G traffic should bypass the eNodeBs and leverage your new investments and deployments. But does that happen in practice? Comparing the master node, the cell and the secondary nodes allows you to check.

In this use case, you can filter by site (to see the gNodeBs used by that site), or by individual gNodeBs (to see the sites using it) – so, you can check how your infrastructure is being used and determine whether the bypass is effective.

Similarly, another use case focuses on a unified perspective of 4G control plane alongside 5G NSA user plane traffic volumes and user numbers. The idea here is to evaluate data volumes and the number of users – the two are clearly related and, if data over 5G doesn’t grow in line with a decrease in 4G users, there’s likely to be an issue that needs to be addressed.

Likewise, this data can also be used to benchmark other sites as they are upgraded. So, with the captured data, you can track sites through time, as well as examine the effectiveness of your deployments and whether they are delivering. You can evaluate each site as well as take a network view to see how 5G traffic is performing at a local level.

No one has every answer to every question – or even knows every question to ask in the first place. Everyone has an idea or opinion, however, as well as a desire for fresh insights which may be driven by changing contexts.

We see this with Kalix Analytics  users – you work in a dynamic environment, which requires both constant access to known insights as well as the ability to tackle new problems and to find new ways to drive insights.

That’s why our Professional Services team is so important. You can bring your ideas to the table, and we’ll help you realize them so that you can get access to the insights you need for the challenges you have seen in your daily operations.

We’ll be sharing more of these innovations with you in the next part of our series – but what we really want is for you to keep these ideas coming in, so we can help you capture the insights you need.

About the Author

Jonas Nahlin is Director of Professional Services at Polystar. Together with his team of highly skilled telecom engineers, data analysts, and solution architects, he works closely with customers to transform data into actionable insights that improve service assurance, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

In the next article, we'll explore innovative use cases for enhancing security and helping operators protect customers from fraud.