JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3

User Experience Enhancement

What s Inside:
Advanced EPC,
MBB enabling services and improving user experience

Analysis Report on UMTS

Network Requirements for OTT Services
OSSii,
Reshaping NBI Integration

MBB MO,TECHNOLOGIES
HUAWEI Wireless Marketing
CO., LTD.
 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3

Wang Yufeng

MBB Solution Support Dept, Director

User Experience Enhancement Marketing Dept, WN
What s Inside:
Advanced EPC,
MBB enabling services and improving user experience

Analysis Report on UMTS

Network Requirements for OTT Services
OSSii,
Reshaping NBI Integration

I
n the past, network construction focused primarily on delivering
basic communication services. Over time it shifted focus to
MBB MO,TECHNOLOGIES
HUAWEI Wireless Marketing
CO., LTD.
measuring and optimizing network quality. Now, the focus is on
user experience.

Today, operators and network equipment suppliers are looking for

Sponsor: solutions that can accurately determine and deliver the best possible
Wang Tao
user experience. They are doing this to provide their customers with
Consultants: top quality mobile communication services.
Yang Chaobin, Cai Mengbo, Dai Jisheng,
Zhao Qiyong We at Huawei know building a more intelligent network is an
important part of meeting this complex challenge. Such an approach
Editor-in-Chief:
Wang Yufeng helps adapt mobile broadband networks to better meet the demands
of growing and changing markets. It helps to optimize traffic models
Editors: for better mobile video and web browsing. And it gives operators a
Ma Xiaoxu, Prabhat Srivastava,
Xu Dezhi, Yin Dongming, Kong Linghua
better management experience for their network operations.

We consider the ideas discussed in this issue of MBB Insight to be

Contributors: an important part of what the industry needs to do to provide the best
Yu Yijun, He Wensheng, Lin Yanqing
user experience. By building more intelligent networks, there’s no
limit to what we can achieve.

Copyright © Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

2013. All rights reserved.
No part of this document may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means without prior
written consent of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.

Huawei Industrial Base Bantian Longgang Shenzhen
518129, P.R. China

MBB MO, Wireless Marketing

Tel: +86-755-28780808
E-mail: MBBInsight@huawei.com
Version No.: M3-023985-20130727-C-1.0

www.huawei.com
CONTENTS
P 01
Advanced EPC,
MBB enabling services and improving user
experience
01 Introduction
02 EPC standards timeline
02 Challenges and opportunities for the Advanced EPC
03 Advanced EPC Key Features
09 Conclusions
09 Annex: Abbreviation

Analysis Report on UMTS

P 10 Network Requirements for OTT Services
10 Introduction
11 Relationship Between OTT User Experience and Mobile Network
Capabilities

12 Analysis on KQIs for OTT Services

16 Characteristics of Mainstream OTT Services
17 Mobile Network Capability Requirements for OTT Services
19 Summary and Prospect
20 Acronym or Abbreviation
20 References

P 21
OSSii,
Reshaping NBI Integration

21 NBI-A personal experience

23 NBI integration is an industry challenge
24 OSSii to solve the challenge
 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience

Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and

improving user experience
Introduction of WNRD:
Wireless Network Research Department is the research part of Huawei wireless network business unit. It is
responsible for the activities of research, standardization and prototype development and verification in the
field of algorithm, radio access network and mobile broad band (MBB). It focuses on the most advanced and
future-oriented technologies, such as 5G, SDN/NFV. It is a key player and contributor in the global wireless
standard and other relevant industry organizations, e.g. 3GPP, WWRF, IEEE, and etc.

Introduction consists of the radio system LTE and the Evolved Packet Core
(EPC). A further evolution of the LTE radio system has been
done in the time frame of 3GPP release 10 and is called LTE-
Advanced. The corresponding overall system has been selected

3
as an ITU 4G technology option. It should be noted that LTE
GPP’s 4G mobile system LTE/EPC has been developed
denotes the radio system, but is also the official terminology for
by the mobile industry in the last few years during
marketing the overall mobile system of LTE and EPC.
3GPP releases 8 and release 9 to meet the continuously
growing service requirements of MBB. The overall system

1 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience

During the following 3GPP releases on the network side
the further evolution of the EPC is targeting at enabling of
more profitable services and improving user experience, both
bringing added value for the whole mobile market. Service
enabling has thus become an important topic after basic EPC
features have been specified during initial 3GPP releases. In
this white paper it focuses on the current phase of EPC, which
is denoted as Advanced EPC. It takes advantage of the excellent
radio capability of LTE and LTE-Advanced.
In this white paper it provides an overview on how the EPC
timeline developed, considers the specific challenges and
opportunities for the Advanced EPC and describes the different
key features of the Advanced EPC that are intended to address
the challenges and opportunities.
EPC standards timeline
have been designed to provide a new mobile system targeting
at higher spectral efficiency, higher peak data rates, shorter
round trip times and frequency flexibility. This radio access
system is called Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN), and the core
network is the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). Both together form
the Evolved Packet System (EPS).
After the basic EPC features, i.e. providing high performance
IP bearer services for MBB, had been completed within
3GPP release 8 and release 9, work started on enabling voice,
multimedia and machine type communications services, like
emergency call, CSFB/SRVCC enhancements, M2M related
features. The currently ongoing phase of advancing the EPC
targets at improving or creating business opportunities for
operators by enhancing existing or developing new EPC
services and features, which is called Advanced EPC. Advanced
EPC is expected to be evolved further, and the next phase of
EPC is Beyond EPC. In the Beyond EPC phase, SDN may be
introduced. The timeline of the Advanced EPC is shown in the
following figure 2a.

The initial activities on the LTE/EPC system started already

in 2004. The radio access system and the related core network

Figure 2a. EPC standards timeline

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Release 8 Release 9 Release 10 Release 11 Release 12 Release 13 and later on

LTE LTE-Advanced Further LTE evolution on LTE-B/C

EPC: basic Advanced EPC: Service Enabling for MBB Further EPC evolution

In the last few years the Telco industry experienced significant

Challenges and opportunities changes. One significant trend is the move of Internet services
from personal computers to mobile devices. This trend got
for the Advanced EPC accelerated especially with the explosive penetration of smart
phone. Another trend is that in many developed markets
the penetration rate of mobile subscribers is reaching some

2 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience
saturation. This increases the interest of looking for new
revenue opportunities and extending mobile services to
other potential markets (Enterprise, government, machine
communications, etc).
The whole mobile industry eco-system started to change when
smart phone begun to dominate the terminal market. One
significant change is that traditional telecom services like voice
and message get more and more challenged by the so-called
Over-The-Top (OTT) applications using the mobile system as a
transparent bit-pipe. However, there is more and more interest
in offering better services to the users by making the mobile
system application-aware and providing added value, like QoS,
for OTT applications.
The following activities have been identified for Advanced EPC
to proactively cope with the above trends and challenges:
•• Make the mobile system more robust and efficient, in order
to manage the increasing amount of connected devices, but
also the increasing variance of connection types, e.g. from
M2M, and save OPEX and CAPEX.
•• Enlarging the system capacity, in order to meet the
requirements from huge traffic volume, which is still in a
process of growing fast.
•• Support new services and further improve the Quality of
Experience for key services like voice and video.
•• O ffer network capabilities to applications for better
supporting the diversity of Internet services and facilitating
an expansion of the mobile ecosystem towards applications.
Advanced EPC Key Features
Signaling congestion control
The origin of the investigation on signaling overload in the
core network was a specific case of a Radio Network Controller
(RNC) restart leading to a flood of UEs registering with the
network in a short time period. The affected HLR could not
answer all the requests, which made the situation even worse
since UEs retried the registration. Similar issues were identified
for other scenarios and other network entities. 3GPP has thus
3 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3
started to look at these issues with the setup of a study item on
Core Network Overload (CNO).
One of the issues being studied was the load handling for
Diameter applications. Comparable to SS7, a new logical
function is introduced, the Diameter Load Manager. It
influences the route selection when a congested node is
detected.
Another investigated issue is about the optimization for the
reporting of user location information. The basic idea of
avoiding too much location report traffic in the network is to
adjust the granularity of the location reporting according to
the needs, e.g. by defining a specific area for which a report is
wanted.
A third issue is on the overload control for GTP-C interfaces.
Different approaches are evaluated for reducing the traffic
towards loaded nodes caused by too many GTP-C requests.
User plane congestion control
With the high penetration of smart phones, mobile data
applications occupy more and more of the mobile network
resources. Especially in RAN, user plane congestion
occurs more frequently and becomes a serious problem to
the operators. Mechanisms are wanted, which reduce the
occurrence of congestion and alleviate congestion in a quick
and smooth manner. 3GPP is studying this under User Plane
CONgestion management (UPCON).
Today application/user services with their different QoS needs
can be identified and treated by using separate bearers. When
congestion happens, RAN may need to decide on delaying
or discarding IP packets based on the bearer QoS. However
in many deployed networks, services with different QoS
requirements often share the same bearer, i.e. the default
bearer. In this case the RAN has no information on differences
among these services being conveyed in the shared bearer
and transfers all IP packets in a uniform way according to the
allocated bearer QoS. A shared bearer prevents the RAN from
taking efficient approaches for avoiding/alleviating congestion
specifically per application/user service. Marking the user data
packets with an identifier for their priority during congestion
(the so called Flow Priority Identifier, FPI) is a solution that
provides the RAN with extra information. The PGW/GGSN
marks the data packets with the Flow Priority Identifier based
on the subscription, application type and possibly other criteria.
Contents
 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience

According to this information the RAN can shape or discard
the data traffic specifically per priority of the application or
user service.
Another way of RAN node congestion mitigation is notifying
affected applications, which may then try to adjust the service
while maintaining the Quality of Experience as good as
possible. For example, a video application could change its
media codec or employ video compression. Other applications
may trigger providing services based on load notifications, e.g.
for delivering push data depending to the network traffic status.
Carried grade WiFi integration
WiFi is more and more regarded as an important part of mobile
operator networks. It can be connected to the EPC via S2a, S2b
and S2c interfaces. In Advanced EPC, the S2a path with GTP
will be enhanced to support UEs accessing EPC via WiFi with
CSFB is considered the first step as it relies on fallback to
legacy systems. It has been launched commercially with
the early deployment of LTE/EPC and will continue to be
supported in Advanced EPC at least for supporting roamers.
To further improve the user experience Huawei developed
“Ultra-Flash CSFB” (refer to figure 4a) as enhancements of
the standardized CSFB. It optimizes the call-setup time for CS
fallback, which is accomplished by the Advanced EPC network
due to initiating call setup in parallel with the UE falling back
to GERAN/UTRAN access network. With those optimizations,
it provides an equivalent or even less call-setup time compared
to a native 2G/3G CS call.
Figure 4a: Ultra-Flash CSFB
Sv
SGs

minimum changes for the UE IP stack. Further, concurrent MSC MME

multiple connections need to be supported for WiFi access and
seamless handover between 3GPP and WiFi (considered under
3GPP release 12 work item SaMOG) to reduce efforts for
implementing carrier grade WiFi support in UEs.

In Advanced EPC, an overall network discovery and selection Ultra-Flash CSFB

mechanism considering PLMN selection and Hotspot 2.0

GERAN/UTRAN LTE
ANQP (Access Network Query Protocol) elements enables
the UE to efficiently connect to the network via the most
proper WLAN AP. A cellular assisted WLAN discovery and
selection mechanism will improve the user experience when I M S a n d S RV C C ( i n c l u d i n g v i d e o S RV C C a n d i t s
moving between 3GPP and WLAN without user perception. enhancements) are the long term voice solutions for voice over
To decrease the time required for the mobility with WLAN, a LTE/EPC and are supposed to support both voice (including
new security architecture is designed to make the UE achieving HD voice) and video services in Advanced EPC. With CSFB
substantially faster access to WLAN. and IMS deployed, two voice service options are available that
Network controlled IP flow mobility further enables the UE to may complement each other.
route IP traffic simultaneously over 3GPP radio access network
and WLAN, and easily moving IP traffics between the radio
access technologies smoothly based on operator’s policy.

Voice service for LTE users

Voice services for LTE users are provided either by deploying
a subsystem for VoIP/VoIMS or by falling back to GERAN/
UTRAN enabled Circuit Switched (CS) domain. CS Fallback
(CSFB) and IMS/SRVCC (Signal Radio Voice Call Continuity)
are the two key features for enabling voice services within the
EPS.

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 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience

Video enhancement
Video traffic has emerged as the dominant traffic in today's Internet (Per Huawei mLab report - H2 2012, streaming application will
account for 40% to 60% of mobile usage in 2015, figure 4b). How to deliver such massive traffic with the required QoE becomes
critical to operators.

Figure 4b. Mobile usage forecast of 2015

Web browsing
0.96% West Europe North America
2.85%
Streaming 1.50% 1.01% 0.91%
4.36%
File transfer
1.25% 13.31% 1.87% 10.81% 18.77%
IM 34.74%
4.67% 4.07%
SNS
VOIP
58.20%
Email 40.72%

Gaming 2.22%
0.19%
1.87%
0.33% 0.92% 0.91%
0.82% 0.60% 1.71% 0.34%
7.96%
1.73% 1.39%
2.08% 8.44% 9.06%
3.03% 7.45%

27.66% 35.95%
47.83%

37.89%
55.62% 43.97%

Latin America Southeast Asia China

In an industry-wide collaboration including multiple SDOs 3GPP and partners developed the method DASH (Dynamic Adaptive
Streaming over HTTP). However, it is running on the application level and thus provides limited tooling for operator control. A
network control enhancement to DASH [see figure 4c] is being discussed in 3GPP Release 12 to support more business scenarios
like network aware adaptation, precise QoS control, etc.

Client 1 Figure 4c. DASH with network control

Server

Client 2

Advertisement

High bit rate

Client N HTTP Adaptive Proxy
Medium bit rate
（HTTP Cache）
Low bit rate

5 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience
Another option is to take advantage of IP multicast technology
which is supposed to be a cost effective way of delivering
common content traffic to a group of users. MBMS (and
eMBMS) is a cellular multicast technology for UMTS/LTE
networks, which could be the base for further work. 3GPP has
started to work on on-demand MBMS for this purpose. On-
demand MBMS would allow operators to identify the common
video traffic (carried over DASH) or deliver different video
traffic with carrousel style, then shift the traffic from unicast
mode to multicast mode. This transportation mode switch
should of course consider information like user location,
number of users accessing the same content, etc. to achieve
reasonable gains.
Proximity based services
Direct Device-to-Device discovery and data exchange services
exist already for a long time. Bluetooth and WiFi Direct (802.11)
provide examples of such service offerings. The 3GPP system
introduces such functionality, named Proximity Services,
within its release 12.
The main driver for this is the interest to use the EPS for
providing professional mobile radio services for public
safety usage, like for police or ambulance. Some additionally
considered usage scenarios are offering 3GPP proximity
services for commercial or consumer applications, such as the
discovery of other users belonging to the same application
and who are in proximity or to enable direct LTE or WiFi
communication between users or devices that are in proximity
to each other. Proximity communications are also considered
as an option for offloading traffic from the network and thus
improving cost and resource efficiency.
3GPP proximity services include the discovery service and the
communication service. Each may be used separately as an
enabler for other, specifically application services. Proximity
discovery and communication service will be available as
functionality of the E-UTRAN/LTE access system. Public
safety users or applications may use those services based on
pre-configured permissions also when there is no coverage or
connectivity with the mobile system. Consumer usage is only
permitted with authorization by the mobile system on a per
usage basis.
Specifically for enabling Public Safety application services the
3GPP proximity services need to provide relay functionality for
extending radio coverage in various scenarios.
6 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3
Group communication system enabler
These enhancements are also driven by the interest of using
the EPS for providing Professional Mobile Radio (PMR)
services. The adoption of the 3GPP system as a common
global mobile broadband system is caused specifcally by the
interest in broadband features for group communications,
which are not offered by current PMR systems, like ETSI
TETRA or US P25. These current PMR systems provide group
communications as narrow band services. The interest in using
advanced features and services that require broadband support
made 3GPP’s EPS a good candidate for this. While proximity
services cover mainly the service support under conditions
without suitable radio coverage, the group communications
system enablers consider all other aspects needed for operating
PMR services via an EPS. It may be possible to use existing
features, like EPS packet bearer services or roaming, without
specific modifications. Special considerations are on efficient
system resources usage. Especially for scenarios with many
users in the same area multicast data delivery may be needed
and therefore the usage of eMBMS or other enhancements need
to be considered. Other challenges that may require specific
systems enablers are the strict timing requirements from such
mission critical services.
Machine type communications
Machine to Machine (M2M) brings specific challenges to the
network due to the potential massive number of devices to
be supported and the fact that those may act in a coordinated
manner.
For the current phase of the Advanced EPC, the focus is more
on improved support for a large variety of M2M application
scenarios. Specifically low cost, low power consumption and
efficient handling of small data transfers have been identified as
critical issues.
Further 3GPP features and services will be provided and
offered to applications or service platforms as enablers
for the new emerging M2M business. Like the new future
proof messaging service, which may be considered a more
powerful SMS service, it transfers efficiently data units of
up to 1KB size, independently from IP connectivity. Another
example is the enhancement of 3GPP’s discontinuous
reception mechanisms that allow for frequent data transfers
with less system processing and are also suited to reduce the
Contents
 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience

device’s battery power consumption. Further, a new device

sleep state mechanism may enable devices with infrequent
communications needs, e.g. tracking devices that report location
every hour or day, to run years without replacing the battery.
As soon as the work load situation allows for it, 3GPP may
also continue to define a new monitoring framework to provide
M2M and other service platforms with a comprehensive status
overview about device, service and subscription conditions.
This and other interworking with platform or service
enablement layers is becoming more and more important for
creating applications and services with added value.

Architecture enhancement for

application interworking
There is increasing interest in the mobile network to become
aware of OTT applications. This awareness would facilitate the
providing of network services in a more resource efficient way
and also with better user experience. For instance, the network
could optimize the radio resource scheduling for certain
applications. Also letting applications being aware of the
network status (e.g. congestion) may help to further improve the
user experience. For example, a video server could proactively
adapt the codec if it gets a congestion pre-notification, thereby
avoiding any annoying video interruption. Such awareness for
applications should be addressed in a general way. A proposed
framework is shown as below in figure 4d.
Figure 4d: Application Interworking Framework for
Advanced EPC
Service Layer
AS
XML based access to PCRF
Nowadays mobile operators enable dedicated support for their
own or 3rd party applications via the Rx interface, which is
based on Diameter protocol. However, 3rd party application
providers typically use XML based protocols more frequently.
Changing those applications to support Diameter, if possible,
would create additional efforts and is therefore no cost efficient
option. In order to resolve this issue, an XML based access
from the AF to the PCRF should be specified as a new XML
based Rx variant or provided by a protocol converter (referring
to figure 4e). Both options may be needed to support different
deployment scenarios.

Figure 4e. Options for XML based access to PCRF

AIF
Diameter based Rx
PCRF

HSS PCRF Converter

SGW/PGW
MME XML based Rx AF

RAN EPC Gx (Diameter)

UE eNodeB
MME

A new function called AIF is introduced between the

service layer and the mobile network to abstract the network
capabilities in a systematic way and thus unifying and opening
eNodeB SGW/PGW
the network capabilities towards application service providers.

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 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience

SGi traffic steering

Currently a range of Value Added Service (VAS) enablers are deployed between P-GW SGi interface and the edge router to the
Internet Service Provider. These VAS enablers may include traffic compression, video optimization, web caching, HTTP header
enrichment, Firewall, etc. These enablers are important for providing services in a cost efficient and stable way. Good VAS
deployment will not only improve the user experience, but may also create additional revenue from enhancing or processing data in
accordance with business relation.

There is however a need for an efficient routing of user data traffic to avoid unnecessary traversing of individual VAS components,
which are not needed according to the policy applicable to the specific user data traffic. Service Based Routing (SBR) has been
added to the EPC by vendors to fulfill this requirement of steering user data traffic selectively through VAS enabler components
based on user identity, mobile network information, and service type. (Figure 4f)

Figure 4f: Basic SBR

VAS 1 VAS 2 VAS 3

MME
eNodeB
UE RAN Internet
SGW/ SBR SP Server
EPC PGW

In Advanced EPC, SBR can be further enhanced to provide dynamic chaining of VAS enabler components with better agility
and optimization by adopting SDN based methods. In the SDN model, VAS enabler components will be concatenated by a
programmable switch which is under the control of a centralized SDN controller (See figure 4g). The traffic routing policy is
implemented by the interaction of SDN controller and programmable switch based on configuration or dynamic policy control.

Figure 4g: SDN enabled SBR

VAS 1 VAS 2 VAS 3

SDN
Controller

MME

eNodeB Internet
UE RAN Switch
SGW/ SBR SP Server
EPC PGW

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 MBB Insight Advanced EPC, MBB enabling services and improving user experience

Conclusions
LTE/LTE-Advanced and the Advanced EPC are continuously
developing for meeting new or extended challenges and
expectations arising from the mobile system usage penetrating
virtually any area of life and work.

The Advanced EPC delivers new key features for enhancing

efficiency and business for already deployed MBB services and
applications. But the Advanced EPC is also opening for new
usages by improving system efficiency and cost position for
scenarios that are not typically broad band, e.g. massive usage
of M2M with a small amount of data, or by offering specific
features from the mobile system towards applications or service
platforms for creation of a multitude of innovative services and
applications. A main aim is always maintaining stability and
robustness of the mobile system also with the growth of volume
and variety of the traffic managed by the mobile system.

Acronym or Abbreviation
Acronym or Abbreviation Full Name
CNO Core Network Overload
CSFB CS Fallback
DASH Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP
EPC Evolved Packet Core
LTE Long Term Evolution
M2M Machine-to-Machine
MBMS Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service
M2M Machine to Machine communication
SAPP Service Awareness & Privacy Policy
SBR Service Based Routing
SDN Software Defined Network
SIRIG Service Identification for improved Radio utilization In GERAN
SRVCC Single Radio Voice Call Continuity
UPCON User Plane CONgestion management
VAS Value Added Server
XML eXtensible Markup Language

9 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

Analysis Report on UMTS Network

Requirements for OTT Services
He Wensheng

He Wensheng is an expert of OTT user experience of mobile network. He joined Huawei

Shanghai Research Center in 2000. he has been worked for five years development experience
in RAN, and one of the main inventors of Huawei Distributed Base Station System, 3 Years
experiences in mobile network solution domain. He has five years in QoS and QoE domain. He
was responsible for the research of LTE E2E performance from 2009. He started and supervised
research of OTT user experience on mobile network in 2011.

interaction between mobile network and Over-The -Top (OTT)

Introduction services. That is why user experience improvement gradually
lags behind the development of mobile networks and OTT
services. Based on the relationship among user experience,

A
s mobile broadband (MBB) Internet services
develop rapidly, people require better and better user
experience for mobile services. However, there is no
service characteristics and network capabilities, this article
provides the UMTS (including HSPA) network capabilities
requirements for guaranteeing the user experience.

10 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

Relationship Between OTT User Experience and Mobile Network

Capabilities
Three Phases of OTT User Experience Improvement

Figure 2-1 Three phases of OTT user experience improvement

OTT

OTT
2

OTT Capability
openness API

Mutual adaptation White

Network
box
Self-adaptation
Network Gray
box

Network Black Phase 3: The network opens its

box KQI Reference
capabilities to OTT services. APIs of
Phase 2: The network and OTT network facilitate cross-layer
services are mutually adapted. Both optimization, for meeting user
Network and OTT service do experience requirements in different
Phase 1: OTT services are
optimizations to improve user scenarios for users.
self-adaptive. Based on
self-optimization of algorithms and experience based on the KQI reference.
solution, traffic characteristics of OTT
services adapt to the mobile networks
for optimal user experience.

Figure 2-1 shows three phases in user experience development
of OTT services: Black box phase (OTT self-adaption), Gray
box phase (mutual adaptation between mobile networks and
•• In phase 3, mobile network capabilities are opened to
OTT services), and White box phase (cross-layer optimization
based on network APIs).
•• In phase 1, mobile networks are black boxes to OTT
services because the networks transmit data only, without
caring about contents. The data transmission capability of
a network is not only related to the network load but also
related to network coverage. In this case, OTT services
are self-adaptive to the network, for achieving better user
experience in various network conditions.
Therefore, openness of mobile network capabilities
becomes an inevitable trend.
OTT services. In this phase, mobile network has prepared
adaptation mechanisms and corresponding capabilities for
most services. The networks can open these mechanisms
and capabilities to OTT services through APIs. Based on
the service scenario, APIs are called by OTT to request
appropriate mechanisms and capabilities to achieve the
requested user experience.

•• In phase 2, mobile networks adapt to OTT services to

improve user experience by adjusting data transmission
strategies, especially wireless resource scheduling
mechanisms, based on the service type. In this case, mobile
networks must know the service type. But, detecting
service type is not easy because OTT services do not
follow standard telecom protocols and change frequently.

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 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

Relationship Between Network , Service and Experience

User experience is a comprehensive index for adaptation between service characteristics and network capabilities (such as
bandwidth, delay, and packet loss rate). In the whole service session, more network capabilities mean more closely fulfilling the
service traffic requirements and better user experience.

To know network capability requirements of an OTT service,

Figure 2-2 Relationship between network, service and first it is needed to establish the user experience requirements
experience (KQI reference) for the OTT service, and then analyze the
required network capabilities based on traffic characteristics.
Service For example, for 360p videos, the network bandwidth must be
characteristics more than three times of its bitrate to meet the initial waiting
User time of smaller than 7s. However, smooth play can be ensured
experience as long as the network bandwidth is 1.1 times of the video
bitrate.
Network
capabilities
Although the industry has defined and standardized lots of
methods for network QoS and service QoE evaluation, it still
has no uniform QoE benchmark.

Analysis on KQIs for OTT Services

User Experience
User experience is a subjective feeling of a user when using a service. For OTT services carried on mobile networks, besides the
service quality itself (such as video resolution), the user feeling can be reflected in terms of service response speed, accuracy,
usability, interest, and irritation. In addition to the user's own factors (emotion, occupation, age, education, and so on), other key
factors affecting OTT user experience are the network technology, fee, terminal, and service. This article focuses the impact of
mobile network on the user experience.

Figure 3-1 User experience factors

Speed Accuracy Usability Interest Irritation ……

OTT user experience

Network Fee Terminal Service ……

User experience factors

12 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

MBB services grow more rapidly after smart devices spring
up. Today, people can use smart devices to access all services
provided by OTT, which run on the PC before. However,
mobile network development relatively lags behind the OTT
services. Even in developed countries, such as Europe and
the United States, users cannot enjoy networks because the
fee is high and the mobile network cannot provide sufficient
bandwidth for all users. Today, Mobile Broadband networks
mainly include 3G and LTE networks. GSM/Edge networks
are still being used. Currently, large traffic consuming services,
such as video, are performed over Wi-Fi in most cases.
Man-machine interaction delay is the most important index of
user experience, especially for TCP based services. Interaction
delay includes initial response delay upon service startup
and interaction response delay in the service process. If the
interaction delay is smaller than the human perception delay, it
is known as zero waiting time. Besides OTT factors including
service design, service server configuration and deployment,
and so on, the other key factors affecting the service interaction
delay are network bandwidth, delay, and packet loss rate.
User experience is improved at the pace of mobile network
technology development. Figure 3-2 shows the impact of
network development on user experience. For example, in
the initial phase, the GPRS data rate was only 40 kbps, round
trip time (RTT) was larger than 600 ms, and page response
delay was larger than 10s. Whereas, in the LTE network, the
maximum single-user throughput can reach up to 150 Mbps or
higher, RTT can reach up to about 10 ms, and the page response
delay can be within 3s.

Figure 3-2 Impact of networks on user experience

700 waiting time(s) 3G waitingtime:3-5s

LTE waitingtime:1-3s
600 12 5G waitingtime:<1s
11
500 10 GSM
Latency(ms)

9
400
8 Zero waiting time is
300 7 the goal and trend of
6
3G user experience
200 5 development.
4
100 3
2 LTE
0 1
GPRS EDGE EDGE WCDMA HSDPA HSUPA LTE 0
GSM 3G LTE 5G Network development
Rel'87 Rel'99 Rel'4 Rel'99
Network technology development Impact of technical development on user experience

Zero waiting time is the trend of user experience development.

To achieve zero waiting time, not only the network capabilities
need to be improved, the network also needs to provide
appropriate capabilities based on service characteristics in
different development phases. For example, for video services
based on HTTP Progressive Download (HPD) mode, a higher
bandwidth can bring a smaller initial buffering delay. In
addition, higher initial buffering at terminal can increase the
coverage tolerance of mobile network when playing video.

13 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services
KQI Reference for Mainstream OTT
Services
The KQI reference must adapt to the current technical
capabilities and economic level and be improved at the pace of
technical and economic development. The KQI reference must
also meet the expectation of most users. The industry does not
have the unified method for establishing the KQI reference and
uses different methods to evaluate user experience. The most
widely used methods are questionnaire and expert assessment.
Both methods need heavy manpower and are unstable (affected
by the expert group members). This article aims to establish the
KQI reference based on the existing user experience and then
optimize the KQI reference using the man-machine interaction
analysis based on human perception.
Figure 3-3 Statistics evaluation method based on actual user experience
The OTT Service KQI falls under
Single-user service
normal distribution, and percentage of
experience KQI good and excellent is higher than 80%
Excellent
Good
Bad
Service experience
proportion
This article provides the Key Quality Indicators (KQI) reference
for four mainstream OTT services: web browsing, streaming,
VoIP, and micro-blog.
Web browsing
•• Home page response latency: indicates the duration from
entering a correct website address in the address bar and
pressing Enter to the time when the browser parses and
displays any content(for example, the title of page) of the
web page (the user feels she/she visit a correct web page).
•• Page display latency: indicates the duration for the browser
to display the full web page after the user enters a correct
website address and presses ENTER.
14 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3
•• Statistics evaluation method based on existing user
experience: In a scenario with sufficient bandwidth,
user experience tests are performed on popular services
and then classified the statistics data based on normal
distribution to obtain excellent, good, and bad-level KQI
references. The KQI references described in this article are
obtained through this method.
•• Man-machine interaction based on human perception:
The research focuses on The human perception including
vision, hearing, and touch. Through this research, the
basic and best human perception thresholds are measured.
Human perception could be affected by different
environment conditions and psychological factors. Huawei
mLAB uses the mentioned method to further optimize the
KQI reference.
The optimal KQI reference will
achieve a better tradeoff point between
user experience and network load
Number of
users per cell
Number of users per cell
•• Web page display success rate: indicates the percentage of
correct web pages downloaded.
Streaming
•• Initial buffering duration: indicates the interval from the time
clicking the play button to the time when the video starts.
•• Maximum single-buffering duration: indicates the maximum
buffering time for a single pause during the video is playing.
•• Rebuffering frequency: indicates the number of rebuffering
times during the video is playing.
•• Rebuffering duration: indicates the total rebuffering duration
upon pauses during the video is playing.
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 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

VoIP
•• Ringing latency: indicates the duration from the time when
the caller presses the call button to the time when the caller
hears the ring back tone.
•• Call setup latency: indicates the duration from the time when
the callee presses the accept button to the time when the call
is set up.
•• Call setup success rate: indicates the percentage of
successful call setups during the period from the time when
the caller initiates a call to the time of call setup, excluding
failures caused by not being accepted.
•• Speech latency: indicates Mouth to Ear Delay (total time for the
voice to be transmitted from the speaker to the listener).
•• MOS (speech quality): indicates Mean Opinion Score, a
key indicator used to evaluate the speech quality in the
telecommunications system.
Micro-blog
•• Blog refresh latency (25 posts): indicates the duration
from clicking refresh to the time when the web page is all
displayed
•• Blog post latency (text with 140 characters): indicates the
duration from clicking send to the time when a message is
successfully sent.
•• Blog post latency (with images: 50–200 KB after
compression): indicates the duration from clicking upload
to the time when a message indicating successful upload is
displayed.
•• Blog browsing latency (with images: 50–200 KB): indicates
the duration from clicking download to the time when a
message is successfully downloaded.

Table 3-1 KQIs reference for mainstream OTT services in UMTS Network

Service Type Reference of User Experience (UMTS)

CA Excellent Good

Home page response latency: < 1s
Page display latency: < 4s(Page Document Size<
Web browsing
300KB and embedded objects quantity < 20
Web page display success rate: > 96%
Home page response latency: 1~1.5s
Page display latency: 4~10s(Page Document Size<
300KB and number of resources < 20)
Web page display success rate: 90%~96%

Initial buffering duration: < 5s (240P), < 7s (360P)

Initial buffering duration: 5~8s (240P), 7~9s (360P)
Maximum single-buffering duration: < 3s
Maximum single-buffering duration: < 6s
Streaming Rebuffering frequency: ≤ one time/1h video
Rebuffering frequency: ≤ two times/1h video playing
playing
Rebuffering duration: < 8s/1h video playing
Rebuffering duration: < 3s/1h video playing

Ringing latency: < 3s Ringing latency: 3~4s

Call setup latency: < 1.5s Call setup latency: 1.5~2.5s
VoIP Call setup success rate: > 98% Call setup success rate: 90%~98%
Speech latency: < 200 ms Speech latency: 200~400 ms
MOS: > 4.0 MOS: 3.0~4.0

Blog refresh latency (25 posts): < 4s
Blog post latency (text with 140 characters): <
Microblog 2s; (with images: 50~200 KB): < 5s
Blog browsing latency (with images: 50~200
KB): < 4s
Blog refresh latency (25 posts): 4~8s
Blog post latency (text with 140 characters): 2~3s
Blog post latency (with images: 50–200 KB): 5~10s
Blog browsing latency (with images: 50~200 KB):
4~8s

15 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight
Characteristics of Mainstream
OTT Services
Service Characteristics
Service characteristics include pattern and bitrates requirements
of a service session. These characteristics are closely related
to user experience and determine the network capabilities
required for each session. If network can meet the maximum
bitrates of all service sessions, such network is no longer the
bottleneck of user experience. However, such network requires
higher deployment costs. Service characteristics study aims to
provide on-demand network capabilities for service sessions to
guarantee required user experience at affordable network costs.
•• Service characteristics can reflect the actual requirements
to the mobile network, determining the basic network
capability requirements.
•• Service characteristics reflect the characteristics of
interactions between users and services.
•• Study of service characteristics helps network self-
improvement and determines the opening requirements of
the network capabilities.
Characteristics of Mainstream OTT
Services
Web browsing
•• Session characteristics: Interactive session, intermittent
traffic, not requiring continuous traffic assurance. For a
single service session, a higher bandwidth and a smaller
delay can bring better user experience.
•• Contents characteristics: page size, embedded object
quantity, embedded object size, connected hosts quantity,
and compression. The contents characteristics impose great
impact on user experience.
•• Symmetry: Asymmetry, Downlink traffic is consumed in
most cases. However, uplink traffic is consumed when file
upload.
•• Cache-ability: Caching supported. HTML5-based websites
support links prefetching and caching of internal resources.
•• Transmission protocol: HTTP/TCP
16 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3
Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services
Streaming
•• Session characteristics: Continuous session, and online
video session requiring continuous traffic assurance.
•• Contents characteristics: Units of frame. Frames can be
divided into primary frame and secondary frame. Video
bitrate depends on the coding algorithm and frame rate.
•• Symmetry: Asymmetry, Downlink traffic is consumed in
most cases.
•• Cache-ability: Caching supported. Higher initial buffering at
terminal can reduce the bandwidth requirement during the
video is playing.
•• Transmission protocol: TCP in most cases
VoIP
•• Session characteristics: Continuous session, continuous
traffic assurance in the speech process.
•• Contents characteristics: Voice is the basic element. Voice
rate depends on the coding algorithm.
•• Symmetry: Symmetry, uplink and downlink traffic is
symmetrical. In the silent period, speech traffic depends on
the coding algorithm and can be reduced by about 50%.
•• Cache-ability: Caching is not supported.
•• Transmission protocol: UDP in most cases and also TCP
tend to be selected in certain cases
Micro-blog
•• Session characteristics: Intermittent short session
•• Contents characteristics: SMS of less than 250 bytes and
compressed images in most cases
•• Symmetry: Asymmetrical, uplink traffic is consumed in blog
post. However, downlink traffic is consumed in blog refresh
and large-image browsing.
•• Cache-ability: Caching supported for blog refresh and post.
•• Transmission protocol: TCP in most cases
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 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

Table 4-1 Typical data for key service characteristics reference of mainstream OTT services

Service Type Important Service Characteristics

•• Average size transferred over the network per page: 320 KB

•• Average number of unique hostnames encountered per page: 7
•• Average number of GETs per page: 44.56
Web browsing •• Average percentage of compressible bytes that were actually compressed: 66%
•• Image quantity per host: 29.39
•• Average image size per host: 205.99 KB
(Data source: Google)

The popular video resolutions played on mobile terminals are 240P and 360P. Videos include long video and short
video clip. The optimal video resolutions and bitrates for terminals with different screen are as follows:
•• Phone with a 3.5"~5" Screen: 360p(640x360 pixels), bitrate: 600~800 kbps (H.264)
Streaming
•• Phablet with a 5"~7" Screen: 360p(640x360 pixels ), bitrate: 600~800 kbps (H.264)
•• Tablet with a 7"~10" Screen: 480p( 853x480 pixels ), bitrate: 1~1.5 Mbps (H.264)
•• Notebook with a 10"~17" Screen: 720p(1280x720 pixels ), bitrate: 2.5~5 Mbps (H.264)

•• Voice data is transmitted in P2P mode and the size of most voice data packets are small.
•• When there is a direct route between the caller and the callee, the shortest path is established through shortest
VoIP path detection for P2P communication to reduce the path delay.
•• Based on dynamic coding algorithms, the voice bitrate can be adjusted based on the network status. Skype: 6~40
kbps, Viber: 6~120 kbps

•• Refresh: In average, each blog post consumes about 5.2 KB IP traffic and consumes a maximum of about 10 KB
Microblog because of small images.
•• Upload/Download: Most images are 50 KB~ 200 KB.

Mobile Network Capability

Requirements for OTT
Services
Mobile Network Capability
Requirements for Service
Achieving good-level user experience is the basic network
requirement. The first task of network planning and
optimization is to determine network capability requirements
for each OTT services, and then calculate for each user. Based
on the KQI reference and service characteristics, Huawei
mLAB has established the network capability requirements
reference for mainstream OTT services in Table 5-1.

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 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

Table 5-1 Network capability requirements reference for mainstream OTT services

Wireless Network Requirements (UMTS)

User IP
Service Type Experience RTT Jitter Packet User Experience
Level Bandwidth (kbps)
(ms) (ms) Loss
Rate (%)

Excellent > 512 < 80 < 50 <5 Web browsing is smooth.

Web
browsing Good > 256 < 150 < 160 <5 Users feel some delay.

Initial buffer phase: > 1024 (240P), >

2400 (360P) Video starts quickly and has
Excellent < 120 < 50 <1
Playing phase: > 300 (240P), > 780 very smooth experience.
(360P)
Streaming
Initial buffer phase: > 512 (240P), >
1200 (360P) Video starts with some delay
Good < 120 < 50 <1
Playing phase: > 256 (240P), > 660 and is not very smooth.
(360P)

Call setup is rapid. Users

Excellent > 128 (uplink and downlink) < 60 < 50 < 0.5 are unaware of conversation
latency and the voice is clear.
VoIP Call setup has a short delay.
Users are aware of slight
Good > 64 (uplink and downlink) < 130 < 180 <1
conversation latency and the
voice quality is good.

Blog browsing is quick and

Excellent > 256 (uplink and downlink) < 100 < 50 <5
smooth.
Microblog
Blog browsing has some delay
Good > 128 (uplink and downlink) < 120 < 160 <5
than excellent.

Network Capability Figure 5-1 Single-user network capability requirements

Requirements for User Cumulative probability for services with good-level or higher user experience
120%
Together with the concurrence rate of
services, network capability requirements 100%

for service can be used to calculate network 80%

capability requirements for each user. Figure Over 90%
CDF

60%
5-1 shows the UMTS (including HSPA)
bandwidth requirements regarding good 40%
or higher user experience for a single user
20%
and the average single-user throughput of 1
Mbps can guarantee users to enjoy good or 0%
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
excellent level experience in more than 90%
Throughput(kbit/s)
of mobile traffic.

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 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

Summary and Prospect

The long-term goal of operators is to build networks enabling

users to enjoy excellent-level experience; meeting this goal is Figure 6-1
a long process with huge investment. As described in chapter Coordination between OTT and mobile network
5 , to guarantee good-level experience for most traffic, the
throughput of 1 Mbps anytime anywhere should be ensured.
User
Therefore, how to provide excellent-level user experience for
experience
VIP users while ensuring good-level user experience for most User experience
users is an important subject. improvement

Ca
pab
ion
Network capability openness is an important measure to

Mutual adaptation

ilit
tat
ap

yo
ad
improve user experience and network resource utilization

pen
lf-
Se

nes
efficiency. With network capability openness, the network will

s
become more efficient and the network capability status can
be used by OTT to dynamically adjust network appetite in real User OTT Mobile
time. In such way, services can have better experience and Services
Adaptation Network
have less pressure on network. For example, when the network characteristics capabilities
is idle, OTT services with caching ability can increase the
buffering at terminal, reducing network consumption in case of
congestion.

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 MBB Insight Analysis Report on UMTS Network Requirements for OTT Services

Acronym or Abbreviation
Acronym or Abbreviation Full Name
3G Third Generation Cellular network
A
API Application Programming Interface
C
CDF Cumulative Distribution Function
E
Edge Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution
G
GPRS General Packet Radio Service
GSM Global System for Mobile Communications
H
HPD HTTP Progressive Download
HSDPA High Speed Downlink Packet Access
HSPA High Speed Packet Access
HSUPA High Speed Uplink Packet Access
K
KQI Key Quality Indicator
L
LTE Long Term Evolution
M
MBB Mobile broadband
MOS Mean Opinion Score
O
OTT Over-The-Top
Q
QoE Quality of experience
R
RTT Round-Trip Time
T
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
U
UDP User Datagram Protocol

References
111 [Web metrics: Size and number of resources]: Sreeram Ramachandran, Software Engineer, https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/web-metrics

222 [New Vision for User Experience Evaluation: Mental Load Measurement for Users]: http://mux.baidu.com/?p=2963

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 MBB Insight OSSii, Reshaping NBI Integration

OSSii,
Reshaping NBI Integration
Lin Yanqing

Director, Huawei Wireless Network OSS & Service Marketing Operation

16+ year’s industry experience. He joined Huawei in 1997, worked as R&D engineer for 5 years.
Then he worked in solution sales and marketing area till now.
He has multiple years’ working experience in overseas’ market.

interface) developing team in Huawei Shanghai R&D center,

NBI-A personal experience recalled his first experience on NBI work 10 years back. “I
graduated in 2005, but in 2003 as a graduate trainee, I started
my career on what was called ‘NBI squad’”, he took one sip

I
of heavy tea and smiled, “it was tough in the first year, a real
It’s a Friday afternoon in April, sitting in one of many
journey”. Looking outside, the huge south wing of the center
“working islands” in the R&D lab, Gu Ke, who is a veteran
extends beyond the line of sight.
of OSS(Operations Support System) NBI (north bound

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 MBB Insight OSSii, Reshaping NBI Integration

In 1990’s, Telecom network architecture in 1990s was silo-based,
so were network element management system (EMS). There
was one EMS for access network, and one for transmission and
IP network each, and the subsequent boom of GSM networks
required their own EMS as well, but it wouldn’t be for at least
another decade that NBI development would warrant significant
industry attention.
Starting in 2000, due to UMTS deployment and more services
offering to the end user, to improve operation and maintenance
efficiency, some operators began enhancing Network
Management system (NMS) to unify network operations across
different technologies and different vendors, and reducing service
A NMS is responsible for whole-network management, normally
supports simultaneous operation of multiple technologies and
vendors.
3GPP defines a “Manager” entity existing in the NMS and an
“Agent” entity in the EMS, the “Manager” entity communicates
with the “Agent” entity to realize network management
functions. The interface between these two is called the NBI.
Figure 1: NBI Model
NMS
Manager

Notification
Operation

Operation
to market time.

response
NBI
Though standards for NBI interfaces had been defined by this
time, their realization was different for each vendor. “Not much
Agent
attention was given to the NBI interface in the beginning,”
EMS
Gu recalled. “So it evolved. Different vendors had their own
requirement in realizing an NBI interface, and this led to SBI
integration problems.”
RAN Core

What is NBI? NBI includes basic interfaces for configuration management

In a typical network management system, EMS manages network (CM) interface, performance management (PM), fault
element. The interface between EMS and the network element is management (FM) and security management (SM) interface,
south bound interface (SBI), which is normally vendor-specific as defined by 3GPP below (fixed network NBIs are defined by
and proprietary. TMF):

•• 32.401: Concept and Requirements

PM •• 32.404: Definitions and Template
•• 42.402, 32.405,425: Radio Measurement Specifications

•• 32.111-1: Fault Management; Part 1: 3G Fault Management requirements

•• 32.111-2: Fault Management; Part 2: Alarm Integration Reference Point: Information Service
FM •• 32.111-3: Fault Management; Part 3: Alarm Integration Reference Point: CORBA Solution Set
•• 32.111-4: Fault Management (FM); Part 4: Alarm Integration Reference Point (IRP): Common Management
Information Protocol

•• 32.62X: Generic NRM IRP

CM
•• 32.76X: E-UTRAN NRM IRP

•• 32.371: Telecommunication Management; Security Management Concept and Requirements

•• 32.372: Security Services for Integration Reference Points (IRP): Information Service (IS)
SM
•• 32.373: Security Service for Integration Reference Point (IRP): Common Object Request Broker Architecture
(CORBA) Solution

Although defined in detail, NBIs are still different when implemented in accordance with vendor-specific EMSs since the above
standards do not specify all required parameters.

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 MBB Insight OSSii, Reshaping NBI Integration

Due to legacy reasons, all these interfaces have to support various communication protocols, this adds extra complexity. For
example, Huawei M2000 supports the following protocols:

Figure 2: Huawei M2000 North Bound Interface

NMS
CORBA
ASCII FILE FILE MML CORBA FILE
SNMP CORBA CORBA LDAP
FILE RADIUS

FM PM CM Security Inventory

iManger M2000

CDMA GSM WCDMA LTE WiMAX CN

Three parties are involved in OSS NBI projects integrating

NBI integration challenges interfaces for PM, FM, CM and tracing: network equipment
providers (NEP) like Huawei, Ericsson and NSN; operators;
and NMS vendors like IBM, HP and other smaller ones.

Huawei’s WCDMA solution was first deployed in Europe
in 2005. Gu recalled working on a team that saw its
implementation: “It took us more than six months to integrate
CM, PM and FM interfaces with this one vendor. There were
many sleepless nights on conference calls with NMS vendors
and customers. Back in Shanghai we organized an elite team of
designing and coding professionals, and finally we were able to
deliver, but it was a painful process.”
Gu continued: “A small problem arose between the M2000
and NMS, and it took us three whole weeks to identify the one
faulty NMS configuration – and this was with Huawei, the
customer and the NMS vendor all involved in the discussion
and process. There was a lot of finger pointing going on at the
time, but I began to realize what we were experiencing was an
industry-wide problem.”.
Indeed, NBI integration is an industry challenge, not only
consuming time, but also cost. According to NGMN (next
generation mobile networks) statement in 2012, “Currently
operators yearly spend millions of Euros for the adaptation and
integration of the element managers with the OSS layer.”
How well NEPs, operators and NMS vendors are able to
interact with one another across different business and
technology domains has generally been the determining
factor in how costly an integration project can be. Several
aspects of the working relationship between three parties and
compatibility with legacy systems have contributed to higher
expenditures of time and cost:
111 No business collaboration between above mentioned parties:
NEPs have to negotiate with operators on opened interfaces
case by case, which caused extra effort.
222 No communication mechanism between NEP and NMS
vendors. The NBI normally changes with every software
release and NEPs are obliged to inform operators about the
changes – the operators then need to pass on info about the
changes to the NMS vendors, which become an especially
cumbersome process when NEPs need to implement
impromptu NBI changes. Service time-to-market is adversely
affected as illustrated in the following example and chart below:
aaaNEP announces NBI changes to operator at time index 1
before general availability (GA) (normally three months
before GA). Operator passes on the change to the NMS
vendor at time index 1’.

But why?

23 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight OSSii, Reshaping NBI Integration

bbbIf there are any changes at time index 2 (normally two weeks GA and cause even more time delays.
before GA), NEP needs to inform operator info about changes
dddNEP finally delivers the new version to the operator (normally
for time index 2 arrives at NMS vendor at time index 2’.
as a software patch) and then to NMS vendor. Afterwards,
cccIf there are any additional requests for changes from the the NMS vendor has to do testing and integration to provide
operator, it will be passed on to the NEP and NMS vendor at a GA version to the operator, even in the midst of delays
time indexes 3 and 3’, which could occur after NEP software between the operator’s planned launch and the actual launch.

Figure 3: The NBI Integration Process

1’ 2’ 3’ 4’ GA
NMS vendor

Time delay

Operator
New Planned Actual
requirement launch launch

NEP EMS
1 2 GA 3 4 Patch

333 To support legacy networks, EMS needs to develop and

maintain different interface adaptors for integration with
different NMS. For example, 3GPP recommends CORBA to be
FM standard protocol, but many operators did not deploy this
protocol, still use SNMP and FTP. To support legacy protocol is
also a burden to EMS NBI, which adds complexity and cost.
444 3GPP defines interface, but not content. For example, in 3GPP
alarm interface, there is a “j field”, which stores vendor specific
information, in Huawei’s alarm interface, this section is defined OSSii to solve the challenge
as follows:
“j = NeType: BSC6900 UMTS| NeLocation: Shanghai|
vendor: Huawei| neName: lyy_UO| alarmName: OMU Board
Fault| alarmLocation: Subrack No.=0, Slot No.=21, Hardware What is OSSii?
Type=ETH1 netcard, Fault Cause=Ethernet Port Disconnected| To save the NBI integration cost and time, in May 2013, Ericsson,
appendInfo:” NSN, Huawei jointly announced OSSii (OSS interoperability
The same field in other vendor’s network is quite simple and initiative), ” The objectives of OSSii is to enable and simplify
different, so the NMS will have different adaption to integrate. interoperability between OSS systems, reducing overall OSS
Since the content could be different, and could change over the integration costs and enabling shorter time-to-market” (see www.
software version, NMS vendors need to develop and adapt to ossii.info )
this difference and change. “OSSii is based on FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory)
“Technology is migrating to converged network platform for principle”, stated Ocean Sun, who is heading Huawei wireless
different radio standards, so is the network management system”, network OSS & Service product management department, “any NMS
stated by one leading operator in Europe, “to converge network vendors can join the initiative following the defined process. Healthy
management system, NBI integration efficiency should be competition in this area is encouraged. Finally the industry will benefit
improved” from better off-the- shelf and shorter time- to- market OSS products”.

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 MBB Insight OSSii, Reshaping NBI Integration

How it works?
The following process details how interested NMS solution
vendors join OSSii:
AAAStep 1: Sign memorandum of understanding (MoU) with
each initiating party (Huawei, Ericsson, NSN).
BBBStep 2: Negotiate with each initiating party and sign
bilateral agreement.
CCCStep 3: NBI interfaces including CM, PM, FM and trace
interface opened to the joining NMS vendor.
DDDStep 4: Initiating party provides necessary facilities and
testing services to carry out testing and pre-integration.
EEEStep 5: NMS vendor releases OSS product.

Figure 4: OSSii Participating Procedure

Inter-
Bilateral Sharing of Product
OSSii MoU
Agreement interfaces
operability
release
initiating testing
parties

Parties jiining
the community

The following details how OSSii improves integration
efficiency and saves costs:
AAANEP provides NBI documents to NMS vendor at
time index 1 (normally three months prior to GA);
interoperation lab and service are also made available.
BBBPending changes, NEP will issue notice before GA and
pass the change to NMS vendor.
CCCIf the operator has any new requirements, it will be passed
to NEP at time index 3 and to the NMS vendor at time
index 3’.
DDD NEP provides a patch at time index 4, almost the same
time the NMS vendor provides the GA version

Figure 5: The NBI Integration Process with OSSii

New requirement Planned launch

Operator

1’ 2’ 3’ GA
NMS vendor

OSSii Providing NBI documet, integration LAB,integration service

NEP EMS
1 2 GA 3 4 Patch

25 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

 MBB Insight OSSii, Reshaping NBI Integration

OSSii makes it much easier for NMS vendors to develop OSS is driving the project from Huawei side. “The MBB industry is
applications since operators no longer have to act as middlemen developing very fast, now network virtualization and openness
between the NEP and NMS vendors. are a hot topic, in future, OSSii’s business model could be a
good reference for network capability virtualization.”
And since NMS vendors will be able to reach agreements
with NEPs when joining OSSii, overall costs are reduced by
eliminating the need to negotiate on a case-by-case basis.
“We received positive response from industry partners and our
customers and we believe this will help building a healthy NBI
eco-system”, said Ocean Sun.

Back in Shanghai, Gu explained that OSSii “provides a

platform for NEPs and NMS vendors that enables better
collaboration, enhances pre-integration efficiency before
software launches, and cuts down on time constraints for
deployment.”

What’s Next?
“OSSii paves the way for further NBI collaboration and
redefines the NBI integration business model for the first time
in the OSS ecosystem”, commented Dr. Mathias Gabrysch, who

26 JULY 2013 ● ISSUE 3 Contents

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