With India's mobile data consumption surpassing usage of the US and China, mobile service providers are working to enhance their network infrastructure to manage and support the growth and ensure quality of customer experience. To this end, India's largest telecommunications services provider Bharti Airtel is integrating Cisco SON suite to manage growth in data and voice traffic, said a statement.
“Our collaboration with Cisco has helped us to dynamically adjust our network during exponential increase in voice and data traffic. We are now taking SON to next level by integrating it with other data sources and machine learning capabilities. This is a path breaking step to put more intelligence in the network and enable us to enhance real-time experience of our consumers,” said Abhay Savargaonkar, director, Networks, Bharti Airtel.
Cisco SON Suite, based on multi-vendor multi-technology (MVMT), self-optimizing network (SON) solution, is a platform and a set of applications that automates the Radio Access Network (RAN).
Cisco said that SON is carrying out optimization based on customer experience and predictive analytics apart from the traditional approach of responding to network degradations. According to technology firm, SON self-healing applications have been enriched for taking proactive actions in near real time, using predictive machine learning and interworking of SON with NOC tools, PM analytics & customer experience analytics platforms.
Cisco said that it is continuously working with Airtel to identify new use cases and enhancing SON capabilities of deployed platform. “Airtel is building a completely automated network platform that self-monitors, adjusts, and modifies without manual intervention,” said Yvette Kanouff, senior vice president, general manager, Service Provider Business, Cisco.
“Working together, we designed an open, hyper-programmable architecture that consolidates Airtel's multi-vendor, multi-domain network into a sleek, agile, unified system capable of scaling to meet the intense demands spanning in and outside its region,” Kanouff said.
