As the mobile network continues its exponential growth, we are noticing a flourishing development in lifestyle applications and features. In recent years, HD video, live streaming, AR/VR, cloud gaming, and many other new developments are attracting more diverse user groups. In line with user growth, required traffic is soaring, and of course, optimal service experience is expected. Facing this trend, operators want to refine the operation of pipe traffic, so they can increase service revenues along with traffic growth.
How Can Operators Increase Both Traffic Volume and Revenues When Traffic Monetization Encounters Bottlenecks?
At the early stage of the 4G era, traffic monetization is achieved by charging traffic and binding OTT service packages. By doing so, operators can offer featured services, win new users, and gain higher revenues through OTT traffic attraction. In the post-4G era, operators are diverting more funds towards 5G, and simultaneously reducing allocated capital to 4G. However, new services such as live streaming, cloud gaming, online conference, and XR bring the explosive growth of mobile network traffic. Certainly, there is a mismatch between investments and mobile network traffic, with network congestion only getting worse and user experience deteriorated. How to improve the overall pipe efficiency, and how to maximize the value of per-bit traffic and ensure optimal user experience under limited bandwidth resources have become major challenges facing operators.
Experience Management Solutions Help Operators Convert Traffic to Money
To address the preceding challenges, operators can make a breakthrough by delivering differentiated experience assurance to high-value users. Specifically, operators need to satisfy two common demands, one is cell congestion control and optimization, and the other is experience assurance for high-value users. In response to such demands, Huawei proposes two experience management solutions: Cell Congestion Optimization (CCO) and Dynamic QoE Assurance (DQA).
The CCO solution integrates the service awareness capability of the core network to ensure user experience with limited bandwidth resources. For cell congestion, congestion control is a common method in use. Different from this, Huawei innovatively puts user experience ahead through intelligent and dynamic optimization algorithms for heavy-traffic users. By doing so, when these users watch videos or play games, flow-level traffic burst can be detected. The traffic is then shaped within milliseconds, and valid packets are forwarded at a rate 15% higher than before. In this way, user experience is effectively improved.
The DQA solution provides refined network management and operations based on intelligent network pipes, service types, and service experience requirements. Huawei introduces intelligent analysis and policy management to the core network, so as to provide real-time experience awareness and intelligent analysis on user-subscribed services. In this context, differentiated service experience can be dynamically delivered to high-value users on demand. What's more, the assurance effect can be visualized, and users can certainly notice it. After the service assurance, a service experience report will be immediately pushed to users for closed-loop business management. With the DQA solution, operators can launch packages for different levels of service assurance. This accordingly increases the ARPU, grows revenue, and stimulates more network traffic.
Currently, Huawei's experience management solutions have been piloted among leading operators in Thailand and some provinces in China. MWC 2023 will run from February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona, Spain. At the conference, Huawei will showcase innovative services and experience solutions, and release innovative 5.5G core network products and solutions. Huawei will work with the industry to explore the combination of experience management and XR services and develop new business models, offering solid network capability assurance for the advent of the 5.5G era.