Contact us   Follow us : linkedin twitter youtube vimeo   FR EN

Network equipment swap and upgrade

Customer

  • European operator
  • More than 15 million subscribers
  • 2G and 3G networks

 

Challenge

Monitor network performance following equipment upgrade and swap

This European operator completed 2 major RNC and NodeB upgrades on its UMTS network. This complex upgrade aimed at introducing new features in order to improve overall performance and customer experience. This operation was very challenging for the equipment vendor who needed to ensure that it was done as smoothly and quickly as possible to reduce costly service interruptions.

Monitoring the network during this maintenance operation was crucial for the operator who needed to:

  • Validate new pilot site feature upgrade,
  • Ensure scheduled downtime compliance,
  • Monitor network performance and quality of service enhancement.

 

Solution

The operator’s 3G network was closely monitored by Astellia's solution consisting of:

  • Non intrusive probes deployed on the Iu and Iub interfaces
  • A Nova Analytics application generating vendor independent KPIs: session/call set-up inefficiency, call drop rate, call set-up duration,…
  • Nova Explorer for thorough drill down investigation.

 

Findings

The solution allowed the operator to follow this delicate operation and compare network efficiency before and after the upgrade. Astellia’s monitoring solution proved that:

  • The RNC upgrade had reduced the call drop and the call set-up inefficiency rates,
  • But the following upgrade performed at NodeB level was responsible for a major quality regression.
Print