Agilent Technologies has launched a service assurance solution that is intended to guide operators through the complexity of offering QoS over UMTS networks and new voice, video and data services.
This monitoring solution enables wireless carriers to aggregate data from key UMTS interfaces, by collating data both from the network elements and by passively monitoring the signalling.
Agilent says that several operators in Europe, Asia and America are testing this solution to speed their new services to market and identify and resolve performance issues before subscribers are affected.
Agilent has integrated its Distributed Network Analyzer, Data Mining Toolkit and Signaling Analyzer solutions into one service assurance solution, the UMTS Performance Analyzer.
An integrated approach means users can more easily identify and troubleshoot issues across the UMTS network and understand the performance of voice and data services. UMTS Performance Analyzer provides insight into the quality and performance of the Radio Access Network, either in a large area, such as an entire city, or down to a cell or user granularity. It monitors and troubleshoots inter-RNC (radio network controller) handovers and reports on the performance of the network and UMTS and GPRS services.
Tom Walls, vp and general manager of Agilent’s OSS division said that operators will not get the same margin for error launching 3G services as they did with 2G, yet the network is much more complicated.
“The UMTS RAN is in the order of 10 times more complicated than GPRS/GSM. The whole radio side has changed and it also has to interact with the 2G and 2.5G networks. There are big issues and all of the information available with current tools is not giving a clear picture of where and why problems are occurring.”
Neil McKinlay, business development manager within Agilent’s OSS division said that the Performance Analyser monitors the control plane of the networks interfaces to give and independent view of what is happening.
“For instance, a UMTS call might require up to a thousand protocol messages to be exchanged to set up a call, over three to four different radio paths. If one path drops it may look to the operator that the call is still up but the user experience is of a degraded call quality,” McKinlay said.