CellPhoneTM is a tool for analyzing network performance with two modules, application/client and server, allowing carriers to evaluate and geographically visualize network performance from the user’s perspective.
The Challenge
It is very difficult for carriers to evaluate and analyze data network performance because of the adaptative characteristics of the network in terms of carried traffic, modulation, and coding schemes.
Traditional evaluation methods of network performance, such as drive tests to measure signal level and statistics from the OSS, may detect some failures but cannot express the satisfaction level of users with the network. These methods were inherited from circuit-switched networks and are not ideal for data networks, such as, for example, 4G.
Today it is common to evaluate data network performance by measuring instantaneous data speed, which does not consider network delays (congestion); this often results in measurements that may show very high data speeds but do not reflect the actual user experience. Click here to read more about this.
CelPlan’s Solution
To solve this problem of measuring actual user experience (Customer Experience) with the network, CelPlan introduces CellPhoneTM, a tool that allows carriers to evaluate and geographically visualize network performance from the user’s perspective.
To allow for end-to-end analysis, the solution includes two modules: a client and a server. On the client side, the application users can download CellPhoneTM for Android, available in the Play Store, which provides information about connectivity, user satisfaction, speed tests, call log, and subjective evaluation of applications performance (user survey).
The second module is the CellPhoneTM server, which allows pre-configuration of data sessions simulating user interactions, such as Skype, phone calls, FTP download/upload, etc. and generates multiple reports such as geo-referenced measurements, monitoring of the type of traffic/test messages, automatic classification of experience and quality perceived by the user terminal (objective), test calls log, and record of user perspective survey answers (subjective).
