PARTNER INTERVIEW: Mobileum is a leading provider of telecom analytics solutions for roaming, core network, security, risk management, domestic and international connectivity testing, and customer intelligence.
We catch up with Kostas Anagnostakis, Senior Vice President – Engagement & Experience BU, to ask about the company’s evolution into the analytics space and how CSPs are using Mobileum solutions to create value for end-users.
Q1 – Mobileum has an impressive track record of providing roaming, core network, security, risk management, domestic and international connectivity testing solutions. In recent years, however, you have established yourself as a network analytics specialist. What prompted this evolution and how do you serve CSPs today?
For Mobileum this was a natural evolution. Mobileum was born in the roaming and interconnect analytics space and since those early days we have built a strong expertise in analyzing and interpreting network data for optimizing the wholesale business, safeguarding subscribers, and deriving insights from interconnect routes.
Over the years, we have expanded our portfolio and enhanced our analytics capabilities with network security, risk management, in addition to testing and service assurance. But more recently, we understood the importance of complementing our portfolio with Deep Network Analytics, to get deeper insights into what’s happening in the user plane and how subscribers are interacting with data and applications.
This development has enabled us to enhance our risk and cybersecurity products. It also helps provide a 360º view of service assurance, combining both active testing and monitoring capabilities with passive monitoring insights. This is particularly important as operators advance on their 5G rollouts and as the requirement for ubiquitous service becomes more prevalent.
Getting Deep Network Insights and real-time network analytics and emulation capabilities plays a critical part in creating a continuous view of service performance, helping CSPs to address any service degradation. We believe that the future of network performance and customer experience lies at the intersection between these two worlds. That’s why we have invested and continue investing in this space.
Q2 – What exactly is Deep Network Analytics and how is it different from existing network analytics?
Deep Network Analytics (or DNA) is the Mobileum proprietary network intelligence technology that provides CSP’s with the real time visibility to understand all the information on its network, and consequently provides the option to act on such intelligence.
Analytics provided are concise, accurate, and real-time. While this sounds simple, it is actually highly involved and complicated due to the scale and underlying complexities of a CSP’s network. Our DNA technology is able to expose all of the various network protocol layers at wire speed, and can scale to the largest CSP networks in the world today. Coupled with our industry-leading analytics are our business insights which provide intelligence to help CSPs solve real-world business questions in areas like Fintech SuperApps, Video Streaming as well as 5G analytics.
Q3 – With regards to Deep Network Analytics, how does Mobileum serve carriers in space in terms of service assurance, subscriber care, event analytics, and video analytics?
There are four core area I would like to focus on:
- Service Assurance
- Subscriber Care
- Event Analytics
- Video Stream Analytics
Service Assurance – We provide clear and concise data on the deliverables of a subscriber’s services, and can measure against pre-set KPIs. This provides the CSP assurance that services are being delivered against KPIs, and also provides pre-emptive alerts when service level KPIs are not met.
Subscriber Care – DNA is able to provide that single pane of glass for a CSP’s customer service to fully understand a subscriber’s usage and experience level, as well as historical sliders into subscriber events in the past, providing for billing and customer satisfaction issues.
Event Analytics – This provides support for high volume, high visibility events such as sports or concerts where there is a high concentration of subscribers at a single location for a short period of time, requiring the network in that location to scale fast. DNA event analytics enable CSPs to gain visibility of detailed usage behavior, detect connectivity issues and react in real-time as mass public events take place.
Video Stream Analytics – CSP Network teams need to assess service quality and validate their network planning and optimization initiatives to ensure consistent delivery of expected video QoE. However, Video KPIs like resolution, initial buffering time, and stall events are unavailable because the video services are delivered via encrypted streams.
Q4 – Video services account for more than half of all network traffic, a trend that is on an upward trajectory. Can you go into more detail on how you’re serving CSPs in this space?
By the end 2022 82% of all IP traffic is expected to be video. To stay competitive, reduce OPEX and churn, and to tap into new revenue streams, smooth and lag free video experience are key factors driving customer satisfaction and usage.
Mobileum’s Video Quality Testing Suite is an end-to-end active service assurance solution to test, monitor, troubleshoot, and benchmark video services. It offers a very flexible quality of experience testing approach for both live and on demand content with the focus on the customer perspective. Real-time alarms flag quality problems before a business impact.
Our leading edge capabilities provide visibility and insights into popular streaming services like YouTube and Netflix. CSPs have real time access to a variety of KPIs such as buffer health, connection speed, dropped frames, resolution, frame rate, stream host, duration, and video ID. With Mobileum, CSPs and content providers can be confident that their product is being viewed at the optimum level of subscriber experience.
Q5 – How can CSPs leverage subscriber data effectively to provide a greater degree of personalization that informs more targeted offerings?
With access to the right data a CSP can pinpoint customer segments with hyper-granular traits. Mobileum Digital Leads Generator enables CSPs to instantly create subscriber segments based on usage and behavioral profiles and generate leads for campaign opportunities.
The solution extends beyond the typical audience creation functionality — not only does it enable managers to identify the right subscribers for a particular campaign, but it also serves as a dynamic profiling tool that allows marketing and campaign management teams to perform quick experimentations within their customers’ attributes database. It helps understand consumer behaviors and preferences, leading to better profiling and definition of customer segments.
Digital Leads Generator allows campaign managers and marketers to return a query result in less than 60 seconds for databases of over 120,000,000 subscribers. The solution is powered by Mobileum DNA and its evolved Deep Packet Inspection technology, which enables rich signatures for web and applications, providing deep details on the digital consumption patterns of individuals. It is fully automated and anonymised, meaning personal data is not shared or consumable.
Q6 – What’s next for Mobileum?
We plan to keep evolving our service to meet customer demands and expectations. We also plan to keep educating CSPs about the potential they have for leveraging traffic on their networks. Understanding today’s complex application traffic, which is often encrypted or obfuscated, is key for telcos to provide the best experience to retain and keep their customers satisfied as well as opportunities to derive new revenue models.
With that in mind in May we’re hosting a webinar with the support of the Mobile World Live team at the GSMA that focuses on how CSPs can leverage Deep Network Analytics to deliver customer experience excellence. It is free of charge and attendees will learn the following:
- How Deep Network Analytics can help telcos to improve Network and Customer Experience
- How edge computing and 5G come together to ensure network security and deliver the promised quality of service
- How to best assess service quality and validate that your network planning and optimization initiatives ensure consistent delivery of expected video QoE
- How to achieve higher campaigns ROI by better matching leads and propositions for up-selling and cross-selling opportunities and monetizing your data to increase your external revenue streams
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