Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

“Under the deployment and guidance of China Mobile in developing the top-level network, we have enhanced the industry, raised the value, upgraded user experience and improved home broadband quality”, said Liang Jian Lin, Vice General Manager, Network Department, China Mobile Dongguan, in his session during the virtual Huawei Better World Summit held last week.

In his talk, Liang discussed that in recent years, the company has kept a strong momentum in Home Broadband (HBB) services, having achieved a market share of over 50 per cent covering 4.7 million subscribers in the city in 2020.

According to him, as the digital transformation of the economy and society continues, HBB services have shifted from large-scale operation with mass connectivity and strong provisioning to high-quality installed base operation. He added that this emphasises on content and experience and that user experience will play a decisive role.

With the subscriber experience being key, China Mobile Dongguan highlighted the need for upgrading the installed base operations of the HBB services. However, Liang said that during the upgrade, they encountered several problems and pain points. This includes being unable to accurately monitor applications (such as games, videos and online education) experience quality, time-consuming manual checks, lack of quantitative analysis for low-satisfaction users leading to churn and low sales efficiency, among others.

Dongguan Mobile-Huawei Joint Innovation to Enhance the HBB Experience with Three New Network Capabilities

To address such challenges, in 2019, China Mobile Guangdong worked with Huawei’s Songshan Lake Research Centre to build the next-generation optical network and set up an XPIE lab in Songshan Lake. This year, China Mobile Dongguan launched an innovative HBB experience improvement project, using a combination of networks from Huawei’s XPIE Lab (Network B) to nurture new capabilities and Dongguan’s live network (Network A) to continuously iterate O&M and operations.

After seven months of piloting, Liang said the joint innovation has yielded positive results. Currently, four OLTs have been piloted, covering a total of 7,856 subscribers. With the first batch experiencing significant improvements in network experience (by over 90%), China Mobile Dongguan is planning to replicate the pilot throughout the city in 2021.

According to Liang, they have introduced several new network capabilities to support the new mode of installed base operations. “The first key capability is [to] experience awareness and measurement. This is DFI (Deep Flow Inspection) application identification technology based on automation – different from traditional DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) which needs to inspect packets”.

He explained that the DFI-based method does not need packet disassembly or private user information. The trained neural network is used to identify packet features and is still workable after application encryption. After the application is identified, application-level KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), such as packet loss and delay, are collected in seconds. And based on the correlation between these KPIs and application KQIs (Key Quality Indicators), the end user experience is measured. This is the second key capability.

The third one is correlation analysis between applications and network indicators with automated algorithms for second-level data synchronisation. This allows them to determine the location and causes of poor Quality of Experience (QoE), enabling them to pinpoint the areas where improvements to their HBB services can be made.

Four New Changes to Overcome Four Major Problems, Enabling Network Autonomy for an Agile Business Model

As a result of these capabilities, China Mobile Dongguan was able to realise four changes in their O&M and operations. Firstly, they were able to shift from a “complaint-driven O&M” to a proactive management of poor QoE, reaching real-world analysis accuracy rates of 100%. “User experience-oriented visibility and management is the most basic and critical part of installed base operations”, explained Liang.

Another change lies in quick analysis of root causes, which results in enhanced troubleshooting capabilities, powered by more accurate fault demarcation and locating, and higher installation and maintenance efficiency. In fact, Liang mentioned that the average fault-handling time is reduced by 35%, resulting in a higher first-time resolution rate and lower instances of repeated fault reporting.

The churn of silent low-satisfaction customers has also been addressed with proactive rectification. China Mobile Dongguan is now able to ensure a high QoE for subscribers (even for those that do not file complaints), resulting in much higher satisfaction and retention levels. In November, the company provided proactive rectification for 22 subscribers with (unreported) poor QoE, and according to phone follow-ups, 20 said their experience had improved.

Lastly, inefficient sales approaches have now been shifted to precision marketing. Based on valuable information such as degradation time and poor QoE bottlenecks, China Mobile Dongguan finds target users for their different products and services and recommend suitable upgrades. With this, the company’s marketing accuracy and penetration rate have been improved significantly, unlocking new revenue sources for installation and O&M personnel while improving the overall user experience.

With a Fully Upgraded Home Broadband Business, Stellar Experience and Service Can Be Guaranteed

“With the support of the three network capabilities and the four changes in operation, we plan to comprehensively upgrade the HBB Network Services of China Mobile Dongguan. We will focus on user experience and provide new HBB products and services in assuring access, coverage, application and stability”, Liang added.

With their plans of city-wide replication and promotion in 2021, Liang said that they will ensure the quality of broadband installation and maintenance, stimulate new momentum, improve customer satisfaction and shape leading scale and quality.

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