For MNOs: 10 wishes of your customers
- Coverage. Users are expecting coverage everywhere those days. It doesn’t even have to be 4G; a simple 3G or HSPA+ will do. But MNOs need to make sure it happens. I have seen several cases where user signs 2 years subscription then he goes home happily to enjoy his new deal and finds out that there is no coverage for him at his address. Excuse me, but what are those predictions maps used in MNO shops good at in such cases? It really means nothing in reality. The very next day user calls the MNO and complain about his lack of coverage and then the pressure starts on radio engineers “to do something” about this customer. Well, there isn’t much a radio engineer can do if MNO doesn’t have enough sites. Coverage is like a blanket: the more you pull from one corner the shorter it gets in the other corner: if you try tricks on parameters without having coverage you will end up with coverage for this user but with a lot of Quality of Service issues. Radio engineers know very well where are the coverage holes in their area. But the budget to build new sites in their area it’s not in their pencil’s signature. Somebody else is deciding the budget for new sites, sector split etc. And if you have budget for 5 new sites and the need is for 38 new sites it means there will always remain 33 sites not deployed, no matter how you play with the new sites location.
- Capacity. Video (particularly Youtube videos) accounts today for over 50% of network traffic. Users expects a decent streaming. They don’t need fancy speeds like 1 Gbpsec or other 4xCA+LAA. Just MNO need to make sure that it’s enough to watch video without buffering. Here’s what bandwidth needs a youtube video based on the resolution of the screen:
- for 720p HD video : 3000 kbps;
- for 1080p HD video : 3774 kbps
- for 1440p HD video : 8913 kbps
- for 2160p 4K video : 20000 kbps
So you see, just giving each of them 4 Mbpsec it will be enough to have 1080p video resolution on a mobile. As easy as it may sound this is still not achievable in downtown at busy hours for several operators on some very specific cells. This topic is very much related with wifi offload that MNOs should do, with sector split that MNO should do, with adding layers that MNO should do, with adding sites that MNO should do, with adding another RAT and with adding wifi hotspots that MNOs should do. Just to see how smart operators like AT&T are dealing with capacity issues is enough to say that they have in downtown sectors with 4-5 layers of 3G (with HSPA+) plus 2-3 layers of LTE (with CA and LAA) plus wifi hotspots to offload traffic. Also it is a while since all smartphones that they sell are branded with FM radio. Why? Because it’s very easy to encourage the user to listen to the radio continuously (that doesn’t consume any network resources) rather than having him streaming all the time videos, right?
3. Network boost: In over 15 years of mobile communication in 3G and 4G there isn’t a single application willing to give user the power to boost resources of the network. I was so many times in the position that I needed to read an email with an attachment and could not done it due to low throughput on cellular connection. I would have paid for this extra with pleasure but the feature was not there. So, why MNOs don’t invent a kind of application to boost network resources: whenever user press a button on that application, he is charged say 1 euro/10 minutes but he gets top resources (enough to complete its operations but not too much to congest the cell completely) just like a VIP would do. Is it so difficult? I think not, it is enough to change the radio bearer capability from non GBR into a GBR=20Mbpsec for 10 mniutes or so. It’s another source of income for MNOs.
4. Priority: bronze, silver, Gold. The very same approach of priority like in the topic above could be if in HLR MNOs would sell 3 different types of SIM cards: bronze for lowest throughput, silver for medium throughput and gold for highest throughput. People would be keen to pay more but have a specific QoS. They would take pride in showing off silver or gold SIM cards and presenting themselves as VIP to their friends. Especially teenagers when they gather together 20 or more and each one is trying to show he is better than the others with his phone online. But if I am thinking twice, are the MNOs ready for such an approach i.e. do they have enough capacity to do this!? The answer is a mixture of yes, no and partially yes depending on continent. Yet it would be a good action point in some developed countries to invent another stream of income.
5. Unlimited data plans. As fancy as it may sound there are people willing to pay for this even if their monthly data consumption is, of course, limited. For example: I have a subscription with unlimited data plan. That is to say there’s no throttle of bandwidth for the first 50 GB of data ; after 50 GB of data the throughput will be throttled. Enough to say that I never consumed more than 12-15 GB of data per month. It is impossible to consume it because I have wifi at home; apart from this we all have things to do in our life, we can’t just play the smartphone all day long! Why don’t big brand names offer such unlimited plans for extra charge? It could be another source of income plus that the users don’t consume it anyway (there are clear stats how much each user consumes per month; therefor a proper trigger threshold for throttling for the whole network can be calculated as an optimum value). I know that in US it is used a lot and it started in Europe too but there are still operators that didn’t adopt it yet. Unlimited plans could be another source of income for them.
6. Users wants QoS (Quality of Service). How many times you had problems during voice calls that is to say: interruptions, metallic voices, noises, gaps, rattles etc.? Each of us faced it at least 10 times and probably will face it many more from now on. This, my friend, is due to the in-sync and out-of-sync parameters of the radiolink no matter if 2G, 3G or 4G. Parameters are set in such a way that network KPIs look great, with very few system drops due to radio link failure, but user experience is poor. I am not sure how many managers are aware about this. What I know for sure is that all the roads where CEO/CFO/CTO of a MNO are passing by are fully optimized with special parameters. For the rest of population, I let you judge based on the quality of the voice calls you encountered.
7. Users hate systematic drops! I give you one example that we had a customer complaint about. User complained that he has a systematic drop each time he was passing from one street to another street at a very specific corner that was somehow in a remote area of a cell. Always drop, always in the same area this is what he mentioned. We further had a look at that cell, it was one with high traffic with over 10.000 calls per day and the drop rate was just 0.3% or 0.4%. Nothing special about this cell. However, it turned out that 50% of the drops of the cell are due to that user that was passing frequently in that area, even if it was a remote one he was passing frequently. User was right: we were able to reproduce the drop easily (radio link failure due to lack of coverage for a portion of 10m by 10m in the location mentioned by customer). But user was very upset, he even tried to go on the other sidewalk of the street but the drop was still there. Lesson here is that no matter how good KPIs look like somebody may still be facing systematic problems. On the other hand I have seen networks with 0.00% drop calls in downtown, with high traffic, for areas of tens of cells. It’s not impossible! Just ask your radio engineer what it takes to have it and give them budget for this; in 6-9 months all problems could be solved.
8. Users hate to be bounded to a contract. The more they are upset about the network and bounded by a contract, the more you can be sure they will move away once the contract will end. MNOs need to focus on engineering to make the network better. Make the user happy to stay, not eager to go. This can be achieved by working hard on technical aspects and not spend huge budgets on marketing. Forget costly marketing campaigns, good news propagate fast anyway. Focus more on technical aspects because an upset user will share his experience with all of his friends. It is enough a share on Facebook to get 1000 people audience about his bad experience with his MNO. From my experience a happy costumer never leaves, no matter how hard the competition lures him with better deals.
9. Users hate to speak with customer care. They get frustrated that they are moved around 10-15 minutes when they call customer care number: there are so many options that it takes good minutes to find the right chain to actually speak to an operator after pressing so many keys and hashtag key; When finally getting to an operator they are already nervous of losing 10 minutes! That their problem is not well acknowledged, understood, treated and solved. It would be much better to keep an online portal where each user can open freely a trouble ticket explaining what’s his problem in his own time, rephrasing whenever he wants when explaining his problem and how he expects to be solved. Just dropdown menus plus the “other” menu where user can explain in his own words what is going on plus some contact details (don’t worry, user will be happy that someone is calling him to provide details). A simple portal, no login required (because you don’t need logins to find YOUR NETWORK PROBLEMS, you have to make it as easy as possible) just getting a number at his ticket submission. And after that user can see online what is going on with is ticket daily. This way MNO will show that each customer counts, he really counts! Eventually MNOs could still maintain a call center number where actually a person answers the call and route the user to the right person/department. Don’t use robots! People got enough of robots and listening to menu options for good minutes. Even worse, some 5 years ago when I called a call center to solve a technical problem their very first minute with the answering machine to solve my problem was about “Did you know about our last promotion that if you …..”. How nice: you call to solve technical problems and MNO plays commercials on your time and on your nerves !? This was something special, indeed, that I will never forget.
10. Users like to discuss a lot about the new technologies. Make sure the coming technologies will not be overhyped in marketing campaigns. If MNO promise them Gbpsec throughputs and less than 1 msec latencies then take care: you will actually have to offer them that! Otherwise the news will spread quickly that’s not a good deal and it’s just another trick. In fact this is all that matters: good things, not tricks. They had enough tricks. Users are really happy with 4G, don’t disappoint them with the next G.