EXFO Sx Drive Test: Improving Two Mobile Operators’ QoE in Finland

Over the past few years, the mobile market in Finland has becoming increasingly competitive—to such a degree that operators invest between 17-19% of their revenues into network development and quality of experience (QoE) improvements. In 2016 alone, Finnish operators will invest €600 million into network infrastructure. The reason? As with other geographical marketing, Finnish operators heavily market their network’s speed and service experience. What’s more, they are often benchmarked in the media, with their performance results highlighted for all consumers to see.

Beyond setting aside funding, however, operators need to know in what precise areas of their network infrastructure they should invest in. While connection speed is, without a doubt, important, subscribers will still face low QoE if the connection drops frequently or if their use is impacted by network latency. That’s why operators need to gain deep insight into all of their network’s health indicators to make wise choices about where to invest.

An EXFO team recently measured the performance of two leading competitive mobile network operators in Helsinki, Finland. An EXFO Sx Drive Test was conducted, powered by EXFO Mobile Agent (EMA), a fully-integrated mobile application for 24/7 wireless service assurance monitoring and troubleshooting, to measure QoE levels for subscribers.

The EXFO team analyzed subscriber QoE levels for both voice (availability, call set-up duration, voice quality, reliability), data (network performance, HTTP tests and data transfer) and radio across the city and in rural areas. The results were truly stunning and could prove to be valuable to both operators to determine where their investments generated the highest ROI. Moreover, several problem areas were identified, including high levels of jitter and areas that had no service coverage—a major issue for consumers.