The growing need to improve the experience for mobile users has seen Huawei unveil the latest version of its Network Experience PLUS solution. The 3.0 release aims to provide an operator with precise details of the level of network and service each customer is receiving, through a Network Experience Index (NEI).

“There are a huge number of metrics available to an operator detailing network performance,” Jack Zhou, Vice President of Huawei Global Technical Services, President of Network Solution & Integration Services Dept, said during Operations Transformation Forum 2016.

“However, they focus on single elements with no standardised method of measuring network performance or the experience an individual is receiving.”

“There are hundreds of network KPIs (key performance indicators) and more than 70 KQIs (key quality indicators) making it difficult to know which to select or how many are needed to evaluate network performance. Our Network Experience PLUS 3.0 solution aims to provide operators with a customer-centric index that collects network data specifically to enable the accurate and objective measurement of a subscriber’s experience of the network and service.”

“The NEI is designed to collect, analyse and evaluate voice, data and video metrics,” said Zhou.

Huawei looked at how stock markets manage and report the huge amount of rapidly changing data in a fast changing business environment. “We’ve learnt from them how stock markets provide meaningful data to traders on equity pricing.”

“NEI combines many different metrics to build a big picture of what is happening in the network so as to enable user experience modelling. We now only look at 11 measurements per user – three for voice, four for data and another four for network capability. We then rank these from 1 to 5 so a clear and understandable picture is presented for each customer.”

According to the company, one trial of NEI had resulted in the operator seeing an uplift in overall network performance from a rating of 78.5 to 90.3 by using NEI data to optimise how resources were allocated across the network.