Home|T-Mobile Austria – SmartCM for enhanced network operations

T-Mobile Austria – SmartCM for enhanced network operations

Customer

T-Mobile Austria (which rebranded as Magenta Telekom in 2019) is a leading wireless provider, constantly striving to improve the quality of service they deliver to their 5+ million subscribers. They support 2G, 3G, 4G and NB-IoT network coverage, and launched 5G in 2019.

Challenge

Magenta’s network had successfully grown over the years. As they had expanded and added new technologies, their legacy network configuration management tool had not kept pace with their requirements or the size of their network.

TEOCO’s Solution

Within a short timeframe, TEOCO had deployed SmartCM, ensuring the successful transition from Magenta’s legacy configuration management system. Magenta Austria can now perform accurate configuration changes in real-time, reducing operating costs and improving subscriber network quality.

SmartCM provides a centralized, vendor agnostic view of Magenta Austria’s entire network. It automatically monitors and audits the accuracy of how the network is configured and highlights all discrepancies. Furthermore, SmartCM can implement changes directly to the radio access network (RAN), such as new sites, cells, parameters, and neighbors, via its network write capabilities. The solution also enhances Magenta Austria’s reporting capabilities by allowing users to automate the scheduling and distribution of reports with key metrics.

In 2019, Magenta upgraded its SmartCM installation to support its new 5G network. They now benefit from advancements that include zero-touch process automation for their network configuration needs.

Value Generated

In 2018, Driton Emini, Vice President Next-Generation Networks, had this to say: “With SmartCM, we have a futureproof solution for our network configuration as we begin work on our 5G expansion. Our partnership with TEOCO gives us the speed and agility we need to continue to grow our business and maintain the highest quality of service. Being ranked the best radio network in Austria in the 2018 Connect Tests is our proof that we are on the right track.”

In 2019 Helmut Lehermayr, Vice President Radio & Transmission Networks, stated: “We’re proud to say that we have the best performing mobile network in Austria. Receiving industry accolades is gratifying but is ultimately the result of sustained investment and ongoing collaboration with highly valued partners like TEOCO. We have benefitted from TEOCO’s expertise for a while and have been delighted with the performance of its SmartCM solution. Extending its capabilities to our 5G network was a very easy decision to make.”

Following the deployment of SmartCM’s 5G capabilities, we sat down with the Magenta team to better understand how they had benefitted. Here are some of the points they highlighted:

Site Integration Efficiency:

  • “With SmartCM it takes about 5 minutes to generate all necessary transcripts/commfiles for ten site integrations. This is a big improvement, compared to the 4-6 hours it took previously.”
  • “It takes around 6 minutes to generate all necessary transcripts/commfiles to activate a feature on 15,000 cells. The same action previously took, at minimum, six hours – and often up to ten hours.”
  • “Flexible cabinet, slotting and radio module designs allow quick and easy integration of new hardware into the live network. If we decide to change how we build our radio sites, we only have to update our reference data, and within hours we can support any new hardware design.”

Network Optimization Efficiency:

  • “We did a clean-up of around 1,000,000 discrepancies (Live vs Plan) with SmartCM in a couple of days. Cleaning up the discrepancies was very quick; most of the time was spent on KPI monitoring. A comparable clean-up was not possible at all without SmartCM.”
  • “In case of issues, the plan and live network history can be easily used to analyze the root cause. Within a few seconds, we can view the history of the network, site or cell for the timeframe we are interested in. This saves a lot of time. Previously, we had to spend time looking at different tools and maybe even raw data files to get the same information.”
  • “At the beginning of the workday, all the data is already automatically uploaded and evaluated, so users can begin their daily CM use cases without any delay. This gives us about 2 extra hours in the day to do our CM tasks – or even complete other tasks earlier – all within regular working hours.”

Operational Integrity Improvements:

  • “By automatically collecting new planning data and live network data, SmartCM ensures data quality is maintained. This is because all actions are completed within a workflow, and users have full control and visibility of the current configuration status.”
  • “With SmartCM as the gatekeeper, we have only one tool/interface which does all the necessary centralized network write actions for us. This enables us to fully control/manage access to our network, even on a parameter level. And if needed, gives us the ability to freeze our network for a given time period.”

Learn More

You can learn more about SmartCM here.