• Anticipating traffic associated with each service
• Associating quality of service with network capacity
• Dealing with interference and crowded networks
• Linking cell capacity with RTT
  • how can you measure that? – what are the key elements to analyse?

• Overcoming the challenge of dealing with
  • multiple handset types
  • multiple coding schemes
  • multiple player types
  • multiple content types
• what choices are available when putting data into the network?

OPERATOR

• Analysing the advantages and disadvantages of each technique by taking into consideration your network configuration and services
  • Overcoming the challenges posed by handsets
    • examining the diversity of devices, operating systems, versions and protocols
  • Certification of mobile chips with GSM and WCDMA bearer
  • Examining the current user device and application software that enables users to experience data services
  • How can handsets help to measure KPIs and QoE?
    • installing user agents in handsets
    • selecting a set of users
  • Dealing with the challenges of handling Multiple PDP contexts
  • Which uplink rate will terminals support?
  Andrej Voje, Technical Advisor, Mobitel (Slovenia)

OPERATOR

• The importance of using metrics that relate to customer QoE
  • significance of end-to-end KPIs
• Grouping customer expectations under categories
  • usability, Reliability, Performance
  • n–Advantages of using consistent KPIs
  • understandable, measurable, quantifiable
• Typical KPIs used for quantifying data services
  • ease of use, customer support
  • availability, accessibility, access time,
• Adding value to the KPI measurements
• How to make the most of measurements you have made

• Overcoming the challenges of dealing with counters
• How to collect effective data for optimising QoE?
• Where, when and how to do this in the cellular network
• Which input data do you decide to analyse?
  • how accurate can the data be?
• Examining cost vs accuracy vs availability

• Defining and obtaining valuable data on what customers experience
• The customer-service-network hierarchy for integrated management
• Enabling end-to-end, multi-level, multi-data service quality management
• Drilling down for root cause identification
• How does the customer benefit from QoE measurements?
• How does the service provider benefit from QoE measurements?

OPERATOR

• Where to instrument speech QoE in the network?
• Passive versus active monitoring of speech and audio QoE
• Linking speech QoE with other network measurements
• Dealing with user perception of voice CODEX
• Overcoming the challenges of background noise
• Differences between GSM vs W-CDMA

• Complexity and speed of change the challenges faced in evaluating QoS on 3G networks
• Options for measuring and monitoring QoS
• The role of end-to-end testing
• Agility and industrialization key success factors for effective Service Assurance operations
• KPI definition and measurements, alarms and integration with network management.

PANEL

• Can the wireless industry deliver on its promises without standardisation in the areas of QoS and QoE metrics and the best practice methods for achieving high scores?
• What should be measured?
• How should we measure it?
• What is the cost of reaching agreement and does the business case justify standardisation?
• Which standards body is best placed to gain consensus on such metrics?
  • ITU
  • 3GPP
  • GSMA

OPERATOR

• Are today’s W-CDMA networks delivering added value over GSM/GPRS?
  • CapEx
  • OpEx
  • QoE
  • QoS
  • unique services not viable on 2G
• What viable alternatives exist for increasing system capacity?
  • allocating and deploying new spectrum?
  • deploying new carriers within existing operating bands?
  • adding hierarchical networks?
  • adding new sectors?
  • reducing service quality (half-rate speech, lower quality video)?
• Considering future traffic predictions
• Optimisation – one word, billions of possibilities
  • the need to develop a common vocabulary for discussing network optimisation
  • the importance of declaring simulation assumptions
  • the role and limitations of simulation

OPERATOR

• Analysing the advantages and disadvantages of each technique by taking into consideration your network configuration and services
  • radio planning
  • drive test
  • automatic vs static
  • RET
  • Iub monitoring
  • static live probes
  • network cacheing
  • cell selection / reselection
  • soft handover/hard handover
  • inter RAT

OPERATOR

• Cell selection and reselection in a multi-RAT environment
• The importance of being on the correct cell
• Why simulations often fall short of actual performance due to ignoring actual cell selection performance
• Avoiding Ping Pong cell reselection between W-CDMA and GSM

• Dealing with imperfections in UE measurements
• Measurement errors and impact on network radio conditions
• UE issues and Root Cause Analysis – examples from real life
• Impact of the UE FW on the network side
• Subscriber perception of the end to end performance
• A practical approach to benchmark UE FW versions in the network
• Case study

• Types of soft handover
• The impact of soft handover on system capacity – why is soft handover necessary?
• Soft handover performance on typical loaded networks
• Soft handover optimisation techniques
• Examining alternatives to soft handover
• The added complexity of SHO optimisation when using hierarchical cells

PANEL

• Challenges with data calls
• Low customer QoE
• If data services take off will 3G networks be able to deliver?
• Examples for 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x current data volumes
• Optimising price of service vs availability

OPERATOR

• Why hard handover is needed
• The handover challenge – not how but when!
• Compressed mode – silver bullet or poisoned chalice?
• Dealing with the additional challenges from hierarchical cell structures (hotspots)
• Creating a Microlayer in order to achieve capacity hot spots

• Video service optimisation over HSDPA
  • How enhancements can be achieved
  Data rate
  Round trip delay
  Latency
  Interworking
• How KPIs can be adopted to deliver a ‘better’ service
  • What tools are available?
  Methodologies for deriving QoS metrics
  Service availability
  Service accessibility
  Service access time
  Service continuity
• Case studies
  • Couei field experience
  • Testing the following applications with operator data for speed, capacity and data quality from normal to high traffic conditions
  • e-mail; video streaming; music downloads and web browsing

• Dealing with the challenge of a lack of past results
• Analysing results of:
  • neighbouring cells
  • power settings
  • hand over
• balancing the amount of soft handover
• dealing with different levels of accuracy
• taking two different types of measurement and understanding which one is most effective
• OSS
• drive test

PANEL

• The growing gap between what is being standardised and what can be efficiently deployed
• Will W-CDMA ever deliver more than GSM?
• How fast is Shannon turning in his grave?

OPERATOR

• Overcoming the challenges in accurately predicting and modelling the radio environment
  • dealing with multipath, pilot pollution and other interference
• How to ensure clean hand off between networks
  • optimising handover parameters and zones
  • optimising neighbour relations
  • using counters to optimise handovers
• What are the risks involved when doing hand over?

• What makes HSDPA require more optimisation than standard WCDMA?
  • scheduling moved from RNC to Node B
  • critical parameters no longer available to monitor on Iub
  • processing power required to deliver real-time scheduling
• How to optimise HSDPA networks to support legacy non-HSDPA handsets
  • managing different handsets within the network
• What optimisation can be done on the RNC?

• Preparing your HSDPA network before launch
• Reducing intereference on the downlink
• Admission and congestion control in 3G / HSDPA network
• Managing coverage holes created by HSDPA
• Examining optimisation scenarios and strategies for HSDPA
  • one carrier vs two carriers
  • one scrambling vs two scrambling

OPERATOR

• What technology is necessary before VoIP is technically feasible?
• What is the impact in terms of capacity and the challenges for the quality of service for a mobile operator to introduce VoIP?
• What additional investment is necessary in order to implement VoIP?
• The strategic issue of the voice capacity of 3G systems when VoIP is introduced against CS voice
• Is there a business logic for VoIP over HSDPA/HSUPA?
  • why optimise?

PANEL

• Can different techniques ever be compared?
• Are some techniques mandatory?
• Examining the mobile operator’s performance strategy and objectives

• Achieving different optimisation strategies for different data services
• Examining the challenges of different services
  • sms
  • mms
  • video streaming and download
• Using 2G vs 3G
• Understanding when to restrict the data rate vs using a high speed burst
• Using a shared channel vs dedicated channel
• Circuit switch vs packet switch

• How to fine tune the ray tracing model for achieving precise calculation of coverage
  • practical experiences
• What computer to use for calculating coverage?
• What is the computing power needed for calculating coverage?
• Is orthogonality prediction reliable?
• What standard deviation of fine tuned ray-tracing model can be achieved in reality?
• Is there any influence of environment type to ray-tracing model precision?
• How do these tools adapt when traffic moves?

• TCP stack overview
• Modifying TCP parameters
• Alleviating the effect of TCP slow start in mobile network
• Understanding the risks with TCP optimisation
  • tunings with adverse effect

• How can capacity be increased in a quick and efficient manner?
• Examining the bottlenecks in the network and how to remove them
• How can decisions be made between the technical department and the commercial department when increasing capacity?
• Predicting how the network will breathe under expected traffic and service mix scenarios

• Should operators focus more on current technologies before moving into new ones?
• Can realistic optimisation ever be achieved given the exponential growth in complexity?
• Understanding the scenario and timeline for deploying new technology