Ensuring the Success of 2.5G and 3G Service Delivery

The market for 2.5G and 3G services is taking shapethe performance of applications before deployment
as mobile providers offer customers capabilities thatmay make success itself a risky proposition. After all,
include Internet browsing, chat, multimedia downloadsan application that performs perfectly well with
and online purchasing. These services promise toseveral hundred simultaneous users may not survive
generate significant incremental revenue forthe onslaught of tens of thousands. So, without
providers, as customers embrace the next-generationappropriate preparation, providers can find
mobile experience. They will also be important tothemselves unable to cope with the very success
other market beneficiaries - including contentthey were hoping for!
providers and online merchants - who see theThe Solution: Network-Aware Development
affluent mobile user as an important target.One solution to this problem is to make the
To ensure the success of their 2.5G and 3G services,real-world conditions of the production network a
however, mobile providers have to grapple withcentral design consideration for all applications from
three primary risk factors. First, they obviously havethe earliest stages of design. In other words, to
to ensure that the services they offer are the onesensure service quality in the real world AFTER
buyers want. Only by understanding customers'deployment, it is essential to be able to discover any
wants and needs can providers offer a portfolio ofpotential performance problems with an application's
services that will generate the necessary take-ratesbehavior in the real world BEFORE deployment.
to be profitable. Second, they have to design thoseThis can only be done, however, if developers have
services to appeal to users despite small screens,some practical means of modeling those conditions in
slower access speeds and limited keypad functions.the lab. Ideally, such a modeling environment will be
These design skills are essential for optimizing theable to replicate conditions on the production
user experience and market acceptance.network - including bandwidth constrains, the number
Third, providers must ensure the reliability of theseof distribution of end-users, etc. If this modeling
services. It's one thing to tolerate a temporaryenvironment is then connected to the actual server
outage on a free or bundled service. It's quiteinfrastructure that will support the planned
another thing to lose access to or experienceapplications, the behavior of those applications in the
chronically sub-par performance with a service you'rereal world can be accurately observed and tested. A
paying for. That's why it's absolutely critical for mobilevariety of "what-if" scenarios can also be generated
providers to validate the performance of their 2.5Gand observed to determine their impact on service
and 3G services before they roll them out tolevels: the loss of some portion of the network, an
customers. Application failures are something mobileexceptional peak in service utilization, a spike in other
customers are unlikely to be very forgiving about. Intypes of network traffic, and so forth.
fact, too many failures too early in the game mayIn addition to accurately replicating existing and
permanently turn customers off to theseprojected real-world network conditions, an effective
money-making services-dooming the market before itmodeling environment should also lend itself to
has a chance to take hold.collaboration between application development teams
The Service Level Assurance Challengeand network infrastructure managers. By sharing a
Ensuring service levels for 2.5G and 3G servicescommon modeling platform, these two groups can
presents special challenges. Multimedia applications, forreach consensus about issues potentially affecting
example, are particularly bandwidth-hungry and areservice levels - as well as the optimal remedy for
easily prone to session breakdowns due tosuch issues - rather than getting bogged down in
temporary congestion in the network. In addition,conflict and finger-pointing. A multi-purpose modeling
such applications often use multiple session, signalingenvironment also ensures that any investment in
and data protocols. These complex dependenciesmodeling technology can be fully leveraged across
often make it difficult to maintain service levels andthe entire application lifecycle, including change
understand the issues that may compromise themanagement, capacity planning and CapEx projection.
end-user experience.Ensure Risk-Free Wireless Deployment
In fact, providers often find themselves rolling newNo provider can afford to have their early wireless
services out into production without fullyservice efforts tarnished with chronic poor
understanding how those services will really beperformance. And no one wants to surrender their
experienced by customers under real-worldhard-earned early adopter customer to the
conditions. That's because services are typicallycompetition because of service failures. Mobile
tested in laboratory environments that don'tproviders who want to gain and sustain marketshare
adequately reflect the bandwidth limitations,in value-added wireless services must therefore
distance-driven latencies, and capacity contention thatmake every effort to ensure the reliability and
exist in the production environment. This isperformance of their offerings. And to do so, it is
unfortunate, because it exposes providers to thecritical that they embrace modeling technologies that
considerable risk that applications won't perform inare as advanced and sophisticated as their
production as they did in the lab.next-generation networks.
By the same token, the inability to adequately assess