SCP Precise Marketing System: Assisting Operators in Premium Gigabit Operation

With the rapid advancement of bandwidth technologies, home networks are evolving from mere bandwidth increases to a more holistic focus on both bandwidth and user experience enhancement. This transformation signifies a shift from traditional common home networks that relied on a single cable to a more sophisticated and unified network system. As a result, mesh and FTTR networking are gradually becoming mainstream demands, reflecting the growing need for seamless connectivity. Operators possess access to vast amounts of valuable data regarding home networks, yet they face three significant challenges when attempting to leverage this data for improved user experience: invisible experiences that are hard to quantify, difficulties in analyzing low quality of experience (QoE) metrics, and challenges in accurately identifying user demands. Consequently, precise network operation has become a core concern for operators striving to deliver enhanced services and customer satisfaction.

In 2023, ZTE, in partnership with a leading operator, launched the industry’s first smart cloud platform (SCP) precise marketing system. This innovative solution aims to assist operators in enhancing their broadband service operations by providing valuable insights and targeted marketing strategies. By leveraging advanced data analytics and customer profiling, the SCP precise marketing system enables operators to better understand user needs, optimize service offerings, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.

Framework of SCP Precise Marketing System

The SCP precise marketing system is designed to collect data across six dimensions: terminals, traffic, network quality, packages, preferences and other operator networks. It aims to deeply analyze user profiles, mine potential users of various services, and facilitate targeted marketing of multi-service packages (Fig. 1).

• Analyzes and identifies potential users who may migrate to other networks, providing early support to retain existing users.
• Analyzes and discovers inactive users, proactively addresses their issues, and provides early assistance to prevent them from becoming potential network-migrating users.
• Analyzes and identifies high-value users, categorizing them with specific labels to distinguish between heavy gamers, video users, readers, livestreamers, and SOHO users. It further tailors gigabit package services to meet the diverse needs of these high-value segments. For example, users with low Wi-Fi quality, numerous smart terminals, and strong spending power will be recommended to install mesh AP or FTTR. Users with high daily data usage and significant consumption of high-bitrate content will be advised to upgrade their packages. Additionally, users who spend over XX hours online daily, consume more than XX amount of data, and frequently watch both short and long videos will receive tailored video package recommendations.

Core Functions of SCP Precise Marketing System

Leveraging the collection and in-depth analysis of home network and user service data, the SCP precise marketing system provides six-dimensional profiles for home broadband users, enabling effective precise marketing.

Home Network Data Collection and Mining 

By default, terminal devices (such as ONU, FTTR and mesh AP) report data to the SCP precise marketing system every 15 minutes, generating comprehensive network KPI reports that provide valuable insights into performance matrics. Operators can easily access detailed home network usage reports and tailored capacity expansion suggestions through the SCP webpage. Additionally, they receive automatically generated reports on a periodic basis, ensuring they are always informed about the latest network conditions and can make timely decisions to optimize service delivery.

Network KPI data includes various metrics, including CPU and memory utilization of terminal devices, online and offline time, as well as traffic, flow rate and bandwidth utilization of WAN and LAN interfaces. It also covers WAN connection traffic, Wi-Fi traffic, flow rate, idle time ratio and interference occupation ratio, and service bearer capability (including delay, jitter, packet loss, and reachable bandwidth) of user terminal links. The network KPI reports are designed as diverse statistical reports, focusing on home user terminals, enterprise user terminals, Wi-Fi coverage, bandwidth traffic, offline status, service bearer capability, and destination analysis. Additionally, user labels are created to extract market value.

User Service Data Collection and Mining

Integrated with deep packet inspection (DPI) plug-ins, terminal devices transmit user service flow information to the SCP precise marketing system via the message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) event interface, generating detailed service usage analysis reports.

The service usage analysis data includes the MAC address, hostname, and IP address of the stations (STAs). Based on users’ network usage and habits, service usage analysis reports are designed as statistical reports categorized by games, videos, shopping, social media, app stores, and operator applications. These reports are used to identify users engaged in games, videos, shopping, social interactions, app stores, and other operator networks, facilitating targeted promotions for acceleration packages, traffic packages, offline living equity, and handset marketing, as shown in Table 1.

Four Highlights of SCP Precise Marketing System

The SCP precise marketing system has advantages in precision, cost, data, and revenue. It guides operators in delivering products and services tailored to the needs of specific customer groups, ultimately increasing sales revenue, enhancing customer satisfaction, and strengthening competitiveness.

• Precise user profiles: The SCP can associate a service flow with a specific user terminal to create accurate user profiles and can determine whether the service used by the user aligns with the link quality of their terminal.
• Rapid deployment and low investment: The SCP supports various deployment modes, including physical machine deployment and customer private cloud deployment. It features low costs and a short implementation period, enabling association analysis of user services and terminals. According to different precise marketing strategies, it can significantly increase ARPU value and reduce operators’ OPEX.
•  Wide application and large data samples: The SCP has been widely deployed by operators in China and abroad, managing over 10 million devices. A substantial volume of data samples is available for the SCP to collect and analyze in-depth, enabling it to provide precise marketing strategies for operators.
• Diverse application scenarios and high returns: Precise marketing is not only targeted at the marketing departments of operators but also assists installation and maintenance engineers by providing precise marketing suggestions through the mobile app associated with the SCP system. For example, for users who complain about slow network speeds or lagging, the app can display real-time network topology and terminal link connection quality, guiding users to install FTTR room ONTs or mesh APs to replace outdated routers and promoting specific service packages.

Currently, the home network KPI reports and service usage analysis reports from the SCP precise marketing system are being utilized at numerous sites for both domestic and international operators. These comprehensive reports play a crucial role in helping operators transition from simply increasing bandwidth to significantly enhancing user experience. By providing actionable insights, they enable operators to optimize their services and address user needs more effectively, ultimately improving the overall development efficiency of home broadband users.