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Support has been ignored for long by most providers and certainly never been on the innovation radar. And yet, there are some recent examples that show that innovation when applied to support has far-reaching possibilities to address the all-encompassing customer experience paradigm.

It should not be a surprise that business pressures are driving providers to look at support services (as at other services) to drive cost-savings and risk reduction. Survival itself is demanding a renewed focus on service experience and the need to continuously improve support quality and response time. These are conflicting business requirements. And it is interesting that the process has triggered a fresh approach to support and the age-old dull and mundane image is getting a makeover! Support is suddenly being seen as something far more dynamic - an over-arching service that can impact customer experience far more than we all realized.

Isn’t it interesting that all discussions today around LTE focus on radio and network technologies; most see it as the means for either capacity expansion or cost reductions; while some encourage a few debates on the decline of unlimited data plans and need for tiered-pricing? The promise of new services & the evolution of business processes is all but lost in the noise!

As LTE deployments continue to make the headlines, the actual number of active LTE subscribers today is just over 1.2m worldwide. However with committed roadmaps driving operator strategies, the numbers are expected to grow phenominally; one of the recent reports I read from In-Stat projected 150m worldwide by 2014.

Interestingly, the roadmap to LTE today is driven by adding capacity, reducing per-bit costs and remaining competitive -- there is no evidence of new services or revenues. LTE is emerging as the technology to enrich the existing services and experience –- the good old candidates of multi-player gaming, video & TV and internet access. There is no focus on introducing anything totally new. And further with early announcements on LTE-Advanced claiming 10X improvements with the next generation technology (thru enhancements like carrier aggregation & extended MIMO functionality), we can look forward to not only faster speeds & higher capacity but also an improved experience under congested network conditions.

It's Not Just About Speed

Recently we conducted a webinar on Delivering the ‘Optimal Mobile Backhaul’ Experience – which generated many interesting and insightful questions on wireless backhaul implementation challenges, solutions, and future roadmap. We received more questions than we were able to answer in the allotted time, so we decided to answer all the questions through this blog. We hope these responses are informative for those of you seeking to better understand the nuances of building robust wireless backhaul networks. You can access the webinar archive by clicking here. 

Q.  Why do you say MPLS can’t provide SONET like resiliency? The Fast ReRoute mechanism has been standardized and widely used for many years now and provides an excellent way to provide path level redundancy and resiliency in the network.

Multi-vendor global networks are driving the need for common standards, and highly interoperable products and services. Conceptualized in the year 2005, the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) certification program for Carrier Ethernet equipment, solutions, services, and engineers consists of a series of tests that provide evidence for end-users, service providers, and manufacturers, that products and services are compliant of published MEF specifications.

Telecom equipment manufacturers face several challenges in harmonizing equipment across multiple network domains on a common set of MEF standards. Of the various specifications defined by this forum, MEF 9 and MEF 14 are the most important from a product certification perspective. These specifications address equipment and solution certifications that ensure that devices with Ethernet layer 2 features comply with the MEF standards. These certifications, in turn, aid service providers to select equipment which can interoperate with other MEF compliant devices, and provide guaranteed performance and desired functionality.

MEF certification benefits vary by different constituents, including:

Enterprises/End users

•   Assures users that services perform according to agreed specifications and standards

•   Provides the knowledge to make informed decisions at greatly reduced risks

•   Accelerates Carrier Ethernet deployment at lower cost

•   Provides common terminology to compare services

Service Providers

•   Reduces costs and time on complex interoperability testing

The shift in value from products to services has been ongoing for several years now, and has opened up a whole new world of professional services and Managed Support Services. It’s the strategy of some of the world’s most innovative companies: IBM, for instance. And yet there are many areas that are still untapped, and have the potential to impact the true customer experience.