Stay Ahead of the Game with 5G Network Benchmarking
By Keysight Nemo Wireless Network Solutions
The importance of performing 5G network benchmarking in today’s highly competitive telecommunications industry cannot be emphasized enough. Benchmarking is the game changer that allows you to stay ahead of the curve and provide unparalleled service to your customers. By testing and measuring network performance against your competitors, you gain a competitive edge that cannot be matched.
Benchmarking data is a powerful tool that can be used to make informed decisions about network investments. With access to accurate and comprehensive data on key performance indicators (KPIs), you can focus on implementing network improvements in a way that enhances the quality of service for end-customers and helps to reduce customer churn.
Imagine having real-time insight into your network’s performance, enabling you to identify and resolve issues before they impact your customers. By utilizing benchmarking data, you can optimize your network’s capacity, coverage, and reliability, providing a seamless end-user experience.
Benchmarking data can also be used for marketing – find out the strengths of your network against competitors and use them in advertising and promotion. With actual data to back up your marketing claims, you gain a competitive edge and position your network as best-in-class in the minds of the customers.
However, to achieve the highest quality data and a comprehensive understanding of your network’s competitive landscape, benchmarking campaigns must be carefully planned. This includes drive and walk tests that cover all necessary locations and collect all important KPIs while using the same mobile devices as your customers are using. The data collection process is further complicated by the need to collect data from multiple competitive networks, making planning and execution even more crucial.
Scalability and Flexibility at the Core of Nemo Benchmarking Solutions
Data collection equipment are typically long-term investments. To back up your investment, Keysight’s Nemo benchmarking tools have been designed to adapt to different network measurement needs mobile operators might have today and in the future.
A modular, scalable, and comprehensive benchmarking system may sound complex, but it does not have to be so. At the core of Keysight’s laptop-based Nemo benchmarking systems is the powerful Nemo Outdoor engine that has an established position both as a pioneer and leader in drive test measurement solutions for over 25 years. Nemo Outdoor is not only widely used, but also known for its ease of use and flexible user interface. A short learning curve and a single, easy-to-use platform for all network measurement needs contribute to lower operating costs and lower initial investment as it can be taken into use effectively with less training.
In the past few years, Keysight has introduced two Nemo Outdoor based benchmarking solutions, both designed while keeping the requirements of 5G network testing in mind. Now that they have been on the market for a while, they have been thoroughly tested, verified, and well received by our customers. Nemo Network Benchmarking Solution (NBM) is a scalable measurement solution for network benchmarking, optimization, and verification for field and lab environments. Nemo Backpack Pro is a lightweight benchmarking solution suitable for both walk testing and drive testing.
Nemo Network Benchmarking Solution (NBM)
Keysight’s Nemo benchmarking systems have been designed to cover all your benchmarking needs and help to capture all the necessary KPIs in one go. NBM can be used with up to 60 test devices and two scanning receivers, all connected to one laptop running Nemo Outdoor.
One Nemo Backpack Pro connects up to 18 smartphones and 1-2 scanning receivers, and several backpacks with up to 60 devices can be connected to one laptop.
Nemo Backpack Pro
As an example, you can use one Nemo Backpack Pro to measure networks from three different operators with six devices each. By minimizing time spent on the field collecting data, you can save in operational costs and focus on other tasks, such as network planning.
The systems can be mixed and matched, scaled up to meet your future network measurement needs and to include the latest devices and technologies, and even connected to legacy measurement devices you might already own. You can, for example, invest in an 18-device system today, buy twelve devices more next year, and expand to an even larger-scale benchmarking system when you have the need and budget for it.
The flexible systems also adapt to your daily network measurement and benchmarking work. You can equip a test vehicle or a lab with an NBM system and choose from our wide range of flexible mounting options or connect several Nemo Backpack Pro units together for a large-scale benchmarking campaign. If necessary, you can take one of the backpacks from the test vehicle for a walk test or connect a Nemo Backpack Pro to a rental car for an ad-hoc drive testing in a new location. You can also connect all your NBM and Nemo Backpack Pro tools to a single laptop and view all measurements in the same Nemo Outdoor user interface.
Nemo benchmarking solutions have comprehensive measurement capabilities covering all relevant KPIs for quality-of-experience (QoE) and quality-of-service (QoS) issues, regardless of the configuration you have. Our ITU-T and ETSI standard compliant testing methodology ensures the measurements are scientific, reliable, and repeatable.
With Keysight’s unique, automated AI-driven Application Testing Automation method, introduced at the end of last year, you can reliably and rapidly optimize 5G network performance and deliver greater QoE for smartphone users accessing the world’s most widely used OTT services and social media applications, including Facebook Messenger, Microsoft Teams, Snapchat, TikTok, and Zoom. Testing with real applications and services that customers are actually using, in the very same way as real end-users are using them, provides a realistic view of the network performance enabling you to quickly react to network issues before your customers do.
VIDEO: Get Realistic Insight of 5G QoE with Application Testing Automation
When all the required benchmarking data has been collected, it is time to put the data to use to help you make informed decisions and to keep you ahead of the competition. Get an overview of measurement results from the easy-to-use Nemo Outdoor user interface or get the most out of your data by combining NBM or Nemo Backpack Pro with Nemo Cloud and Nemo Analyze and create an end-to-end automated data processing environment from the collection of measurement data to analytics and reporting. View the results as an NPS 3.0 score in a report or real-time dashboard that compares the quality of mobile networks and visualizes the QoE that the end users perceive with real use cases in different environments.
Interested to learn more? Contact us at: nemo.info@keysight.com