During the first year of the pandemic, network traffic increased by 500% compared to 2019, leaving telco providers scrambling to proactively monitor traffic flows to improve network capacity virtually overnight. These shifts in how people were using their network included:
- Upward trends in collaboration tool usage and VPN usage;
- A notable increase in call volume, and then a sustained increase in minutes of use driven; and
- Increases in gaming traffic and video traffic.
As the world begins to assimilate to the post-COVID world, network shifts will continue to fluctuate unpredictably. Without the ability to proactively track changes in traffic flows across mobile networks in real time, a dramatic shift in demand could cause consumers to lose connectivity completely unexpectedly. The problem of customer churn also becomes apparent as telco providers are unable to efficiently sift through and make sense of the many different data factors that contribute to it like demographics, usage, connectivity, network performance and reliability and more. This leads to delayed reporting of degradations and outages and an insufficient understanding of the behavior of specific segments of their customer base. The telecommunication organizations must leverage hardware-accelerated analytics with GeoSQL and interactive visualization capabilitiesto meet the demand and answer unexpected bandwidth demands.
Higher-quality network performance
An indispensable factor for a telco organization’s long-term success relies on having optimal network performance. More importantly, telco organizations that know how and where to optimize their network performance to be the most efficient possible will reap the most benefits. Utilizing hardware-accelerated analytics with GeoSQL and interactive visualization capabilities helps to easily encapsulate the full picture of network performance in real time so telco operators can quickly nip any problems, or potential problems, in the bud. This includes issues with bandwidth usage, latency or network speeds. With real-time network monitoring, the telco operators can accurately pinpoint when and where to optimize their networks, resulting in far superior performance levels across the board. By leveraging this technology, telcos can easily identify network pain points, anticipate usage trends, maintain network reliability and maximize experience improvements during peak load traffic.
Other key impacts of leveraging this technology include:
- Accelerated network reliability reports and detection of performance issues,
- Optimized network investments based on timely customer movement data, and
- Reliable performance and increased capacity wherever customer traffic flows.
The real-time visualization of network performance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the benefits hardware-accelerated analytics offer telco organizations. In fact, it may be even more important for telcos to understand how to react to the network performance data pictured in front of them. As network performance data is continuously mapped and updated, acting in real time based on that stream of data creates numerous avenues of data-driven decisions. By utilizing network performance monitoring tools like hardware-accelerated analytics, telco operators can ensure they have a full grasp on their entire network around the clock, helping them focus on solving issues rather than scanning the network. This also prevents telco operators from being bogged down by rampant false alarms so they can focus their attention on legitimate alerts.
Upgraded customer experience
The benefits of leveraging network monitoring tools does not stop at a higher performing network or increased visibility. In fact, another key foundational aspect for a telco organization to have long-term success depends on their ability to deliver the best-in-class customer experience, which networking monitoring technology supports. With GPU-enabled analytics, telco operators can track and monitor key data points of customer interaction, like precise time and location, within the network. This helps telco operators to better understand customer behavior patterns and provides valuable insights on how network performance and service delivery are being impacted, which in turn will help telcos provide tailored experiences to their customers.
For example, analyzing customer churn can take insurmountable time without an accelerated analytics tool to make sense of the data because they rely on so many different factors and data points. With hardware-accelerated analytics, and interactive visualization capabilities, telco operators can quickly analyze and visualize all of their data to spot anomalies and hone in on specific network issues that can cause sluggish customer churn.
Indeed, network performance monitoring tools have the capability to move telco organizations forward by providing the tools needed to make the most impactful data-driven decisions. As the world continues to get back to the “new normal,” shifts in network demand will continue to be unpredictable as consumers take advantage of fully remote positions or non-standard work hours. This means that telco providers must preemptively account and prepare for ongoing dramatic fluctuations in network usage. For telco organizations to monitor their data in real-time to achieve high-quality network performance and increase overall efficiency, while also providing the top customer experience, hardware-accelerated analytics with GeoSQL and interactive visualization capabilities remain crucial to answer those exact needs.
