Service Quality Management and Assurance

Telecom Services have dramatically increased in their bandwidth use and complexity, as well as for the number of customers accessing these services. Service consumers have also increased their service expectations today, expecting more "intelligence" in services and their performance.

Key Tasks include:

• New services and performance monitoring methods for the rapid deployment of service.
• Keep Service products ahead of the competition with a high quality of service
• Service simplicity of use, guarantee of service and support management
• Be responsive to Customer Experiences in consuming the services

Good service is a highly complicated, multi-layered management function which stands at the end of a long process. It is a logical result from a process of training your entire personnel, those who are involved in providing service to your customers. Systems are needed to support their Service Assurance tasks:

• Fault and event management
• Performance management
• Network Service monitoring
• Quality of Service (QoS) management
• Network and service testing
• Network traffic management
• Customer Experience management
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) monitoring
• Trouble ticket management

Service Quality Management (SQM)

Network data has broadened its appeal into the Business and Service Management areas. Accessing customer data on-line provides instant feedback of service performance enabling the detection of changing service trends and traffic loads, especially in roaming services. Now, combining this with Customer profiles and network inventory data, you can indentify new revenue potential and provide Service Level Agreements for VIP customers or Groups, including roaming partner services.

Nexus Telecom systems enable new insights into Customer Experience and Service performance. Nexus Telecom brings together on-line network service performances and customer experience information. After additional enrichment with customer profile and network inventory data, the new network-wide insight view still remains on-line and flexible enough to react quickly to changing customer needs and eliminate potential revenue threats. The combination of on-line intelligent service information and different levels of network data access helps lift customer service expectations. An informed Customer Care Support and the fast detection of Service performance changes are essential to enhance your positive Network Operator service image in today's social networking culture.

Customer Care Support

In a recent survey, it was confirmed that the major source of Network and Service degradation was detected through customer complaints. How you manage this customer touch point influences the whole customer experience within your Operations. Time is valuable in this relationship.

Nexus Telecom products have focused on maximizing the on-line service performance monitoring and minimized the time in responding to service information requests. Improving speed and efficiency to access and display customer data helps provide Customer Care Support and Operation Engineers with complete on-line technical detail and experience records. The benefits include more efficient Support Centre and a faster repair time response for Customer or Network Service issues. In closing the loop and lifting customer expectations, the distribution of information about the resumption of normal services to Service Management and Customer Care, who are able to support customers informing them of any similar issues about their Services.

Intelligent Service Performance Monitoring

Mobile data service bandwidth is increasing dramatically and is changing your revenue paradigm. Profit opportunity is no longer driven by new technology, but by applications and services, making it essential to understand the most popular services consumed by Customers. Through the proliferation of mobile devices, customer expectations are increasingly set by the mobile device's capabilities. Your current service packages may not match what consumers want today.

Nexus Telecom moved into intelligent on-line data capturing to assist you in tracking device usage and effectiveness, along with understanding new customer segmentations and their service consumption. Customer behaviour can change fast due to today's mobile device technology features and Customer Network experience sharing over social networks.

The intelligent data monitoring delivers service consumption gap analysis, as well as service performance threshold alarms to detect major network and service issues. Additionally, the information supports network and revenue planning, marketing activities and detailed session analysis for troubleshooting. As a new interesting on-line data source, a data export feature compliments the product's place in any mobile data network.

Network and Service Testing

In both monitoring and testing customer services, Nexus provides network-wide integrated solutions to ensure service features function correctly end-to-end for the installed technologies and access networks. Service monitoring is either achieved with passive probes or network element data gathering systems. Service testing is performed at regular intervals through proactive testing campaigns, on both core network interfaces and remote probes located in selected regional network access sites.

Nexus Telecom's service verification test system connects to network access switches, and extends its reach to test each network access switch through IP core network technologies or additional TDM interfaces. Performing service function and voice quality tests between switch interfaces verifies the core network services. To complete the proactive end-to-end service tests, the remote access network probes are incorporated into the regular testing campaigns. Proactive verification tests are also available for Roaming Services internationally, where the Nexus Telecom system can be further extended through remote probes located in neighbouring countries.

Having such a proactive test system deployed in a network helps verify services during new access network roll-outs, after network configuration changes and switch software updates, all under your complete control. The record of each service test call or data session is recorded in a central database for reporting and service degradation alarming, and is also available as an on-line data source for service quality management applications, including billing tests.

Testing new technology services and network equipment

Network equipment manufacturers are successful when their products are deployed in live networks and function correctly with various network traffic load conditions. New technology products providing complex services require extensive function and regression testing, as well as stress tests of new service features under severe traffic loads.

Nexus Telecom delivers network interface simulation and traffic load testing systems to both equipment manufacturers and network Operators. Equipment manufacturers need leading edge technology testing systems aligned with the tasks of performing equipment acceptance testing with future network protocol and interface technologies. This same test system is available to network Operators, who want to test the integration of new network equipment with their existing network specific interfaces and services, especially when the network Operator offers customized service products to get that differentiating edge over the competitor networks.

Our customers enjoy having one platform that delivers all network technology interface simulations, which is also combined with the most reliable performance load testing features on the market.

Service signaling data capture and analysis

Service signaling data used by network switch protocol communications is valuable. Whether trouble-shooting new technology network roll-outs, or complying with Regulation Authorities licensing laws, getting access to your data involves clever capturing, filtering and export systems.

Nexus provides several systems to match the required service task of accessing this protocol information.

1. For very large deployments in customer network access and core technologies, a passive probing system captures and stores signaling protocol messages, enabling extraction of specific messages by users performing troubleshooting tasks, or automatically exported through a central server to external applications.

2. Temporary signaling data capturing and storing systems are often deployed to understand the configuration of new technology switches, or to ensure network services. The system units are either deployed in a specific location with a central data reservoir for analysis and reporting, or moved regularly as portable units to perform ad-hoc data capture.

3. IT Administrators of IP networks perform raw signaling data capture often at specific routers or switches. However, problems mostly occur intermittently requiring a clever solution to detect and capture these incident issues. Nexus delivers an all-software protocol capturing system, which rapidly accesses the network devices and select the particular protocol signaling data from the affected link. This system can be further extended by using appropriately located IP devices that allow the access to network signaling data over several different technology networks.

Supporting your Service Performance and testing systems

Today's IP technology allows easy access for our support engineers. Nexus Telecom product focus has been to fully integrate our systems, with deployments having one central site, and IP network connections to all other system site locations, including to all the users of our systems. Our Support engineers are highly trained in the deployment and configuration of our systems. We are available when you have support questions about our systems and respond accordingly.

Enhancing our support services are seminars for User Groups, as well as the Power Users responsible for the management and configuration of our customer systems. It is also possible to choose from the various Service Level Agreement offerings to provide the right support service for you, our customer.