“Insights from network devices are crucial for understanding QoE and the ability to predict future network behavior is even more vital,” advised Motive Product Director Colin Grealish.
Grealish explored how advancements in 5G can be applied to technologies enabling wireless-wireline convergence – such as Fixed Wireless Access – to allow Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to assess Quality of Experience (QoE) through data collection. A key 5G innovation highlighted was Network Exposure Function (NEF) that allows CSPs to access data directly from the actual application in use.
Consumer QoE has a lot of variables, noted Grealish. He explained that people have different expectations and tolerances based on what application, service, or device they are using. For example, a user downloading an email or waiting for a video to load will be more tolerant than gamers or consumers of IoT where uptime and low latency are vital factors.
As FWA is a radio technology, there are many challenges that come with ensuring appropriate QoE for the end-user. This is because, with FWA, there are a range of obstacles. This includes environmental, line of sight, interference, and regulatory challenges that can attenuate and block signals, and ultimately, limit the performance of the technology.
NEF innovation can help CSPs find out what is impacting the end-users’ QoE and augment their QoE assessments. NEF can collect network data, such as uptime, communication failure, location of devices, the density of the network, whether there is packet delay, and so on. Grealish highlighted that this data is particularly useful for customer care agents and network planners who are dealing with customer disputes as they can resolve any network issues quickly.
Not only does this provide CSPs with greater visibility of the network, but the critical insights and data provide the necessary foundation for network troubleshooting, which can allow CSPs to predict potential issues in the network and fix them quickly when they arise.
As the industry continues to embrace wireless-wireline convergence and the technologies, such as FWA that come with it, collaboration and innovation will be key to delivering reliable, high-quality services that benefit both CSPs and end-users.