Congestion & network failures are major cause of mobile network outages and service degradations: Spirent

Spirent Communications announced the availability of an insightful report from telecom trends analysis firm Heavy Reading titled “Mobile Network Outages & Service Degradations: A Heavy Reading Survey Analysis.” The report gives an outlook on how the evolving mobile network is performing when it comes to service reliability.

Further on, it also provides an in-depth survey-based analysis of what operators are currently experiencing in terms of network disruptions. It explains the impacts outages can have on the entire business, especially when they affect a large percentage of subscribers.

“Among the most notable findings in this year’s study is that network failures are now the leading cause of mobile network outages, where physical link failures were the primary cause a couple of years ago,” said Patrick Donegan, Senior Analyst with Heavy Reading

Key insights:
· Busy hour congestion is the leading contributory factor in outages, marked by 37% of respondents as occurring often, 52% as rarely and only 11% as never.
·Network congestion and overload is by far the most common cause of network outages and degradation, with 81% of respondents listing it, followed by network failure at 46%.
·Network failures are the cause of the most severe outages and degradations – named by 85% of respondents.
· January 2016 survey data shows an increase in the number of outages that take 48 hours or more to fix.
· The launch of a new phone is typically less disruptive than the launch of a new service, with 44% stating a new phone is never a contributing factor compared to 28% marking never for the launch of a new service.
Mobile communications is an all-IP environment and is accelerating at an ever-increasing pace. Users these days demand instant access to thousands of apps and fast download speeds. Managing delay-sensitive services such as VoLTE is more challenging than earlier days when traffic was driven by users checking email and browsing the web.

“The Heavy Reading report makes the case clear that degradations and outages are serious problems for operators, resulting in hits to their brand reputations and lost profit with cost being typically one to five percent of revenue,” says John Baker, General Manager, Mobility Infrastructure Business Unit at Spirent Communications.