Mobile Broadband World Takes Small Steps Into Enterprise Mobility SLAs and QoS

| Sep 22, 2008 | Enterprise Mobility - Europe | Advisory Report

| Analyst: Rolf Schonhowd

Rolf Schonhowd Principal Analyst, Enterprise Mobility - Europe

Summary

The Mobile Broadband World show September 17th and 18th in Amsterdam arranged by IRR Telecoms and Technology conference group was focused primarily on the latest mobile infrastructure technologies such as WiMAX HSPA and LTE, including plans and deployments among mobile operators, but also on consumer applications, services, social networking enhancements, and multimedia devices in the market. However, few new service announcements were made at this event. Moreover, searching for enterprise-focused services presentations and hot topics always requires some detective work. However, it was encouraging that areas such as Quality of Service (QoS) and Service Level agreements (SLAs) were discussed, as these business topics are increasingly coming up as enterprise mobility issues.

For at least 6-8 years, national and global fixed telecom players have offered enterprises SLAs in terms of classes of services (CoS) reflected as bronze, silver and gold with service level guarantees attached. So why in a converging world where service providers, both fixed and mobile, are aggressively marketing new services as “anywhere, anytime and on any device” can we not receive a SLA with solid guarantees for mobile services? There is no doubt that there is a need to also empower mobile mission-critical services and applications with a high and guaranteed level of quality. The common answer from market players is that because of the nature of how mobile networks work, SLAs and quality of service guarantees can’t be provided and nobody offers them today. Thus, during the event there were few presentations that even began to question what should be considered an integral part of delivering service with higher quality to clients, both consumer and enterprises. Suggestions were made by Orange’s Wim de Mooij, Manager of Mobile Broadband, and TeliaSonera’s Johan Wickman, VP Head of R&D Mobility, that the next level will be to offer business-class mobile data services for which mobile operators can charge a premium.

So this report will initially cover a broad set of mobile broadband topics highlighted at the event but will look in particular at what enterprises can expect of QoS and SLAs.

Current Analysis Perspective

At the Mobile Broadband World show there were a majority of representatives from equipment providers such as Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens and Motorola and telecom operators such as Orange, TeliaSonera, Telenor, O2 Ireland, Telecom Italia and Vodafone. The opening keynote speech by the chair Orange’s Wim de Mooij, on the first day of the conference, outlined 5 key questions that would need to be answered during the event. These five questions were:

At the event, all keynote presentations focused on mobile operators’ deployments of new infrastructure such as HSPA, mobile WiMAX and future plans for LTE. Furthermore, a lot of the presentations made use of examples of consumer offerings to demonstrate what mobile operators are doing to improve their service offerings that leverage broadband networks. The current state of the market shows that mobile data growth has exceeded many market players’ predictions which leave them with a problem on how to support and upgrade their networks to meet the demand. Another related area was the mobile backhaul challenge; operators described various ways that they have dealt with this such as upgrade their networks either gradually to packetized infrastructure based on ATM legacy technologies or E1 lines or by swapping out the old infrastructure with new HSPA broadband and IP technologies. Furthermore, sensible business models for offering new and profitable consumer services were also a key focus area. However, it is still early days when it comes to what mobile operators can offer for new services and to understand how well their business models are tuned to accommodate clients’ needs and new rivals such as Google.

The ongoing discussion of what next generation mobile infrastructure is best suited to address the increasing need in a world where more and more devices are always on was a hot topic. Deployments of HSPA and later LTE plus WiMAX, received a lot of interest in the session named Mobile Broadband Networks. Current Analysis has written a lot on this topic in its wireless infrastructure module. However, there is no doubt there are different camps promoting their view of what will be the dominating mobile broadband technology going forward. LTE seems to have an upper hand in Europe compared to mobile WiMAX which struggles in some part of the world where competition is fierce such as in Western Europe to make a credible business case for a sound ROI. However, while HSPA is being deployed it is clear from European operators’ presentations that 2G and 3G networks will be with us for a long time still. Overall, even with vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia-Siemens presenting the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), the topic was almost not debated at all as part of how to leverage operators’ investments in mobile broadband networks.

Another topic that was highlighted although much less than mobile infrastructure and mobile data market growth, was the need for QoS and business-class offerings in serving customers better, for enterprises but also consumers. One interesting presentation was from a fairly unknown company named P3 Solutions (P3) from Germany which offers a monitoring solution for delivering service level measurements to either enterprises directly or indirectly via mobile operators’ managed services. While the current market situation is that mobile operators are struggling to accommodate any type of SLAs or SLGs, the proposed solution from P3 could have some potential in enabling business mobile services to be enhanced with similar commercial agreements to what typical fixed services such as IP VPN and IPT have delivered for many years.

In essence, P3’s SLA solution, branded DSMQ (Distributed Sensor Quality Monitoring), is implemented via either a USB dongle device or mobile phone (standard Symbian S60 devices) where any SIM card can be inserted and these devices will in a passive or active mode gather data to measure technical performance such as received signal strength indicator (RSSI), type of radio access technology (2G/3G), IP dumps, Layer 2/3 network traces with NTM firmware, GPS localization data, walktest support, service related data (e.g. voice, call duration, call termination, B-party MSISDN), but also location information (MCC, MNC, LAC, CellID). In addition, it supports ETSI compliant KPIs such as voice telephony (+ PESQ [ITU-T P.862]), packet switched data (PSD), WAP/Browsing, FTP, streaming, SMS and MMS end-to-end, cell broadcast and email (POP3, IMAP, SMTP). Thus, the DSQM solution helps collect data in the following categories: Voice, Messaging, Applications, Browsing, Downloads and Imaging. Hence, the DSQM is able to constantly monitor via its control center tool the received service level from an end-user perspective for network coverage, voice call success, data connection reliability and speed, plus service quality for key applications like e-mail and Intranet access. It also collects information when the user is outside of network coverage when abroad. The company has already worked with mobile operators such as O2, Vodafone and T-Mobile in Germany testing its solutions; however very little has been promoted by any one of these mobile operators when it comes to enterprise mobility SLAs. However, P3 outlined a good example of how this could work by using a SLA between a mobile operator and a German electricity and natural gas provider. The parties made a SLA which linked to a 15 minute on-site appearance in the case of reported gas leaks, leveraging 24/7 standby operatives who are alarmed via mobile calls. Thus, this SLA is tied into emergency response teams who repeatedly claimed they did not receive any calls in spite of the fact that the mobile operator claimed that calls were routed correctly. The bottom line is that SLAs could be a powerful marketing instrument for mobile operators if they are able to measure, report on and guarantee their performance more effectively.

In Europe, both Vodafone Global Enterprise and the FreeMove Alliance are stating that master level agreements are offered to enterprise mobility clients but no hard service level guarantees (SLGs) such as availability or dropped calls are publicly announced. So far if looking at the European enterprise mobility market among fixed and mobile players, we have only seen one operator, Cable & Wireless (C&W), offering standardized SLAs. It offers them for its FMC service, offering an in-building SLA for availability and dropped calls. Moreover, C&W is the first UK operator to use its guard band low-power spectrum GSM license to deliver an enterprise-grade FMC service in-building using picocells as well as femtocells in some locations and cellular roaming via its MVNO relationship with Orange. C&W already has a large client signed up, Tesco, and under the terms of the 5-year deal, Tesco will pay C&W GBP 100 million for the network. In turn, C&W has contracted Ericsson to design, build and manage the network for 5 years. The network will use C&W’s IP network as backhaul, which will be used to link up some 1,500 Tesco locations with the private GSM coverage. The choice of enterprise FMC services has so far been limited in the UK. The only service alternatives are BT Corporate Fusion and Orange Unik, which take a different approach to C&W and requires customers to invest in new dual-mode WiFi/GSM handsets and WLAN access points on campus. (A comparison of these technologies was presented at the show, however in the context of consumers planning to install femtocells solutions in the home compared to WiFi and UMA solutions).

Hence, based on some of the latest market initiatives taking place, is the challenge of offering a SLA with guarantees now made possible, with companies such as P3 Solutions offering this either alone or with mobile operators such as Vodafone, Telefonica O2 Europe, Orange Business Services or FreeMove? We believe not as in the short-term there remains an unwillingness to commit to SLAs among key mobile operators. It is promising, however, that we are now closer to some sort of resolution with new mobile solutions from companies such as P3 allowing the European mobile operators able to take a step in the right direction. Providing useful service measurements will create a greater amount of trust among enterprises to sign up to business-class enterprise mobility deals. Overall, by offering a value proposition that builds upon new technology, service providers can meet enterprise clients’ expressed need for better control of availability and reliability from enterprise mobility services. Based on the presentations at the show, there is no doubt that broadband access via DSL, Ethernet, WiFi and 3G have opened up the office, leading to a convergence of work and home. In theory, employees can check email or access corporate applications, interact with colleagues, and use voice over broadband to communicate from anywhere at anytime. In reality, however, enterprise clients with multinational activities contend with a patch-work, multi-communications environment that cannot yet guarantee end-to-end QoS on a global basis.

Recommended End User Actions

• All enterprises in Europe should consider guarantees included as a “tick the box” item when considering potential service providers for enterprise mobility services. They should ask in particular what commitments these service providers’ offerings will bring in terms of the overall business goals for the enterprise.

• Enterprises should ask any service provider that approaches them what types of customer experiences they have had implementing mobile SLAs, and if these engagements are for industry-specific verticals such as their own industry and ask if they can talk to these clients to better understand what value the service provider imparted.

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Recommended Vendor Actions

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