PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30

PowerProbe active tests measure subscribers’ Quality of Experience, making it possible to proactively address issues in order to minimize churn

Your Challenges

Communications service providers need to provide a high Quality of Experience to subscribers in order to ensure that they maintain their accounts and encourage them to upgrade to higher value added services. It’s very hard to improve what you can’t measure so network operations and engineering needs continual insight into subscribers’ Quality of Experience in order to proactively address issues, ensure a positive Quality of Experience and minimize churn. At the same time, Tier 2 and Tier 3 support engineers need the ability to quantify performance in order to more quickly understand, diagnose and resolve customer issues.

But traditional tools and methods do not provide the ability to proactively identify and diagnose issues by location, service, subscribers affected, etc. nor can they objectively measure the impact on subscribers. As a result, network operations and engineering is forced to rely upon subscriber complaints or network outages to inform them of problems in the network. A reactive approach risks alienating subscribers because by the time they call in they have already had a negative experience.

How We Can Help

PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes provide network engineering and operations with an active test solution that provides a full understanding of the subscriber’s Quality of Experience. PowerProbe probes measure and alarm on factors that directly affect the subscriber’s Quality of Experience such as echo, noise, response time, accessibility and retainability. As a result, network operations and engineering has the visibility it needs to take proactive action to correct problems before subscribers call in to complain.

PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes also execute active tests to assist Tier 2 and Tier 3 support engineers in reducing the time needed to diagnose issues by uncovering faults in the network or subscriber service. PowerProbe probes eliminate the need to rely on subscriber qualitative complaints. With PowerProbe probes located strategically in the network, support engineers can quickly diagnose and isolate issues in the network, resulting in faster problem resolution.

Installed at different segments of a fixed and mobile network, PowerProbe probes inject live subscriber emulated traffic into the network. PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes handle applications with different traffic volumes, network locations, interfaces, protocols and testing requirements. For example, an operator can perform hundreds or thousands of emulated tests with a PowerProbe 6000 located in the network core, including IMS, fixed cores or mobile cores. The PowerProbe 500 is used in the network access to test the RAN, CMTS, DSLAMs, SBCs, etc. The PowerProbe 30 probe is used in residential areas or on smartphone devices respectively.

Controlled by Tektronix DirectQuality active test automation OSS, PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes can perform on-demand or scheduled active tests for monitoring, fault management, SLA validation, installation, troubleshooting and provisioning applications. Active test automation can be used to accelerate new service rollouts or deployments.

Features and Benefits

  • Flexible active test architecture provides a cost effective solution that can reside in any part of the network including the network core, access or subscriber premises.
  • PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes enable network operations and engineering and support engineers to segment the network to quickly isolate issues using active test automation to determine whether the problem is in the end-subscriber location/device or network access or core.
  • PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes provide the ability to measure any network including 3G, LTE (VoLTE), VoIP, legacy, cable, etc.
  • Appropriate pricing meets the needs of network operations, network engineering and field support groups.
  • A small investment in PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes is all that is needed to get started. The investment can be scaled as the network grows.
  • Real audio and True Voice Quality measurements provide a true understanding of the subscriber’s Quality of Experience
  • The ability to generate a variety of subscriber based traffic and services from a single active test probe platform reduces CAPEX spend while providing a true understanding of the subscriber’s Quality of Experience over hybrid networks and technologies
  • Active test automation with the DirectQuality System can be used to perform on-demand test call scenarios for timely network-wide troubleshooting
  • Periodic execution of multiple test scenarios in a single test plan with periodic with alarm notification provides immediate visibility to any degradation in Quality of Service

Applications

  • Competitive Benchmarking
  • Carrier Interconnect
  • End-to-End Subscriber troubleshooting
  • New Service Rollout and validation

Competitive Benchmarking

Communications service providers face fierce competition from other providers who are trying to take their customers either by offering a higher Quality of Service or a lower price. In order to prosper in this difficult environment, communications service providers need to deliver the best possible Quality of Experience at a cost-effective price to their subscribers. But today communications service providers often don’t know about a problem in their network until either customers call in to complain or a benchmarking service like JD Powers publishes a report. At this point it’s often too late as subscribers are already leaving and the communication service provider’s reputation has begun to slip.

In order to deliver a higher Quality of Experience than competitors, communications service providers need the ability to measure the Quality of Experience of both its own customers and its competitor’s customers. In the past it has been very difficult for network operations and engineering to obtain competitive benchmarking measurements, making it hard for communications service providers to truly understand how well their services are performing. PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes combined with the DirectQuality test automation system provides competitive benchmarking that enables communications service providers to perform service quality tests on their own services and their competitors’.

PowerProbe 6000, PowerProbe 500 and PowerProbe 30 probes provide immediate notification of problems, enabling communications service providers to take immediate action to correct them. Maintaining detailed, up-to-date competitive benchmarking data also provides product management and marketing and sales with insight into the best approach for marketing services and defending against competitor’s claims. Finally, competitive benchmarking provides network planning and top management with valuable information that can be used to optimize CAPEX and OPEX spend to improve the communications service provider’s competitive position.

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