Monitoring for Dollars & Customers

With churn steadily nibbling away at their bottom lines, wireless carriers are looking for any edge to keep customers. Surprisingly, the answer may not lie solely with beating the competition, but also with an internal monitoring system that keeps a carrier from beating itself.

Network monitoring is an old concept whose increasing sophistication is earning it renewed attention from an industry forever battling to maintain customer loyalty.

"As wireless gets more competitive, it's more crucial that the network be more reliable," said David Berndt, Yankee Group associate director. "In order to make it more reliable, you have to know what's happening, where it's happening and why it's happening."

PINPOINTING WEAKNESSES As swiftly as carriers expand the market with rate plans that entice greater numbers of end users, they're also adding strain on their systems, stretching resources and potentially exposing weaknesses in the network-operations centers.

Monitoring specialists -- including Inet Technologies and DigitalMasterwork -- have recognized how network problems affect churn, and they're taking advantage. With systems available for all sizes and ages of networks, analysts say carriers can't afford to underestimate the importance of a stable network equipped with a monitoring system designed to stop problems before they start.

"People expect the network to work," Berndt said. "They're not as tolerant as they used to be."

Companies are usually reluctant to say how much they charge for monitoring systems, saying the cost can vary greatly, depending on the carrier and its expected growth. Most monitors are tailored to each carrier, and customer growth typically is handled simply by adding monitors to each system node rather than adopting an entirely new system-wide monitor.

But no matter what size system a carrier ends up with, many agree a key feature must be the monitor's ability to diagnose problem spots as close to real time as possible. Many monitoring systems are even set up to flag problem spots before they arise, giving network managers time to respond and plug additional holes down the line.

Inet's GeoProbe, for example, makes a system residing on different nodes, so that before one of the nodes goes down, the system sends up a warning flag. Technicians can see all of the network traffic flowing and see exactly what went wrong. The result is the ability to pinpoint a problem, identify the offending equipment and confront the vendor to resolve the situation.

GeoProbe provides real-time surveillance, instantly detecting and reporting network faults, and collecting and displaying network-performance statistics. The system also performs real-time or historical protocol analysis, as well as important call traces -- allowing network managers to identify which customers lost service and later placate the user.

"You can pro-actively call out to them and say, 'We know, and we want to credit that account with 20 extra minutes,'" said consultant Berndt. "That's one way to completely surprise and astonish the customer. You better believe the customer is going to think twice about leaving you."

That sophistication has proved lucrative for Inet, which reported record second-quarter profits on the strength of its giant clientele that includes AT&T, British Telecom, Deutche-Telekom and MCI WorldCom. The GeoProbe model has sold for between $350,000 and $13 million, depending on the amount of network traffic and configuration, said Kelly Love, Inet director of investor relations.

Another company doing big business is DigitalMasterwork, which has seen a roughly 50% jump in revenues on the back of its Web-based system, which the company likens more to an online support manual than a true network-monitoring system.

DigitalMasterwork's AIDLearn Alert, which provides support in a robust Web environment, keeps technicians from having to search through volumes of operating manuals that could result in downtime.

Essentially, AIDLearn Alert automatically displays critical reference material -- tailored to the individual carrier -- to correct a network problem. Specific alarm descriptions, escalation procedures and information about how the problem affects customer-service-level agreements all are aimed at cutting downtime and boosting customer satisfaction.

"We provide the online reference, so when there is a problem, such as an outage, the technician immediately has the information they need to respond to the problem and solve it," said Chuck Carlson, DigitalMasterwork managing consultant. "We help the client build an encyclopedia about problems that occur with the system. It's an instantly accessible online bookshelf."

AIDLearn Alert has been deployed for GTE's new high-speed private fiber network, the Global Network Infrastructure. The application for wireless carriers largely remains the same.

"For example, you're Nextel, and you're offering paging, voice mail, direct digital connect, wireless data, and each might be on different switching components," Carlson said. "Those components might generate up to 1,000 alarms. The typical technician may not know what all those alarms are. That's what we're here for."

Similar to Inet's traceable calls, AIDLearn Alert employs an Oracle 8 database that identifies customers affected by system problems, allowing customer-service officials to perform damage control with those affected clients.

DigitalMasterwork's licensed software costs $10,000, though a carrier's overall cost could range between $50,000 and $250,000 depending on the network's size and complexity.

The economic necessity of network monitoring is becoming clearer as carriers jockey for position.

COSTLY TURNOVER New customers, on average, cost carriers between $350 and $500 each on marketing, network space and customer service, Berndt said. Compounding the problem is the market's historic turnover.

"If a carrier has 200,000 customers, and loses a third of those in a year, it's very easy to see why this is important," Berndt said. "The payback (from monitoring) is there."

Corporate service-level agreements (SLAs) add to the importance of propping up the network with reliable oversight. Larger groups often have SLAs with carriers that include compensation for outages or persistent disconnects.

Both Inet and DigitalMasterwork, which handle landline and mobile systems, recognize wireless' competitiveness and are taking advantage.

"Outsourcing of network operations is a huge business, and we fit in very nicely," Carlson said. "We have focused more on this industry. There's a shortfall of trained personnel, and it's a rapidly growing market where people are putting new networks in the ground and in the air. It gets more competitive by the day for these guys. One key part of that is providing the best product they can so that the network operation ... becomes a key factor in retaining those customers.

"What you're seeing with more mature carriers is that they get much more focused on performance of the network. Revenues per minute have dropped, so they have to get every bit of value and efficiency out of the network that they can."