Bringing True Value to Operators’ Business

On 18 September 2012, Guenther Fischer, head of network quality and performance management at H3G Austria, and Mehrzad Nabavieh, managed service director at ZTE, gave a joint presentation at Managed Services World Congress (MSWC) 2012 in Berlin. ZTE commenced a modernization project for H3G Austria in 2010, and the presentation focused on this particular project.

Strong Ties Between Hutchison and ZTE

H3G Austria is a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa. As of March 2012, 3 Group had served 31.612 million UMTS customers worldwide. 1.2 billion euros have been invested in the network and IT equipment in Austria of which the major investment is from Hutchison. H3G’s customer base was 1.496 million in June 2012, which represents 11 percent customer growth year-on-year and makes H3G the fastest-growing mobile operator in Austria.

ZTE professional services have grown tremendously since 2007. ZTE’s revenue from services in the past five years has grown 52 percent. ZTE’s services cover more than 150,000 sites, 130,000 km of fiber optics, and 100 million end users. ZTE has signed contracts with the tier-one multinational operators such as Telenor, Telia Sonera, MTN, Hutchison, and Telefonica.

ZTE’s partnership with Hutchison spans six countries in two continents. In 2005, ZTE signed a contract with Kasapa to provide a CDMA network in Ghana. In 2006, ZTE delivered a GSM network for Hutchison in Sri Lanka; and in 2008, ZTE completed a full turnkey project for HCPT in Indonesia. In 2010, H3G Austria selected ZTE to reconstruct its 3G network. Last year, Hi3G chose ZTE to deploy LTE networks in Sweden and Denmark. In 2010, ZTE commenced a modernization project for H3G Austria.

Drivers for Network Modernization

One of the main reasons for H3G’s success in Austria is its services. Only the best smartphones are awarded the 3Superphones quality seal. With 3LikeHome, customers can call and surf the 3networks in Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain, Ireland and Hong Kong under the same conditions as in Austria without any additional roaming charges. With 3WebCube, subscribers can plug-and-play and find the easiest way to enjoy at home. 3MobileTV provides the biggest choice in terms of entertainment and information. More than 80 mobile TV and radio channels on 3mobiles and 3data modems are available.

H3G provides attractive voice and data tariffs to suit all users. For example, 3Superphones provides unlimited data volume for multimedia fans and heavy users. 3Comfort enables users to explore the world of smartphones without any cost trap. 3Light is only €5 per month and is suited to voice call customers. In terms of data tariffs, the free internet offers 20 MB/day free of charge. The 3Data 10 GB offers 10 GB for €9 basic fee. The 3Data SuperFlat costs €15 monthly with unlimited data volume and transmission rate at 10 MBit/s. The 3Data SuperSpeed Flat costs €24 monthly with unlimited data volume and 30 MBit/s transmission.

Because of the innovative services and good tariffs, H3G’s data traffic increased tremendously. The previous network infrastructure was unable to cater for the requested data traffic. Therefore, ZTE needed to modernize the network. H3G started receiving customer complaints from early 2009. Network modernization commenced from the second half of 2010, and towards end of 2011 data traffic surged. By mid 2012, the data traffic was 10 times more than before network modernization in 2009. This showed the success of the network modernization.

Development of Network Quality

After network modernization, all data KPIs improved significantly. A survey by P3 network benchmarking, a third-party surveying company, revealed that H3G provides the best voice network in Austria. From September 2010 to September 2011, the HTTP download rate increased four times; FTP upload rate doubled; and speech quality index improved 10%.  

In a test carried out by CONNECT, H3G was rated the best network in Austria in 2011. H3G scored a total of 476 points out of 500, the highest score in the whole German-speaking region. According to CONNECT, this result is setting new standards in every respect; it was the first time a pure 3G-network had won the test with the highest ever rating given by CONNECT.

Tight management of network KPIs has led to improved figures. The main KPIs are related to: UTRAN availability (based on cell availability), UTRAN performance on cluster basis, core network availability and performance, and operation level agreements on incident handling.

Process and steering models have greatly affected the result as well. For example, KPI reports are provided by H3G Service and Quality Management; incidents and outages breaching the service level agreements are reviewed; and detailed root-cause analyses are done for future improvements. Preventive maintenance cycles are changed to avoid seasonal problems involving air conditions, and this has reduced cost and improved uptime. Architectural changes on the backbone redundancy have been made to resolve repeating incidents.

At H3G, there is a clear relationship between the mean opinion score (MOS), quality of experience (QoE), and customer satisfaction. In order to enhance customer satisfaction, it is necessary to improve MOS. From H3G’s statistics, 67% of users require at least 2 Mbit/s throughput. This requirement was satisfied with 80% of all speed tests showing higher than 2 Mbit/s throughput. The statistics showed that customers that are provided with a higher-quality network have higher data usage.

ZTE’s Modernization Project

●    Effective network modernization

The LTE/DC-HSPA+ network provided by ZTE covers 94% of Austria’s population. In the full turnkey project, 4000 BTSs were swapped, and the 3G/4G core network was rebuilt. By reusing existing facilities, costs were saved throughout the project. After the modernization project was completed, an all-IP transmission network was built, and converged core and access networks replaced the previous architecture.

●    OAM efficiency

OAM was made more efficient as per the managed services contract. ZTE provided a single interface for H3G Austria and managed third-party suppliers on behalf of H3G. This created a clear share of responsibilities that lead to shortened trouble-ticket handling time.

●    Effective performance management

Improving customer experience is the real key to success for H3G. ZTE supported H3G with best practice performance management that included efficient data collection, enhanced optimization procedures, real-time problem detection and agile solution delivery, and end-to-end optimization with focus on user perceived quality. The improved network quality and end-user satisfaction shows the effectiveness of ZTE’s performance-management procedures.

Continuous network capacity and quality enhancement are vital to ensure customer satisfaction. A dependable supplier assists operators build, operate a network that meets desired targets. A strong partnership with ZTE leads to success.