Five Ways Analytics Will Help Propel Your 5G launch

16 APRIL 2020

At TEOCO many roads lead to analytics. Here are our top five reasons a comprehensive approach to analytics will be essential to securing your 5G return on investment:

1. Achieve 5G’s dynamic connectivity requirements

Massive machine-to-machine communications, ultra-reliable low latency connectivity, and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), are often named as the Big Three of 5G use cases. What is common across all of these is that with 5G there will be significantly more connections, applications and services to support. Many of these will be on the move – such as with drones and autonomous cars, along with a multitude of new eMBB use cases, including eSports, gaming and virtual reality. Human behavior is changing, and we take our entertainment with us on the road. Many of these new applications will require a more intensive use of radio capacity. Effectively steering, switching and splitting traffic of 5G services in real time will become increasingly commonplace as network traffic travels across 5G slices and different network technologies throughout the lifecycle of a connection, auto scaling network resources in a zero-touch manner.

The GSMA recently estimated that there are approximately 50 commercial 5G networks currently in service, and so far, they are all non-standalone. This means that for the foreseeable future, 5G services will need to traverse between 4G/LTE and 5G networks, with little tolerance for lag. In order to successfully navigate this complexity, advanced analytics are required to direct traffic according to service contracts, latency requirements, network capacity and the required Quality of Experience in an automated, closed loop approach.

2. Personalize service offerings

A recent report by Strategy Analytics believes that instead of devices being a key driver of 5G revenues, communications service providers need to focus on delivering innovative, consumer-based services that will motivate subscribers to pay a 5G premium. CSPs can no longer compete solely on who has the fastest network and the biggest data plans. With edge-based analytics, CSPs will now have the data and the insights to personalize and optimize the subscriber experience more effectively. By collecting and analyzing data at the edge, CSPs can respond faster, have greater insight into how customers are using applications, devices and services, and ensure the proper QoE is being delivered. By contextualizing network data, CSPs have the real-time intelligence to proactively optimize the user experience, offer service upgrade recommendations and deliver location-based services.

3. Predict 5G service profitability

In the same report, Strategy Analytics also painted a muted outlook for 5G revenues as they believe that total revenue and profits will be flat in the short term. Therefore, when designing and launching new monetizable consumer services and applications, it’s imperative that CSPs understand their true cost of delivery and have identified a target customer segment that will pay the price. Thankfully, with today’s plethora of data, it is now possible to have a granular view of network transaction costs, customer segment profitability, and partner and roaming profitability, allowing CSPs to gain a consolidated view of the margins and profitability of any consumer application and 5G service. With the power of big data analytics, operators can now accelerate their 5G return on investment by predicting and prescribing 5G service profitability and monetization.

4. Deliver on 5G hype

One of the pitfalls around 5G is the remaining unanswered question: will it live up to the hype? In order to meet expectations, CSPs will have to be on point when comes to provisioning, monitoring and optimizing 5G services, particularly as they become more mission critical. The complexity of delivering 5G services, and the stringent SLAs that will need to be adhered to, mean that CSPs can no longer continue in a business-as-usual manner. In a 5G era, CSPs need to leverage AI-machine learning analytics and zero-touch automation to manage the end-to-end service assurance needs that support all 5G domains, services, slices, virtualization, and use cases. If we consider the multiple characteristics that comprise each service, such as SLA-defined QoS or low latency, it will be impossible for service assurance teams to shape traffic quickly enough, or determine the root cause of a fault, or what the implications of multiple alarms at various network layers can mean to service performance. And when connections for things such as drones or autonomous cars require milli-second latency – monitoring, optimizing and troubleshooting can become a matter of life and death. Advanced analytics, machine learning and zero-touch automation are critical to assuring 5G services, not only to ensure that the network is configured correctly so that services run as intended, but more importantly, to predict and even preempt faults or performance issues before they impact customers.

5. Real time analytics will allow operators to achieve agile business processes

Real-time analysis of data coming from the network and from the edge can be used for more than improving network performance and optimizing network and transmission capacity.  It can also improve and automate business processes, improve the customer experience, maximize network utilization (for minimal capital outlay), and support 5G’s increasingly complex service delivery infrastructure.  Edge analytics can be used to capture the actual data and subjective experience of each user, and then relay that information to adjust service performance in real-time.  It also allows operators to build a Customer Experience Index based on direct customer feedback, monitor and improve net-performance scores (NPS) with real user experience insights, as well as measure App performance and usage. And with 5G, there is the opportunity to leverage new synchronization signal metrics for the possibility of cell scanning and beam locking, helping to match network ‘slices’ to usage patterns and detect mismatches.

In a 5G era, digital subscriber behavior will change daily. In order to successfully launch and deliver on the 5G promise, real-time analytics will be critical. Analyzing massive data volumes is already, and will continue to be, a huge challenge for service providers. Being able to manage it all in real time makes it even more daunting. At TEOCO, we deliver on this challenge by continuing to research, invest in and develop ways that keep us, and our customers, at the forefront of big data technology. To learn more about how our real-time analytics solutions are powering today’s intelligent networks across the globe, contact us.