Mobile Assurance Centralized Roaming Management System (CRMS) Brochure
Mobile Assurance Centralized Roaming Management System CRMS Benefits Maximize Revenues Pinpoint the precise details of roaming-service failures to minimize service outages and their revenue impact Raise Satisfaction Levels Resolve many roaming service issues before the customer is aware of their existence Lower Operational Costs Enable managing more roaming partners within existing resources and OpEx Raises operational efficiency in the fault-resolution lifecycle, significantly reducing mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) 2
Protecting High-Value Roaming Services/Customers International roaming customers have a far higher average revenue per user (ARPU) than their local-only voice and data counterparts, but their acquisition costs are also higher. As a mobile operator, the last thing you want is for these customers not being able to use your roaming services, or worse, churning. A major cause of churn is poor quality of service, so fast visibility of roaming outages affecting these customers is vital, especially if they are corporate clients. Features All key inbound and outbound roaming procedures are monitored for 2G/3G voice, 2G/3G SMS, and 2G/3G/LTE data services 24x7, real-time KPI generation quickly detects all roaming faults whenever and wherever they happen Unique Alarmogram web-browser screen highlights and ranks faults through color coding Time Series charts detail what a roaming fault is and how many subscribers are affected Only three mouse clicks get the user from fault notification to detailed diagnosis via the Session Trace application s transaction tracing Advanced reporting platform for historical trending and analysis Cost-effectively scales to maintain 100% coverage as roaming-subscriber count and traffic ramps Successful roaming depends on the reliable operation of multiple mobile networks. As a consequence, without appropriate tools it typically takes a long time to detect, localize, and troubleshoot international roaming problems. Also, the ability to quickly know all the customers who are being impacted by roaming issues before they complain/churn lets a mobile operator become more proactive in managing their subscribers experience and protecting revenues. And, with international services typically contributing 15 to 20 percent of total revenues, roaming customers generate a high proportion of operators profits. Improving the quality of national and international roaming is a top priority of all mobile operators. By monitoring traffic at interconnect points for signaling and user data, the JDSU CRMS solution provides a comprehensive view of roaming performance via an easy-to-use, web-browser interface. CRMS delivers an objective and honest view of service performance as experienced by roaming subscribers, helping operators to detect problems fast and reduce MTTR. By fixing problems before roaming subscribers are aware of any issues, CRMS helps operators reduce their churn rates as well as maximize revenues. 3
Operation CRMS is just one of the applications within the JDSU access7 Mobile Assurance portfolio, supporting both access7 for GSM, GPRS, MSS, and UMTS service assurance and accesslte for LTE service assurance. With applications covering real-time monitoring, historical reporting, BI (multi-dimensional) analysis, and detailed troubleshooting, the JDSU solution portfolio is today delivering higher revenues, increased customer satisfaction levels, and lower operating costs to many mobileservice providers around the world. The CRMS application operates on key interconnect interfaces for both 2G/3G and LTE services, where it captures and processes key inbound and outbound roaming transactions. With 24x7 real-time monitoring of all roaming transactions, CRMS is able to immediately alert service providers to any roaming service issues, no matter if they are due to problems on home or partner networks. Home PLMN SMSC IN MSS/MSC Signaling backbone HLR GW MSC VPLMNs Signaling backbone GGSN SCCP-MAP + SMS + CAMEL Gp GTP-C SGSN GRX 2G/3G roaming monitoring points LTE Roaming Monitoring Points HSS P-GW H-PCRF HPLMN S6a S8 S9 IPX VPLMN S6a S8 Gx V-PCRF S1-MME MME S11 S5 P-GW enodeb S1-U S-GW LTE roaming monitoring points 4
Analysis The CRMS top-level user-interface screen is known as the Alarmogram. It is a highly-intelligent, multilayered structure that lets a service provider monitor a large number of measurements across hundreds of networks in a single view. Thresholds and alarms can be configured for all metrics and all networks. The interface provides a visual alarm using a RAG (red/ amber/green) status view and any networks that are experiencing performance issues provide an alarm so it becomes visible at the highest level. Roaming partners are ranked such that those with the highest severity problems over the previous 2 hours are shown at the top. This provides valuable guidance on how to prioritize fault-investigation efforts. For any selected alarm, the next step is to examine the CRMS timeseries histogram for the KPI that triggered the alarm. This screen shows which errors occurred during each measurement interval and why they resulted in a fault notification. The time-series histogram also indicates how many subscribers are affected by each error, key information for estimating the scope and impact of any problem. By clicking on an error displayed on the error cause volume legend, the user can launch an in-context troubleshooting session with the access7 Session Trace application to obtain a fully decoded signaling trace. Session Trace is launched with the relevant time ranges, error filters, and subscriber IMSI pre-populated. As well as viewing, the trace can be saved in a variety of formats for attaching to trouble tickets or passing to roaming partners. 5
Reporting Platform The CRMS solution is a simple and intuitive application. By having a fully integrated solution service, issues are identified, investigated, and resolved in a shorter space of time, thus protecting the revenue stream. However, to understand the true impact of outages to the business, it is necessary to be able to retrospectively report on these incidents. The CRMS solution has a reporting facility that lets the service provider compile reports on any of the information stored in the CRMS database. There is a report creation and publishing facility supplied with the solution, using the Business Objects Infoview platform. Reports can be published to a web portal and emailed to users, if necessary. Reports can illustrate the impact of incidents, show the service experience through the use of key performance indicators, and provide the basis for service-improvement initiatives. The reports can help establish tighter thresholds for the real-time environment, enable direct comparisons of performance between operators, countries, and network elements, or provide reports of the worst n style for any time period. Monitored Roaming Procedures 2G/3G Voice and SMS Service Roaming Procedures Protocol Roaming Event/Procedure Highlights Problems in: Map Update location Customer registration (2G) Map (3G) Update GPRS location Customer registration (3G) Map Provide roaming number Mobile terminated calls PRN Map Mobile-originated FSM Sending SMSs while abroad Map Mobile-terminated FSM Receiving SMSs while abroad Map Send routing info for SM Routing internation MT-SMS Map Send authentication parameters Authenticating a customer s identity Map Cancel location Roaming coverage Map Total MAP MAP service integrity and availability SCCP SCCP transport SCCP transport integrity and availability CAMEL CAMEL initial DP CAMEL service integrity and availability USSD Collective performance of MAP_PROCESS_ UNSTRUCTURED_SS_REQUEST and MAP_UNSTRUCTURED_SS_ NOTIFY USSD (pre-paid) service integrity and availability 2G/3G Data Service Roaming Procedures Protocol Roaming Event/Procedure Highlights Problems in: Gp Create PDP context Establishing a data context to home network Gp Update PDP context Roaming issues while moving between SGSNs Gp Create PDP context (APN) Establishing connections to specific data services 6
LTE Data Service Roaming Procedures LTE Roaming Configuration Home routed traffic Local breakout and HPLMN services only Local breakout and VPLMN services only S6a Protocol S8 Protocol S9 Protocol Key Interfaces S6a and S8 S6a and S9 S6a and S9 Procedure Update location Cancel location Insert subscriber data Purge UE Authentication info retrieval Procedure Create bearer (APN) Create session-bearer context creation Modify bearer-bearer context modification Update bearer Delete bearer Delete session Procedure CC request command CC answer command Re-authorization request command Re-authorization answer command Roaming Procedure KPI Measurements These measurements include: Absence, total volume Success volume, success rate, success rate (excluding masked errors) Total error volume, total network error volume, total masked error volume, error rate, masked error rate, network error rate Total service response time, average service response time Associated Solutions, Applications, and Services The CRMS application is supported in the following solutions: access7 for GSM, GPRS, UMTS, MSS network, and service assurance accesslte for LTE network and service assurance In addition to CRMS, the following complementary applications are supported within JDSU Mobile Assurance solutions: QoS Analyzer for real-time monitoring of networks and services QoS Analyzer for SIGTRAN for real-time monitoring of SIGTRAN networks and associated services Session Trace for network and service troubleshooting Protocol Analysis for flexible message capture and decode Data Mining Toolkit (DMT) for protocol transaction-based network and service performance reporting by dimension (for example, device and location) accessinsight Data Feeds Export for the export of JDSU passiveprobe data to third-party applications The following professional services are associated with JDSU Mobile Assurance solutions and specifically the CRMS application: Education service operator and administrator training courses Consulting service assurance solution operational assistance Consulting service assurance solution health reporting Support service solution support including software update service Managed service JDSU solution ownership and/or operation For more information on any of the above solutions, applications and professional services, please visit www.jdsu.com. 7
North America Toll Free: 1 855 ASK-JDSU (1 855 275-5378) Latin America Tel: +1 954 688 5660 Fax: +1 954 345 4668 Asia Pacific Tel: +852 2892 0990 Fax: +852 2892 0770 EMEA Tel: +49 7121 86 2222 Fax: +49 7121 86 1222 2014 JDS Uniphase Corporation Product specifications and descriptions in this document subject to change without notice. 30168073 502 0314 CRMS.BR.NSD.TM.AE March 2014