OSS is used to monitor and manage large communications networks and to provide business support to the providers of telecommunications, data communication, and network services. OSS is a kind of automation system that can take information automatically from the cell tower such as network inventory, performance data, service provisioning, network configuration, fault management, etc.
How OSS plays in telecommunication?
The role of OSS in telecommunication plays as the back-end support system for all operational activities within a mobile network. OSS is essential to the 5G/4G network architecture of any mobile network that makes use of software to monitor, configure, and manage the operational activities within a network. Further, it monitors the performance of the network in the following ways.
- Performance and capacity monitoring
- Maintaining network inventory
- Provisioning services
- Performance monitoring on 4G/5G nodes
- Configuring network components
- Managing faults
- Operational day-to-day activities are required for Telcos, which ensure that their mobile networks and services are running perfectly.
Some of the drawbacks of RAN KPI monitoring via OSS
- An area having very good OSS KPIs might still have users experiencing poor coverage, quality, low downloading/browsing speed, etc., thereby resulting in customer dissatisfaction and customers moving out to another operator.
- Lack of location information of failures.
- Business needs to rely on drive testing for real user experience measurement.
- No insights into competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
- Field engineers need to be deployed to customer locations to measure actual issues on the network.
These drawbacks can be addressed through crowdsourcing solutions.
Crowdsourcing use cases
- Measurement of accurate end-user experience information such as Latency, RAN technology, data throughput, coverage, etc.
- No cost or negligible cost compared to RF drive testing as users are performing tests and sending measurements.
- Indoor and outdoor KPI data provide operators opportunity to enhance their network indoors.
- Performance of UE OEMs over network
- Issues such as coverage holes, data speeds, swapped sectors due to cross feeders, and cell over shooters can be identified and optimized without actual drive testing.
- Identification of the top worst locations where users are likely to leave the network.
- Competitor strengths and weaknesses create upselling opportunities.
- Long-term national level map data about network information for own networks and competitor networks which provide marketing intelligence for sales.
Conclusion
OSS (Operational Support System) is required for all kinds of operational activities, which occur in the telecommunication sector - monitor, control, analyse and manage network; for example, the performance of the 5G/4G network. However, in recent years, telecom operators adopting smart crowdsourcing additional enrichment data on top of OSS data in identifying user experience issues and improving the quality of the network by optimizers. In addition, crowdsource platforms will save significant costs on drive testing and field testing. Crowdsourced data can be used not only in Radio Optimisation but also used in RAN Ops, Marketing, and Sales verticals of the network carrier. Conclusion is that OSS data is a must have for mobile network operators and crowdsource data will significantly enhance insights into real user experience on network which overall empower operators to provide superior network experience.
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https://rantcell.com/crowd-sourcing-mobile-network-testing.html
