Wireless carriers like to promote the clarity of their digital wireless voice services every chance they get. Whether it’s in commercials or how they word press releases, each carrier wants the public to think of their service as the clearest choice.
Unfortunately, in the real world where networks are often overloaded, clear communication is more the exception than the rule. What begins as a normal conversation can quickly become either a yelling match or worse, a dropped connection.
“Look, we all live with the lack of voice quality in wireless communications, but since we have a brain, we can often piece together a conversation that is missing a few words,” said Steve Roberts, chairman and founder of Watchmark Corp., a company providing network management software solutions for carriers looking to enhance service quality.
Roberts noted that when voice was the only passenger on wireless networks, customers put up with the occasional garbled conversation or dropped call. With wireless carriers looking to roll out data services on those same networks, acceptance of dropped calls has diminished and may lead a customer to churn toward another service provider.
“With data services, there cannot be a break in the transmission. With data, people are moving money, and any lost transmission is a loss of money,” Roberts added. “With these types of services being offered, demand for quality assurance services will continue to grow.”
Roberts, who was vice president of operations and customer services at U.K.-based One2One before starting Watchmark, explained that with carriers currently bidding billions of dollars for additional spectrum to bolster their networks, making sure they are getting the most out of those networks is paramount.
“In the early days of wireless, the struggle was to get good RF coverage,” Roberts said. “But customers back then did not have much of a choice when it came to wireless service. The only competition was often the same service resold under a different brand name. The name of the game was to build your company so it could be sold to a larger company.”
With customers today having the choice between several wireless operators in their market, network call quality is often the determining factor as to whether a customer stays with a carrier. The cost of signing up a new customer is known to be greater than keeping existing ones.
Watchmark said its solutions, which are used by such companies as Sprint Services, Cingular Wireless and GTE Corp., include service assurance software products designed to manage network performance parameters such as outages, growth and reliability.
“For us, the stars are all aligning,” said Roberts. “Even if the government gave all the spectrum to the wireless industry, it will still soon be all used up. We have to do the best with what we have. There is only so much that can be squeezed out of the infrastructure providers. Ultimately, it will be the software companies that will maximize the use of spectrum.”
