Reliability Requirements

Before you determine how much network reliability you can afford, consider that you cannot afford to be without it. Reliability is rudimentary. You may have gotten your customers' attention with flashy phones and special service plans, but reliability is the reason they will stay. "Back in the early days, the carrier defined quality, and quality was defined as coverage; now the customer defines quality," said Alex Machinis, Empower Geographics president. "Customers are measuring (your) quality every second they're using the phone."

You should be measuring your quality, too. But how much reliability do you need? How much can you afford? The answers depend on your priorities.

BUDGETING FOR RELIABILITY Machinis said if you "walk the walk" when it comes to customer service, then you will pursue it at 100%. In that case, reliability is not about cost, but about the customer. It doesn't matter how big your network is; if you are customer-driven, you will want as much reliability as possible.

"When you talk about network reliability, who says it's reliable? The only person who counts is the guy paying the bill -- the customer," Machinis said. "That's how much reliability you should have, plus a bit more."

Many carriers don't budget reliability into their balance books and don't follow any set rules about reliability needs. Michael Robinson, Sprint PCS vice president & general manager of network services, said experience and technology evolution drive the company's reliability decisions.

"There's no vision that says 10% of our capital program should be invested in reliability," he explained. "It's whatever makes sense to us with respect to where we think our next risk is."

For example, Sprint PCS is looking at the kind of reliability systems it should implement next year based on its 1999 growth, and how much it will cost to plug those into its capital plan. On the technology side, advances often allow for network-reliability improvements.

"Some of our vendors have developed multi-base-station controller capabilities," he said. "We are looking at whether it is wise to re-home base stations in a given coverage area to multiple or different base-station controllers, so that if we lose a base-station controller due to hardware fault, not all the base stations in that coverage area will be out of service at the same time."

Ed Kirkland, Alltel vice president of network services, said Alltel works with its manufacturers on reliability and redundancy issues.

"Cost isn't the issue -- the quality of the service we want to maintain is," he said. "We continually receive reports in each market on our reliability and performance, and we measure those every month and design our systems to that criteria."

If the blocked call, dropped call or other reports don't measure up, Kirkland said, Alltel improves the network through optimization and equipment additions.

Russell Arsaga, U.S. Cellular vice president of engineering, said it looks at network reliability in light of what it is trying to protect.

"The focus has been, and will continue to be, on those capabilities that are the life blood of wireless operations," he said. "We cannot afford to have problems with these."

Two examples of U.S. Cellular's essential elements are its SS7 network and its mission-critical data network. U.S. Cellular commits the necessary resources to ensure that it meets reliability and redundancy industry standards for its SS7.

"We budget for this, year after year, with the objective of improving reliability," he explained. "We continue to implement diverse routing on our signaling links from each of our switches to our mated pairs of signaling transfer points."

OPTIMIZING MANAGEMENT TOOLS According to Machinis, many carriers don't use their network-management tools to the fullest extent.

"It's one big system; it's not just reliability, customer-care issues, network-design issues -- it's all in one pot, and you need to optimize everything," he said.

Robinson said Sprint PCS uses several tools to measure reliability: a system to manage fault management, an alarm-system retrieval and analysis, and another system that manages call performance, including traffic congestion. One system can pick up the result of the others. Sprint PCS' national network-operations center monitors its fault-management system in real-time, 24x7. That system collects information and determines repetitive faults or fault categories.

"We will conduct an analysis to determine the alternatives to assure that a particular type of outage doesn't occur ... and determine if either the revenues or the customer satisfaction at risk is going to be resolved by adding either diversity or a redundant element, or changing the architecture so it's more fault tolerant," he explained.

Through forecasting and planning processes, Sprint PCS dimensioned and sized its network-management tools for its ambitious build-out so it can accept new network growth as it comes on-line.

Arsaga said U.S. Cellular continuously focuses on acquiring operational support systems (OSSs) and budgeting for associated applications that specifically fit its defined set of network-management functions. He said one important aspect of this process is to evaluate up front whether a particular OSS can evolve with its network.

"Vendors inform us of the capabilities they can offer, but we determine which ones are warranted," he said. "Effectively, this gives us a set of bonafide tools at a palatable price."

WHAT'S RELIABILITY WORTH? You may know what reliability and network-monitoring tools cost to implement, but do you know what it costs if you don't have sufficient reliability? Studies show that as reliability decreases, churn increases.

"Carriers look at what it costs them for reliability and network management, but not at what it saves them," said Gary Barton, Objective Systems Integrators mobile market manager. "(Reliability and management tools) also increase revenue because more people on your system mean more revenue."

Some carriers associate network reliability with high cost, but Robinson added that sometimes you can increase reliability without additional cost.

"It's a little bit of that 'work smarter' kind of mentality," he said.

The industry needs such thinking today. No J.D. Powers macro survey can measure the importance of reliability to your business. But smart carriers know that if they don't consistently give customers what they want, they'll go elsewhere.

ADC Kentrox's CrossPATH II Triple-T1 intelligent channel service unit for PCS networks is an access device for carriers that want to minimize network downtime, lower operational and support expenses and maximize T1-backhaul-circuit usage. Carriers can lower T1-access costs by linking multiple PCS cell sites to a single T1 connection back to the MSC, minimizing backhaul charges.

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