Benefits of Location Analysis for Better Network Investment Decisions

Introduction
This document describes how the location analytics platform Demograft can improve ROI calculations during network investment decisions. Demograft is applicable in almost all phases of the lifecycle: 1. Massive amounts of subscriber location events reveal network issues that are difficult to find for OSS and radio planning tools. Even more importantly, Demograft will measure the network via the eyes of customers, not in terms of KPI of cells or sites. 2. Location analytics assists radio planning tools in adjusting the radio propagation models via turning subscribers with GPS-equipped phones into network sensors without need for any apps in handsets. Estimating future revenue of new sites will be much more accurate, knowing where subscribers of specific ARPU often move and use mobile services. 3. Once new sites are built and commissioned, location analytics is valuable in measuring the impact to customer experience. Realtime location analytics complements very well service quality management tools and network KPI monitoring well. Our existing customers have calculated that with Demograft 1-3 EUR per subscriber additional ARPU or CAPEX savings are possible.

Information collection

Radio planning

Building and Commissioning

Propagation model calibration

Site selection

Requirements met?

Investment Decision

Information Collection Phase

Commonly used methods for screening candidate areas for network investments are: KPIs from OSS, probes and Service Quality Management tools Incidents and customer complaints Radio planning tools

Location analytics can deliver more insights in following ways: 1. Characterizes network problems not in terms of technical KPIs, but in human terms how many subscribers, and in particular high-value subscribers are affected by network issues? And where? Based on the passive location data Demograft knows who visits which cells, and how many given cells affect the network experience of selected customer segments. 2. Automatic weak spot detection algorithms reveal network problems that OSS cannot detect. Demograft builds trajectories of subscribers anonymously, monitors areas where traffic falls from 3G to 2G (the same for LTE), where inbound roamers are lost and more. It is much wiser to address issues before customers complain. 3. Demograft thinks in terms of geospatial relations (neighboring, overlapping etc. of cell coverage), not merely by cell or site ID. This improves the accuracy of analysis significantly. 4. Putting customer complaints on a map 5. Extract the list of subscribers who are often served by cells in areas under investigation and compose shortlists for launching customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys are expensive and therefore targeting them precisely is valuable for defining priorities and measuring the improvement. Location analytics makes it possible to scan cost-effectively and automatically scan much larger areas for potential issues, and most importantly, prioritize high-value customer segments.

Design Phase
Radio network planning and site selection involves plethora of tools, and probably most importantly skills and experience of engineers. Design is an iterative process where several potential solutions need to be compared. Location analytics offers engineers a much easier way to compare different options and forecast their impact on future revenues: 1. Together with the Ericsson MPS AECID method it turns all GPS-enabled handsets into signal measurement devices. This way the need for expensive field measurements is reduced, or alternatively, much larger areas can be covered cost efficiently. The accuracy of this method is especially valuable for small and indoor cell planning where small errors in terms of location can easily break it. 2. Instead of an operators ARPU (which is an average over subscriber base) it uses the revenue of THOSE customers who often visit THOSE sites and finds WHAT is their network usage in these sites. This can significantly change the expected revenue of sites, as there can be large variations on which services are used by whom over different sites. 3. Quantifies the traffic in given areas over longer period of time (that is not available from field tests, maybe available from OSS) by customer segment (which is not available from OSS). This is very handy in choosing the right solution for the problem (maybe e.g. femtocell would not have enough capacity).

For previously uncovered areas where location data of subscribers is not available, it uses a national population statistics with demographics (e.g. household income, age breakdown) to estimate the ARPU of planned sites. 4. Takes into account the network topology and the overlapping characteristics of cell coverage. A new cell typically attracts some traffic from neighboring cells. This should be taken into account when estimating the future revenue. This depends also on the customer experience score at a particular site.

Final decision making, building and commissioning

Location analytics not really meant for changing the process of decision making. But certainly the proposal or alternatives made by network designers are more educated, better explained and illustrated.

Operations Phase
All location analytics methods mentioned in the information collection phase are applicable here. Most of the location analytics KPIs are applicable near real time, making them a good complement to Service Quality Management tools. After all, isnt the KPI of how many high-value subscribers experienced issues yesterday and where one important KPI for the long-term success?

About Demograft
Demograft is the platform that converts mostly unexploited subscribers passive location data into a valuable asset. Demograft was designed in 2012 based on a requirement study among CTOs and CMOs. What they requested is actionable analytics for their most typical business priorities: 1. investing into mobile broadband profitably in the context of inflated customer and stiff competition 2. targeting promotions precisely to maximize advertising return, especially of mobile broadband Demografts approach to combine customer data, OSS data and massive amount of passive data brings down silos in every organization. Demograft is nominated for the Best Technology award by GSMA Global Mobile Awards http://www.globalmobileawards.com/nominees-2014/. The winner will be chosen on February 25.

For more about Demograft, refer to: http://www.demograft.com/faq http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN-qPWMb4So