ETSI publishes TR 103 559 and acknowledges R&S NPS as best practice for QoS benchmark testing
The globally renowned European Telecommunications Standards Institute ETSI has published TR 103 559. The technical report (TR) describes the best practices for robust network QoS benchmark testing and scoring. It is the result of intensive discussions among network operators, technology vendors, service providers, and measurement equipment manufacturers such as Rohde & Schwarz.
Two years after rigorously discussing, defining, and drafting the document in the ETSI group STQ MOBILE, the experts approved and published the cutting-edge technical report unanimously. For the first time, the ETSI TR focuses on real field benchmarking. This means that the scoring of networks, operators, regions or technologies is based on a harmonized and integrative scoring methodology: The main KPIs of the most popular services in mobile networks are used, weighted and, finally, integrated into a single score that describes the network performance as perceived by the end user (QoE).
From benchmarking to optimization
The scoring method is often applied in public benchmarking campaigns, and the results are regularly published in technical journals. However, the use of the method described in TR 103 559 goes far beyond the public ranking of mobile networks. On the one hand, the approach offers a bird’s view on network performance, including all common service types, by weighting and integrating individual KPIs without losing detailed information.
On the other hand, the available detailed information enables the implementation of a workflow from the integrative view on the network to drilling down into regions or services and into the most degrading factors in the network. This process leads to efficient and effective troubleshooting and optimization.
The Network Performance Score
In today’s networks, all technologies are present, from 2G to 5G, and the offered performance varies widely. How does one get an accurate overview that represents the quality experienced by the end user? Real field benchmarking produces huge amounts of measurement data across all technologies. Finding problems and weak spots without exactly knowing what to look for is very time-consuming.
The integrative scoring method – in solutions from Rohde & Schwarz called Network Performance Score (NPS) – is the ideal entry point in data analysis for deep drill-down and the discovery of the most problematic areas. The NPS is also an essential feature for optimization. As one of the strongest drivers in these recent ETSI activities, Rohde & Schwarz already offers the integrative scoring method per ETSI TR 103 559 as an integral part of its post-processing and reporting solutions.
- Network Performance Score
- SmartAnalytics
- ETSI TR 103 559