In the last two years, standards bodies, mobile operators and equipment representatives have busily framed SON requirements as part of the LTE standardisation effort. With LTE networks on the event horizon, potentially offering much needed relief to the strained business models of all-you-can-eat mobile broadband services, SON and its impact on the network operation and cost is increasingly important to decision makers.
Operators are starting to invest heavily in LTE, with the aim of providing innovative services and a superior user experience to subscribers.
But for that to happen, they need to learn from their 3G experience and optimise the network, instead of focusing solely on expanding the infrastructure. Although mature, today’s network still drops about one in every fifty calls – a disaster for a modern gamer or streaming video user.
Fixing past problems in 3G has been costly, largely due to highly fragmented manual processes, meaning operators will need to become far more efficient when rolling out 4G networks. The only approach that addresses this challenge these needs is automation of the business processes surrounding RAN planning, optimisation and day-to-day maintenance.
Self-Optimising Networks (SON) help operators resolve such issues by enabling a rapid reaction to dozens of common failure, optimisation and configuration issues that today take up days and even weeks of manual labour. The efficiencies produced by SON cut costs and ensure a better, faster level of reaction to issues that may affect the customer.
SON will reduce the cost of implementing a third network layer, and similarly cut ongoing costs by as much as 60%. More importantly, it can also provide much higher quality and will ensure a higher level of reliability in the network as it deals with problems that would usually require human intervention thus saving cost on engineering work. By automating the system, SON eliminates problems before they reach the end user.
As the shape of LTE networks comes into view, operators will be focused on not only maximising the value of new network investments, but also optimising existing legacy 2G and 3G networks.  By extending management and automation systems already deployed, mobile operators are delving into the beginning of Self-Optimising Networks. This will enable them to free their networks to respond to the demand of data services and traffic mixes that are bursty in nature that will be apparent in new business models.  The new mobile broadband model will require a system that can react to these problems quickly and efficiently and SON automation will be the best possible way to achieve this.