Poor voice quality will not be tolerated by your customers – identify and attack problems before they become epidemic.
"I hear every third word… If you don’t fix my problem, I’m going to your competition."
Customers can tolerate the occasional slow download speed, but they do not tolerate poor voice service. Voice quality issues can stem from a variety of sources: bad phones, distance from antennas, incorrect network settings, network congestion, and more. Without the proper Media Assurance toolset, identifying the problem area becomes guesswork through a time consuming process of trial and error.
One customer called a carrier’s customer care center complaining about persistent voice quality issues. The carrier tried to compensate the customer but the situation only became more aggravated - to the point where the customer was threatening to cancel service. This subscriber was an early adopter of a new high quality voice service offering and was experiencing packet loss on all of his phone lines. The operator’s field engineers had been dispatched on-site several times, but every test proved the lines operationally normal. The carrier was at risk of losing this customer and potentially several others.
1 in 6 would change providers for a better internet video experience.
The field support team escalated the trouble ticket to the operations group. The engineer generated several test calls to the problem site using the Media Assurance toolkit in order to verify the issues. Examining the test results, the engineer was able to conclude that the problem was intermittent. A deeper historical view across the network revealed that the problem was localized to a single Media Gateway, which was hosting the new service offering. The engineer then looked at individual signaling and media sessions for subscribers hosted by that gateway, and was able to narrow the problem down to a stuttering line card. The engineer then dispatched a field technician to replace the card.
Most carriers will be familiar with cases such as this one. These cases are often difficult to troubleshoot, expensive to resolve, and frequently impact on revenue. With Tektronix Communications’ Media Assurance solution, this carrier was able to turn a dissatisfied customer’s experience into a customer success story, and at the same time avoid the loss of other customers. These types of issues are going to happen in any carrier network - they cannot be avoided. You need a suite of tools that ensure you don’t suffer prolonged consequences.