SON Market Update 2015 by The Mobile Network

A TMN PUBLICATION IN ASSOCIATION WITH

The Mobile Network // www.the-mobile-network.com

Making sense of the world’s mobile networks

////////// SON OCTOBER 2015

G N I S I R N SO

M AR KE M AK ER T the c o S m

mp m ovin g the a nies marke t

SO CENTRN’S AL ROLE

THE MOBILE NETWORK // TIMELINE: CHARTING SON’S REMARKABLE M&A STORY /////////////////////////////////

SON RISING // MARKET UPDATE

Empowering our customers to become

Hi!

FEATURE 04 SON UPDATE

the story of SON’s journey from edge use case, to a central function that is vital to operators’ strategic interests.

ISIONARIES

KNOWLEDGE 08 SEVEN THINGS I KNOW… about SON. Paul Gowans of Viavi Solutions on SON’s change from network to customer-centricity.

VISUALISATION

2013

2011

10 SON TIMELINE: 2010

JDSU and Arieso are now Viavi Solutions™ As smartphone and device evolution stretches mobile networks the breaking point, Viavi helps mobile operators transform their networks, focusing on improvements that have the greatest impact on customer experience. As operators deal with the complexities of LTE, VoLTE, HetNets, SON, NFV, and big data, Viavi delivers unprecedented visibility end to end—through the entire network life cycle, from the physical through to the application layer. Learn more about our capabilities at viavisolutions.com/solutions/wireless or call +49 7121 86 2222.

2012

2014

visualisation of the remarkable M&A activity this sector has seen over the past five years. Can you remember who bought who?

NEED TO KNOW

Welcome to The Mobile Network’s SON Market Update 2015. This update takes a snapshot of the companies active in SON right now, and a look at how the deployment and implementation of SON is changing within the mobile operator space. Our first feature establishes SON’s journey from something that was baked into network equipment vendors’ RAN products, to the C-SON systems that are intended to act as SON orchestrators, providing closed loop automation in the network for a number of functions. We also offer a startling visualisation of the incredible M&A activity this sector has seen over the past 3-4 years. Unfortunately, not all the acquisition data is public so it is not easy to be exact, but there are certainly billions of dollars of value represented there. This is money that has been spent to secure a piece of a pie that is being baked by operators who want new ways to manage and optimise their networks to reduce operational cost, yes, but also to increase their ability to respond to certain business objectives. Seeing the deals laid out in this way it is also easier to appreciate where the investment money has been coming from – and mainly that has been from companies who are reacting to operators’ needs to extend their customer and network visibility. Going further, the desire is not just to “see” but to “act”, based on geo-located subscriber analytics, and that is why SON has been on the rise in 2015.

Editorial Director: Keith Dyer Email: keith@the-mobile-network.com Commercial Director: Shahid Ramzan Email: shahid@the-mobile-network.com

12 MARKET MAKERS:

The companies that are developing and deploying SON technology, and continuing to innovate in SON.

FEATURE: SON RISING

RISING

4 TMN MARKET UPDATE

SON technology has been on a journey over the past five years. From an edge use case, distributing limited functionality on radio network elements, the technology is now providing a capability that is critical to the strategic direction of mobile operators. As it has done so, the nature of SON technology providers has also changed. And now, as operators move to increase automation and analytics-fed orchestration in the network, SON could be about to enter a new era.

he rise of SON really coincided with the faltering steps that followed the deployment of LTE networks, and alongside that, the Customer Experience Management engagements that operators entered into a few years ago. Understanding the customer experience became the battle cry of an operator community that was being told it would die a slow death unless it could provide differentiated, personalised customer experiences. Alongside this drive for end user service quality visibility, came a

concurrent need for efficiencies in use of spectrum and of network elements. Operators needed to save money from their operational activities – and automation and analytics looked like a way to do it. Concurrently, operators needed to make more money from customers, and again lifting service levels by improving network performance, reducing dropped calls, increasing throughputs, looked like a good way to start. Optimising the network around customer value, rather than purely uniform quality KPIs looked like a good way to continue – as well as raising the overall performance level, geo-analytics data fed into SON engines could make sure your most important customers got the service quality they needed, when they needed it. That is how a technology that was baked into LTE standards as a tool for enabling easier planning, deployment and operation, became something more strategically important. But to do so, SON had to move away from those distributed (D-SON) platforms on the base stations and eNodeBs. Operators realised that the edge-based, D-SON systems were implemented differently from vendor to vendor, and were closed to other systems. That meant that a multi-vendor network could not be simultaneously co-ordinated. Instead, a class of centralised SON (C-SON) engines were introduced, with the aim of acting as an orchestrator of the D-SON systems. Acting in alliance with D-SON, these C-SON

engines created the hybrid SON environment. Hybrid SON set some networkwide parameters from a central engine, with the element-embedded D-SON engines making local decisions. This enabled operators to implement some self-organising algorithms to instruct elements from different vendors, and also elements in different layers of the network – macro and micro. Not only that, but if they could “see” elements in different generations, 2G, 3G and LTE, that would give the possibility of a certain level of automated management and optimisation of different modes – in essence retro-fitting SON algorithms to 2G and 3G networks. This is the multi-vendor, multicustomer) rather than network layer, multi mode C-SON capability needs (ie the network aligned to that has been addressed by the best KPIs. likes of Amdocs, Cellwize, Reverb If you view the rise of SON Networks and Cisco. Most recently in this way, as a response to Nokia Networks itself has taken the operator requirement to a) on the cloak of the multisave money in network vendor C-SON provider, operation – especially as A TECHNOLOGY THAT by bringing in Eden Rock networks densified and WAS BAKED INTO LTE Communications and got more complex and STANDARDS AS A TOOL quickly pushing out a C-SON b) to increase their level FOR ENABLING EASIER product allied to its existing of customer experience PLANNING, DEPLOYMENT iSON feature set. visibility, you can see why AND OPERATION, BECAME C-SON also enabled a set the other great trend in SOMETHING MORE of features that were not STRATEGICALLY IMPORTANT optimisation happened. deployed as standard in the This trend was the rather D-SON implementations. These remarkable acquisition trail over a are aspects such as multi-radio two year period, from 2012-2013, technology, customer-experience that saw company after company driven cases, and the optimisation with some sort of automated of networks based on business optimisation or SON capability needs (ie the most valuable taken over and amalgamated into

“

SON

FEATURE: SON RISING

5 TMN MARKET UPDATE

FEATURE: SON RISING

outstanding marketing content that will drive brand

Let TMN take the strain and manage thought-leader articles and features such as “7 things I know about…”

INFOGRAPHICS

SYS

ILABLE AS AN

BLICATIO

eBOOK

with Ra disys

ICATION

IN ASSO

CIATION

WITH iBwa

The Mob

ile Netw ork // www .the-mo

bile-netw ork.com

Making sen se of the world ’s mobile net works

// SMALL

CELLS 201

Talking Small Cells

Q&As with EE, AT&T // Market makers ////////

////////////// Mapping the Small Cells Network

THE MOBILE

NETWORK

WHITE PAPERS

Sponsor your own bespoke infographic to feature in the magazine and online

WITH RADI

DATA PLSOLVING NFV’S ANE PAR ADOX tion in associat ion

A TMN publica

A TMN PUBL

LEADERSHIP

Beautiful looking eBooks and marketing collateral that drive brand awareness and sales leads

CIATION

rk.com

Making sen se of the world ’s mobile net works

awareness and engage your customers. MARKETING

IN ASSO

ile-netwo

A TMN PU

eBooks, topic speciﬁc Market Updates and other

ICATION

ile Netw ork // www .the-mob

ALSO AVA

TMN can help you create beautiful looking bespoke

A TMN PUBL

The Mob

// SMAL

L CELLS

The Mo

bile Net

work //

UPDATE

/////////

www.the-

/////////

mobile-ne

twork.c

ALSO FEATU

RING

Making sen se of the world ’s mobile net works

Host your papers with TMN. All lead generation data is supplied to you directly

MARKET

/////////

30 SECURI TY RED 34 COU UX NTR // MORE.. Y PROFILE: IRELAN . D 2014 // Issue

Mobile World Congress

Double Edition ///////////// //////// Part One ////////////////////

What others are saying about TMN “TMN is always willing to go the extra mile to offer something to differentiate our company. TMN cares about putting your company forward with innovative ideas and its people, creativity, writing skills, and artwork makes it unique. TMN truly understand today’s industry and its forward thinking is the primary reason we support them.”

Mobile Edge Computing 22

EXPLORING 5G ////////////

VoLTE Assurance

FREE map from Astellia

REGULARS

Network and Subscriber Intelligence

GLOBA

L CORR ESP

ONDENT

S // AN ATO

MY OF A MOBIL

E OPER ATO

R: TELSTR

ISSUE

#08

Industry Marketing Director

GET IN TOUCH to see how TMN can help you with bespoke marketing content that drives brand awareness and generates new business opportunities.

info@the-mobile-network.com www.the-mobile-network.com

companies that had been hitherto providing network management and monitoring through OSS and/ or probe-based service assurance tools. Getting much more granular radio access network data became a key “must have”, but more important was the integration of that data into other service quality based tools, to provide that customer-aware, revenue-centric network optimisation capability. into a wider network management, Our timeline on the following pages assurance and CEM brief. Here, SON shows the journey that planning, is made available almost as a service optimisation, geo-location analytics to other product sets. and SON companies took over Being charitable, one might say that period, as the likes of Amdocs, that this allies with the next big shift Infovista, Cisco and TEOCO in mobile networks – the invested and then redeployment of virtualised 2012-2013 SAW COMPANY invested in companies that network functions and of a AFTER COMPANY WITH gave them SON capabilities. SOME SORT OF AUTOMATED software defined transport Monitoring and assurance layer. How might SON OPTIMISATION OR SON companies such as Anite CAPABILITY TAKEN OVER AND be deployed as network and Tektronix also invested functions are virtualised? AMALGAMATED in some level of optimisation Take the C-RAN, where technology, as did the likes of we see pooled and virtualised Astellia. It was a scramble that has basebands arising. What does that still not quite abated, as our chart mean for D-SON features? Well, shows. it might make those base station The integration of these elements more accessible to companies into their hosts has had centralised SON engines, giving SON different results. Some companies, a greater role in the functioning of such as Amdocs, moved quickly to the network. build new service and solutions sets Not only that, but some around the bought in technology. companies are beginning to apply With other companies it has taken SON techniques to other parts of longer. And in others you will the network outside of the RAN. SON sometimes struggle to see SON for backhaul has been proposed as a standalone product function by companies such as Coriant and within a vendor’s product portfolio, Nokia Networks who demonstrated as the SON features get swallowed an SDN-based proof of concept that

“

THE MOBILE NETWORK BESPOKE MARKETING CONTENT

adapted mobile backhaul to the demands placed upon it. The end idea is a programmable, self-aware backhaul network, much as the same is envisioned for SON in the radio network. The truth is that SON deployments are set to grow within operator networks as LTE rollouts densify and expand – driven at first by the easy pickings to be had in finding kinks, overlaps and holes in the network, reducing interference and increasing spectrum utilisation. SON vendors often find the initial benefits of increased customer experience – fewer call drops, fewer interrupted sessions etc - easy to demonstrate and harvest. Some, however, are trying to go beyond this to address specific business issues, which relies on a deeper level of analytics, and customisation. It is the operators themselves that are demanding these additional SON use cases. Where SON goes next will be determined by those use cases, and by the deep architectural changes that NFV/SDN seems likely to bring to the network. SON is still rising. 7 TMN MARKET UPDATE

SEVEN THINGS I KNOW

WWW.VIAVISOLUTIONS.COM

SEVEN THINGS I KNOW...

ABOUT SON PAUL GOWANS OF VIAVI SAYS THAT SON NEEDS TO CHANGE FROM NETWORK–CENTRIC TO CUSTOMER-CENTRIC.

1 SON systems will move beyond their current role as narrow, edge-centric systems providing base-lining assurance, to systems that take account of a network’s end-to-end performance, and of individual subscribers’ experiences. Current SON systems tend to focus on narrow use cases, addressing specific aspects or performance problems. These might be functions such as ANR - making sure neighbour lists are complete and handovers are completed properly - or coverage and capacity optimisation.

8 TMN MARKET UPDATE

2 What this limited focus misses is that even small changes on parameters at the edge can have a massive impact on overall service across the network. Network complexity means that localised decisions taken by distributed SON engines can impact on hundreds of clusters or regions. Take something small like a tweak to an LTE reference signal. That can have a wideranging impact on interaction between network layers, and on how that varies by location. SON needs to be an organism that is responsive to stimuli and changes in complex ways.

3 The problem is that we are not taking into account the subscriber experience. We are viewing SON from a network status perspective, but dealing with use cases that are not mutually exclusive. ANR impacts CCO and that impacts something else and you cannot make those decisions in isolation. So our view is SON needs to start somewhere else: it needs to be subscriber and customer centric, taking into account usage and location data. That means being truly multi-vendor, getting the granularity of decision making you need, rather than basing the network view on stats from one vendor’s systems.

Being subscriber centric doesn’t always mean taking decisions on all usage by all customers. We know that 50% of data is consumed by 1% of customers, in just 0.35% of the network by area. So smart SON here would take account of specific user data allied to knowledge of local terrain that might impact on performance.

Big Data platforms will unlock new SON’s potential. Solutions like Viavi’s ariesoGEO have the ability to geo-locate every event and call from a subscriber perspective, to draw intelligence at a sub-cell level, providing buildinglevel accuracy to make adjustments. SON can look at that information and make a decision based on what the customer wants, or a specific customer KPI, or tweak a signal level to a certain percentage of subscribers at a sub-cell level. The scale to process billions of events a day across a network is critical to the subscriber-centric SON.

6 5

If you do build SON to be subscriber-centric, you can then align networks with revenue and opex. A lot of the tools today, operating on performance stats, are focussed only on the opex aspect. But if you start to build from the subscriber experience inwards, you can decide on aspects such as keeping a customer bestconnected for voice and data across 3G, 4G and WiFi, between your macro, small cell and WiFi layers. You can align your decisions to your business rather than just your network.

In the future… operators deploying SON 2.0 will benefit from a platform approach that takes data from a whole range of sources, to make optimal decisions that are focussed around customer value and experience and take into account end to end network performance. To do that will require getting algorithms and customer-centricity to a different place than they are currently, and that will require scale, granularity, and even the horizontal expansion of SON from its current radio focus to the controllers and orchestrators that will define, optimise and control the networks of the future.

ariesoGEO

ariesoGEO locates, stores and analyses data from billions of mobile connection events, giving operators a rich source of intelligence to help boost network performance and enrich user experience.

This intelligence transforms the effectiveness of network performance engineering; enables customer-centric self-optimising networks; creates true understanding of customer experience and enables monetization of unique insights

The proven ariesoGEO carrier grade solutions are resilient and highly scalable. Operating on five continents, clients include mobile operator groups such as América Móvil, AT&T, MTN, EE, Telefónica and Vodafone, and leading equipment vendors including Alcatel Lucent and NSN. 9 TMN MARKET UPDATE

SON TIMELINE

THE JOURNEY

OF SON

SON TIMELINE

How optimisation went from being a niche to a core part of the intelligent network

JULY

FEBRUARY

A timeline of the merger and acquisition activity in network optimisation shows that 2013 was the key year, although the deals have continued into 2015.

MARCH

DECEMBER

SEPTEMBER

ARIESO > JDSU (NOW VIAVI SOLUTIONS)

SYMENA > TEOCO

ACTIX > AMDOCS

2012

Deals have been driven mainly by OSS, assurance and network management companies adding SON to their features list. Clearly there has also been a move by the main NEPs to add SON capabilities to boost multivendor capabilities.

INGENIA TELECOM > ASTELLIA

NOVEMBER

CELCITE > AMDOCS

MAY

EDEN ROCK COMMUNCIATIONS > NOKIA NETWORKS

2014

2015

2013 2013

TEKTRONIX COMMUNICATIONS (NEWFIELD WIRELESS) > NETSCOUT SYSTEMS 2015

2013

THEY STAND ALONE: 2014 2013 2012

2013 2013

2012

2010

DECEMBER

OPTIMI > ERICSSON

APRIL

SCHEMA > TEOCO

10 TMN MARKET UPDATE

FEBRUARY

INTUCELL > CISCO

UBIQUISYS > CISCO

OCTOBER

AEXIO > INFOVISTA

AIRCOM INTERNATIONAL > TEOCO

CELLWIZE

(founded 2009)

OCTOBER

DECEMBER

MAY

NOVEMBER

MENTUM > INFOVISTA

2013 2013

AIRHOP

(founded 2007)

NEWFIELD > TEKTRONIX COMMUNICATIONS

XCEED TECHNOLOGIES > ANITE

REVERB NETWORKS (founded 2007)

XCELLAIR

(founded 2015)

11 TMN MARKET UPDATE

FEATURE: SON MARKET MAKERS

SON MARKET MAKERS Who are the companies making the market for SON, who are their latest contract wins and what are the latest technology announcements?

Optimization Solution, launched in July 2015. This solution mediates RAN data to create business rules and analytics that can feed centralised management and optimisation solutions, including SON, alongside Customer Experience GeoLocation and Intelligent Correlation for network diagnosis. Amdocs’ strategy is a prime example of SON’s role within a multi-vendor, intelligent network with embedded business and network intelligence working in combination.

ANITE PRODUCTS: NEMO XYNERGY, NEMO WINDCATCHER.

AIRHOP COMMUNICATIONS PRODUCTS: ESON, VSON, ESONIFY. irHop technology is often integrated “under the hood” in equipment vendor network products. For example its eSON software forms part of a complete small cell software platform from Radisys, integrated on a Broadcom chipset. Other equipment integrators include Arcadyan and Hitachi Communication Technologies. The company’s latest product release came in early 2015, when it launched eSON, its “next generation” SON solution that included dynamic uplink radio resource management for the first time. AirHop markets eSON as “the first SON solution that coordinates real-time parameters from the HetNet

12 TMN MARKET UPDATE

with other important non real-time KPIs”, co-ordinating real time network data with long term KPIs to give quicker identification of root causes of network outages and degradation.

AMDOCS PRODUCTS: AMDOCS SELF OPTIMIZING NETWORKS.

ith geo-location capabilities, and subscriber insight, this centralised SON solution can support 2G, 3G and LTE networks, helping operators to run more efficient networks, and to target optimisation against customer value. Formed from the combination of existing planning software, with 2013 acquisitions Celcite and Actix, the solution is a part of Amdocs’ Centralised Management and

nite is another example of a company coming at SON from a slightly different angle. The company is best known for its test and assurance products, which ranges from device and network infrastructure testing through to network monitoring and benchmarking. Yet in October 2014 it acquired optimisation specialist Xceed Technologies, paying $30 million for Xceed, which had revenues of over $11 million in 2013. Xceed’s Xynergy SON product allows business rules to be set to push changes into the network either in closed or open loop implementations. It’s notable that Anite has bundled the former Xceed products under a broader optimisation portfolio, that includes on-site troubleshooting and maintenance tools, as well as the collection of QoS/QoE metrics for network verification through drive or walk testing. Anite positions

Nemo Xynergy as a big data analysis platform for carriers.

ASTELLIA PRODUCTS: NOVA RAN OPTIMISER, NOVA MONITORING ere is another service assurance company that made an investment in a SON provider, with its acquisition of Ingenia Telecom in 2014. Founded in 2007 and based in Spain, Ingenia had network analysis and SON for the RAN. Astellia saw the value in adding that RAN optimisation capability to its probe-based network assurance platforms, which were already tracking service quality in the core network. Adding the two together gave it crossnetwork visibility, with automated RAN analysis of radio parameters such as neighbour lists, PCI clashes and crossed sectors generating recommendations to reach optimal QoS. Nova RAN Optimizer includes a geo-location engine, using radio measurement data to produce RF coverage and quality maps.

CELLWIZE PRODUCTS: ELASTIC-SON, SON STUDIO

ellwize is a provider of closed loop. centralised SON technology that can be implemented in a cloud-based fashion, mirroring operators’ move to NFV/SDN.

Cellwize’s message is that it can manage the optimisation of multiple layers of the network, creating a view of the network as a single entity. Elastic-SON is available as a series of modules, covering functions such as CCO, load balancing and Small Cells optimisation, as well as energy usage. The company also delivers a solution it calls Value Driven SON, which marries SON capability to customer data from BSS elements such as CRM or OCS (Online Charging). This is intended to enable operators to set their business priorities, and then the SON applies the capabilities in the network.

CISCO PRODUCTS: CISCO SON SUITE

hen Cisco bought “black box” C-SON company Intucell for $475 million it sparked off a wider awareness of the strategic value of SON in the network equipment space. The company developed this acquisition into Cisco Quantum, to which it added edge SON capabilities from small cell platform developer Ubiquisys, bought for a further $310 million. These two assets gave the operator the capability to offer a hybrid SON capability, something that could be a crucial enabler of its desire to become more of a player in carrier wireless infrastructure market – especially in small cells. Recently the Quantum brand was removed from the Cisco literature, with the vendor marketing its former Cisco Quantum SON Suite as simply Cisco SON Suite. The company

said this reflected the fact that software was at the heart of all it does, so it made no sense to have a specific softwarerelated brand, which is the job that Quantum was doing.

ERICSSON PRODUCTS: NETWORKS SOFTWARE 15B, ERICSSON NETWORK MANAGER, RADIO SYSTEM SOFTWARE

ricsson had for a while a product line called SON Optimisation Manager, launched in early 2012. The following year, in February 2013, it announced SON Policy Manager, a function that enabled operators to set policy rules for SON automation. Now, however, you will search long and hard for a mention of SON in its own right in Ericsson’s literature. The SON Optimisation Manager has been integrated within a wider network software portfolio, Networks Software 15B, providing automated operation within Ericsson Network Manager.

HUAWEI PRODUCTS: SINGLE SON uawei’s SON solution has been around since 2011, developed in the years before that alongside research interest and support from Vodafone. Huawei claims to now

13 TMN MARKET UPDATE

FEATURE: SON MARKET MAKERS

have 150 SingleSON customers, with Thai operator AIS becoming one of the latest to deploy SingleSON in 2015, to support the network upgrades it is carrying out to meet increased mobile broadband demand. If Huawei’s numbers are true, it is an indication of the spread of the deployment of SON technology through 2014 and 2015. SingleSON now sits within Huawei’s portfolio of radio access products, where its “Single” brand covers SingleBTS, Single Radio Controller and SingleSite products.

optimise mobile networks based on live network measurements. Such functionality will be uniquely combined with the unmatched network simulation capabilities of Mentum Planet, to provide CSPs with a complete solution to ensure detected network issues can be fixed efficiently, optimally and reliably.”

INFOVISTA

his should really say Newfield Wireless, which should really say Tektronix Communications. Newfield Wireless isn’t a provider of classical SON solutions, but its RAN geoanalytics platform, TrueCall, combined with Tektronix Communications’ GeoSoft RAN soft probe can generate subscriber data correlated with device data, analysed to provide network visibility and enable network decision-making. This enables it to act almost as an enabler of SON deployment, allowing operators to derive real time understanding of the network where operators are rolling out SON technology.

PRODUCTS: VISTANEO, XEUS.

n a theme that we may be getting used to, here is a network performance company that strode into SON via acquisition – two of them in fact in Mentum and Aexio. The company launched VistaSON in 2012, before buying Mentum later that year and then Aexio in late 2013. Its VistaSON product was rolled forward into VistaNEO, with Aexio’s geo-location data analysis products integrated into the company’s network planning, service assurance and optimisation products. The key radio network optimisation software is now known as VistaNEO. What Infovista is seeking to do is build up a range of network planning and optimisation software that is allied to its subscriber and service assurance capabilities. See the following example: “Xeus PRO, will enable RF engineers to

14 TMN MARKET UPDATE

NETSCOUT SYSTEMS PRODUCTS: TRUECALL

NOKIA NETWORKS PRODUCTS: NOKIA EDEN-NET

rior to its acquisition of Eden Rock Communications in May 2015, Nokia already boasted of

its multi-vendor capabilities with its iSON Manager software. More than just an on-board optimisation solution for its own products, iSON could, Nokia said, also work in a multi-vendor environment. However, the Eden Rock deal gave it a C-SON presence that it could not have boasted of before, and the Eden Rock tech was quickly added to the Nokia product line as Nokia Eden-NET. The new solution is designed to enable operators to “customize and create new SON modules to remedy operatorspecific pain points” by innovating their own solutions on top of the platform. On the market from July, it is early to judge its impact. Another thing to bear in mind is that Nokia tends to mention SON in relation to its 5G tech development, seeing SON as an enabler for dynamic transport optimisation, in alliance with an SDN fabric.

P.I WORKS PRODUCTS: SON-G

.I Works has a centralised, closed loop, multi-vendor SON Solution that has many of the classic SON functions including ANR, CCO, load balancing, fault detection and energy saving. The Turkey-based company said in June 2015 it was working with a Tier 1 USA carrier on its South Eastern network rollout. Another customer announced in 2015 was Indonesian operator Bolt!, who deployed closed-loop SON optimisation functions

for its complete LTE network. P.I. Works has applied for two US patents. The first patent is Wireless Network Performance and Robustness Tuning Using Deviations in Multiple Key Performance Indicators. It defines new approaches to identifying coverage, capacity, and performance problems in mobile networks. The second patent is Self-optimizing communication network with Criteria Class-based functions.

REVERB NETWORKS PRODUCTS: INTELISON he InteliSON platform from Reverb is based on RAN inputs through performance, configuration, fault management and call traces. Functions include the Critical Zone Detectors, which provides continuous monitoring KPIs from the RAN cluster. Other classical SON features include ANR, load balancing, interference reduction and self-healing capability. The company holds patents in CCO SON optimisation and also in multi-mode SON optimisation and is expecting to see applications for licenses for the technology from other parties. Recent operator clients include Viettel in Vietnam and an un-named operator. The company is also integrated with Nokia Networks through its OSSii, an interoperability initiative that established interoperability between Nokia OSS data and Reverb’s SON software.

VIAVI SOLUTIONS PRODUCTS: ARIESOGEO he company entered the SON market with the acquisition of Arieso in 2013, when it was still operating as JDSU. That brought it access to great deal of geo-located data and analysis capabilities. Now, the GEOson and ariesoGEO products sit as “Location Intelligence” products within the over “Network Planning and Optimisation” umbrella. GEOson provides CCO and ANR functionality that can be deployed in a centralised fashion to handle multi-vendor deployments. ariesoGEO can perform multi-vendor, multi-layer data analytics, providing insight into areas such as very precise location of cells for planning, or for optimising a network to generate best user experience between 3G and 4G layers. Major customers include Japan’s SoftBank.

TEOCO PRODUCTS: MENTOR, ASSET DESIGN, ASSET GEO,

he acquisition of Aircom International in late 2013 added that vendor to prior acquisitions of Symena (April 2012) and Schema (December 2012) that had already given it some automated cell planning and RAN optimisation and analysis capabilities. Aircom boosted

that capability still further, especially in the areas of optimisation and network management. The company now markets a range of planning and optimisation tools under the ASSET, CONNECT, DIMENSION and MENTOR brands. Its C-SON solution is based on the MENTOR optimisation tools, combining fault and performance management components and trace data for geo-location. TEOCO’s moves in this space have been notable for its move from after the event service and performance into capabilities that give it more optimisation and near real time credentials.

XCELLAIR PRODUCTS: XCELLRAN cellair is a newcomer to the optimisation space, and is bringing a heavy focus on WiFi access point optimisation and management, although it also has LTE small cell and LTE+WiFi optimisation capabilities. The company’s XcellRAN suite is implemented as a virtualised, scaleable solution that can be expanded as operators’ needs arise. Its key features are the combination of Radio Resource Management and SON with automated provisioning and fault management. The focus on WiFi is intended to bring greater clarity to the interference that WiFi access points can offer suffer from, unlocking currently unused or unusable spectrum.

15 TMN MARKET UPDATE

Empowering our customers to become

ISIONARIES

JDSU and Arieso are now Viavi Solutionsâ&#x201E;˘ As smartphone and device evolution stretches mobile networks the breaking point, Viavi helps mobile operators transform their networks, focusing on improvements that have the greatest impact on customer experience. As operators deal with the complexities of LTE, VoLTE, HetNets, SON, NFV, and big data, Viavi delivers unprecedented visibility end to endâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;through the entire network life cycle, from the physical through to the application layer. Learn more about our capabilities at viavisolutions.com/solutions/wireless or call +49 7121 86 2222.