Director of Global Marketing for Actix: "The lines of telecoms and IT are becoming increasingly blurred"

We speak to Neil Coleman, Director of Global Marketing for Actix, winners of Category One of the LTE Awards 2013: Best Test/Measurement LTE Product, for their entry, ‘Customer Experience Geo-location for LTE’. 

Tell us more about your award entry.

Customer experience geo-location for LTE delivers operators a new way of understanding the demand, performance and customer impact of their newly rolled out LTE networks.  We start by geo-locating every subscriber using this to create a clear picture of where LTE services are being consumed, by whom and the experience/throughput they receive.

Operators love this because it enables them to answer key questions about LTE:

* Is it delivering the performance I advertised?

*Am I covering areas where I expect to capture the most revenue?

* What’s the underlying cause of customer problems (handset/network)?

* Where is there unmet demand – where should I focus small cells?

Basically it takes the mystery out of LTE.  For people outside of Test and Measurement geo-location is a hot topic right now.

What do you think made your entry stand out from the crowd?

Well for a start it is tightly integrated with our 2G,3G geo-location capabilities – meaning operators can look at a true cross-technology view of their subscribers’ behaviour and importantly use this to optimize their network to create a seamless customer experience.

How will your product evolve and improve in the future?

We’re working with key operator customers now to use these customer insights to drive highly effective SON solutions that don’t just improve efficiency but improve customer experience too.

What trends do you see ahead for the industry for the next 12 months?

For our world its convergence, operators looking for new data and insights that can be used across the business. For operators in general we’re seeing the lines of Telecoms and IT becoming increasingly blurred. We think this will create a highly dynamic environment.

What are the biggest challenges that lie ahead for LTE?

At a high level it is developing business models and processes to ensure that LTE and HetNets (especially small cells) deliver a ROI. To do this they need to improve targeting of capacity and more importantly capture subscriber insights for monetisation.

What impact has winning this award had for your business?

At a company level we’ve been working hard to accelerate our LTE capabilities on the back of high levels of operator demand – it’s great to get a stamp of approval from a major industry presence.