Case Study: Smart Routing as a Service

HOT TELECOM CASE STUDY

Smart routing as a Service

CASE STUDY

SMART ROUTING AS A SERVICE Type of operator: Caribbean fixed and mobile operator

Objective: Reduce costs of managing voice interconnects

Setting the scene For many operators, both fixed and mobile, voice is one of those “absolutely must have” services that almost no-one really cares much about these days.

Efficiency here is a combination of factors. Firstly, it is critical to achieve the lowest cost for voice and messaging termination in the face of increasing complexity.

The focus is now mostly on data, download speeds and coverage, such that the voice services being provided are thrown into the package rather than being part of the value add. Messaging via SMS is similarly a key requirement, while at the same time, free to use alternatives are readily available to almost all customers,

Taking into account recent factors such as pricing by origin adding significant incremental costs to some destinations.

But, in addition, as always it comes down to people. So another challenge is to manage this complexity, for both voice and messaging, with skilled and manpower, which is often expensive.

To add to that dichotomy, dominant operators are often also under regulatory pressure which requires them to offer these service at all time, to everyone and at a high quality. With that scenario, and with the fact that voice and messaging services are not going away any time soon, it is not surprising that operators are trying to deliver these solutions as efficiently as possible, while still meeting those elusive quality targets.

In this case study we explore how a Caribbean-based operator handled and overcame these challenges with a flexible cloudbased solution from Orca Wave.

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Challenges 1

REDUCING SPEND ON TECHNOLOGY Like many similar companies, this operator’s voice switching infrastructure was a mix of older and newer components. By definition, their voice switches were designed to deliver services over a long lifetime, and as there was little interest from consumers in paying more for voice services, there was no internal case for spending capital to replace these somewhat inflexible components.

With the need to reduce costs overall on voice interconnect and termination costs, the operator was seeking to route calls in the most efficient way possible and make use of interconnect carriers that can offer savings while still maintaining quality.

However, it rapidly came across a major restriction – its switching platform was designed for a simpler scenario where all required routing changes are downloaded directly into the switch. That gave the operator a major headache, as the switch was limited in the size of that routing table, with few, if any, feedback loops to confirm that calls were not being routed accidentally at a loss. This meant that the creation of these tables suitable for the switch required the full-time efforts of well-trained engineers.

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REDUCING INTERCONNECT COSTS With a constant pressure to reduce costs for consumers who are increasingly used to getting high quality communication over the internet for no cost whatsoever, the need to reduce the termination costs for inter-region and international calls was a key challenge. The result was the need to move away from a few international partners to an environment where niche carriers, with a strong focus on various markets, needed to be incorporated into the routing plan to blend down the cost of termination.

Adding multiple interconnect partners was, however, a complex task, as each new partner provided their own regularly changing pricing plan and were providing that in their own spreadsheet format. As more partners were added to the mix to take advantage of their lower prices to certain destinations or code ranges, the more the operational costs of managing these partners rose. www.orcawave.net

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MAINTAINING QUALITY

Additional partners for voice termination added a final twist to its network operations as those smaller partners frequently had to change their own routing plans which introduced quality challenges into what had been a well performing service.

With traditional alarm monitoring approaches, many calls were degraded, or failed, before the systems racked up enough failures to trigger an alarm. At that point, the engineering team found an alternative routing path, and started troubleshooting the failing supplier or destination. Once again – the challenge to reduce one set of costs resulted in an increase in another area.

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RAPIDLY EVOLVING COMPLEXITY

At the same time that the operator was trying to reduce costs in manpower and out-payments, the world of voice and messaging was evolving in ways that most network switches were never designed to handle. Their call termination charging had almost always been destination-based, with systems designed to identify the terminating partner by analyzing the dialled digits.

A recent change which started in Europe, but is rapidly spreading globally, has been to establish pricing based both on the destination and the origin of the call with fees that can vary significantly. This final challenge was the straw that broke the camel’s back for this operator, as the cost of updating systems and network elements to handle this was far too great and yet the cost of failing to route such calls correctly could result in equally large losses.A solution was urgently required!

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Cost

Quality

Complexity

Solution

OrcaWave’s On Demand Smart Routing engine The solution to this multi-dimensional challenge was to make use of the latest designs of complex, on-demand smart routing, but without the capital and training expense of upgrading the network switching platform and its associated back-office systems.

With automated ingestion of the complex pricing spreadsheets, the software automatically generates the best routing plan for the operator’s traffic based on both price and quality and provides ample opportunities to modify this to meet any specific agreements or arrangements that are required.

Although that sounds impossible to achieve, in the case of this customer, however, it proved relatively painless to implement using OrcaWave’s On Demand Smart Routing (ODSR) engine. This solution, which was implemented quickly, with little incremental cost, provides a highly flexible intuitive routing management platform accessed on a call-by-call basis, Smart Routing as a Service!

This was implemented in real-time into the ODSR engine and then queried, call by call, by the switches. For each call, the optimal route is calculated on demand and the required destination choices returned to the switch for the switch for call routing.

All modern switches are capable of a simple SIP call to a remote VoIP server and can respond to the signalling provided back to onward route the call to the provided destination carrier.

Instead of trying to build and maintain a complex routing plan within each of the switches involved in termination, this solution enabled this operator to build just one route choice for each destination – in this case to the On Demand Smart Routing (ODSR) engine hosted by Orca Wave.

Instead of the operator’s skilled routing staff manually trying to manage the complex pricing sheets and manipulating the resultant best routing plan for their older switches, they instead decided to work with the cloud-based BlueWater software developed by Orca Wave.

With destination pricing getting more complex over time, and some operators setting new pricing levels that depend on the origin of the call as well as its destination, the BlueWater software was able to take all of those options into account and deliver routing choices that guaranteed that margins are maintained and calls are never routed at a loss.

And, to add one final benefit, the solution was not just for voice – managing the routing of outgoing SMS messages was also supported in the exact same environment. Instead of having dedicated teams working on the intricacies of each technology, a more efficient combined team became a reality.

www.orcawave.net

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Results This recent implementation for the Caribbean-based carrier confirmed the reality of this approach. With a legacy switching platform, they suffered all the issues associated with difficult yet restrictive route changes. A key priority was also to eliminate the need for manual routing changes to free up skilled team members for other tasks.

11% decrease in the cost per minute of outgoing international calls

With the implementation of the Orcawave ODSR solution, they achieved this without any capital investment and now receive immediate optimized routes for each call, hence maximizing their routing efficiency.

20% decrease in overall costs associated with call termination

Overall, they achieved more than the expected level of savings in four key areas: Firstly, they enjoyed a decrease of over 11% in the average cost per minute of outgoing international calls. They also saw a significant decrease in overall costs associated with call termination of almost 20% month over month.

Then they were able to redeploy expensive and highly skilled staff onto projects that fully utilized their skills and were key to the future of the company Finally, the company gained access to features and capabilities for routing that were far in advance of what they had previously, opening up the opportunities for additional savings in the future.

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Redeployment of highly skilled staff onto strategic projects

Advanced routing features and capabilities

Success factors 1

EASE OF IMPLEMENTATION

The company was able to take advantage of the latest technology and system approaches that are driving the routing plans of the most advanced companies in the field, but without having to remove or upgrade any of their existing network elements or systems.

This rapid deployment ensured that they were able to take advantage of alternative partners and avoid the financial risk of routing calls to destinations that were going to result in costs far higher than their expectations.

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FINANCIAL RESULTS

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PLATFORM EVOLUTION

As mentioned earlier, the early results have more than justified the time and effort involved in implementing the Smart Routing service with savings in both the cost of termination and in the manpower costs in achieving those savings.

Systems and processes for call and message routing continue to evolve as commercial changes occur and an ondemand “Smart Routing as a Service” approach enabled this operator to gain access to these new features as they are released. No new contracts or software or system upgrades were required.

www.orcawave.net

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the author

Steve has a lifetime of experience in designing, engineering and operating networks, both domestic and international.

With leadership experience in small technology start-ups through to global service providers, he has deep experience in a wide range of products, technologies and geographies.

He has the rare skill of being able to explain complex technical issues in easily understood concepts and uses that extensively in his consulting work with HOT TELECOM. Steve Heap CTO, HOT TELECOM

about Orca Wave

Orca Wave is an experienced team of telecom professionals whom have worked together in the international and domestic telecom space for more than two decades. Orca Wave’s BlueWater Software provides real-time, intelligent solutions, architected to accelerate any world class carrier to global leader, as measured by quality, profit and revenue.

The software platform has been the engine for some of the leading Voice and SMS Global Carriers, and Innovative new market entrants that are wholesale, wireless, application, messaging and VoIP providers.

Visit us at www.orcawave.net to learn more.

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