Accedian seals Telefónica network assurance deal

Mobile telco Telefónica has signed a global network performance assurance contract with Montreal based Accedian Networks to improve customer experience and underpin Telefónica’s LTE migration strategy.

Accedian will provide performance assurance for services delivered across Telefónica’s entire global network, including the UK and Latin America. The brief also includes improving the reporting on the operator’s quality of service across its multi-vendor metro and backhaul networks as well as monitoring and management of a full range of LTE applications.

The first commercial deployment will be with Vivo Brazil, where Accedian’s target is to optimise data connectivity and call quality, reduce the number of dropped calls, boost availability and optimise bandwidth use.

Accedian has worked with Telefónica since early 2012, initially with its Vivo subsidiary in Brazil, then extending throughout Latin America via its Movistar arm. According to Accedian, the success of Telefónica’s LTE (4G) growth strategy is reliant on the performance of its 3G network, since users will judge their LTE service on the performance of voice, while oblivious to the fact that these calls will be handled on 3G.

Since the customer’s perception is that they’re on a new network, the quality of experience has to be excellent for both voice and data to ensure users who upgrade have an acceptable experience. In Central and Latin America, where 75% of subscribers are prepaid voice users without a data plan, moving subscribers to LTE is a key objective.

Since 3G delivers data where LTE coverage is limited, its network quality assurance will be an important foundation for 4G, according to Enrique Blanco, Telefónica Global CTO. “Telefónica’s customers will be able to take advantage of the improvement in end-to-end network performance,” said Blanco.