As mobile networks get faster and more complex, potential bottlenecks in the backhaul network become increasingly important in quality of experience. Accedian Networks has reported that its virtualized solution that leverages big data analytics for backhaul monitoring has become a key component of SK Telecom’s network.
The monitoring solution currently handles 12,000 locations in a half-dozen of South Korea’s largest cities and plans to expand the solution to all of SK Telecom’s sites that serve its more than 28 million subscribers. SK Telecom is known for pushing the envelope on network technologies, having launched the world’s first LTE-Advanced network, tri-band carrier aggregation and being on the forefront of small cell deployment to name a few recent examples. The carrier also has been working with Ericsson on 5G exploration, most recently verifying a new network architecture and expecting to launch a new 5G test bed by the end of this year.
In a new case study, Accedian describes how SK Telecom has integrated software-defined networking and big data analytics for network automation as part of its ongoing network and business evolution with an eye toward 5G, and says that SK Telecom has “a broad range of real-time consistent [key performance indicators that] are accessible from their data lake for detailed predictive analytics, reporting and process optimization.”
Dave Dial, VP of international sales for Accedian, told RCR Wireless News that the company has been working with SK Telecom and other tier-one carriers for several years now, and that “the challenge that everyone is facing is that, particularly in the case of SK Telecom, they’ve introduced some very advanced radio technologies into their network – evolving into VoLTE and LTE-Advanced, and planning their 5G evolution. At the same time, if you look at one of the most pressing challenges they face, it’s the lack of performance visibility into what’s happening with the mobile backhaul network.
“Our solution is unique in that we bring visibility into the performance of the backhaul in a 7/24, continuous, real-time manner. It’s not round-robin. It’s not setting up a test and maintenance hour, when perhaps a problem doesn’t surface,” Dial added. “It’s monitoring the network 7/24 in real time and providing information so that operators like SK Telecom can respond to problems quickly, and in fact become proactive in terms of anticipating things that lead to problems.”
SK Telecom uses Accedian’s SkyLight Performance Platform and Nano smart SFP modules, according to the case study, and chooses network equipment that supports the Two-Way Active Monitoring Protocol – or adds TWAMP support to elements by adding one of the SFP modules.
Scott Sumner, VP of solutions marketing for Accedian, said that SK Telecom’s “analytics plan dovetailed with their SN implementation, which is controlling their nationwide network.” He noted that in a dynamic network environment with bursty applications and services and people moving around in a complex radio environment, it is difficult to have a stable, well-balanced, load-distributed network. So the real-time nature of the available information is particularly crucial as SK Telecom moves toward the goal of a fully automated network that can flexibly adapt and maintain consistent quality of service with little human intervention, Sumner said. And there are a lot of data sources being combined from SK Telecom’s network, including systems analytics, radio analytics, user and service analytics, and data on protocol, traffic and congestion.
“If it’s older than 15 seconds, you can’t act on that information,” said Sumner. “Speed of response is extremely important.”
The monitoring and characterization of the backhaul network also allows SK Telecom to support a smooth evolution of network technologies as it adds new features to its network in a multivendor environment, said Patrick Ostiguy, Accedian’s president, CEO and founder.
