How to measure real CX -Customer Experience- across and in wireless technologies? Part I

Disclaimer: The opinions and ideas expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

The Internet has become a tool used across the globe to communicate, learn, teach and conduct businesses. The Wireless for Communities model (W4C) empowered a holistic approach to communication worldwide by empowering communities everywhere with digital skills and tools. By building wireless networks that are managed by the communities to secure the community’s benefits for optimal internet connectivity. Most wireless connectivity technologies like UMTS, LTE, and 5G NR are expensive mainly because of the use of the licensed bandwidth. Communities needed something faster, cheaper and more dynamic, thus new carrier-grade services emerged using the unlicensed radio spectrum, the most notable technology is a non-3GPP technology based on IEEE 802.11 equipment we all know it as Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi uses free unlicensed RF bandwidth which makes it inexpensive. Therefore under-served communities worldwide are now connected and empowered at the same time using this cheap technology. Mobile phone data offloading motivated many service providers to build their own massive Wi-Fi networks. However, some challenges remain. While the technical issues of deploying 802.11 wireless networks and mesh wireless networks have largely been solved, there still remains the need for significant work on identifying quality and customer experience and mobility challenges, especially when compared with the other 3GPP technologies.

In recent years, many RF planning and analysis tools for Wi-Fi from companies such as iBwave, Air magnet, ASSET, and AirCom have become more and more efficient and sophisticated in building enhanced RF designs and deployment strategies. However, these tools are still expensive and dependent on the human element for surveying, deployment, and testing. Moreover, there is a missing element which is the performance monitoring for RF across multiple technologies in the same network, and what the customer is really experiencing, not to mention detecting mobility issues after deployment. While some vendors like Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco, and many others have provided tools and solutions to monitor and control their Radio Access nodes, due to the limitation of some technologies such as 802.11, the user equipment cannot provide QoS information on Radio Links for the downlink on the UE side to the AP (unlike other wireless technologies like LTE, UMTS, GSM, and others) which create a gap in assessing the customer experience in our upcoming world of wireless convergence.  

I think we all agree that the most important factor in the entire network lifecycle is customer experience (Cx) in any wireless network, whether in public venues such as stadiums, shopping malls, cafes or the carrier-grade WiFi networks /and I will be focusing on Wi-Fi/, “slow network” is a common complaint that dents the customer satisfaction of the service. At such sites, where several competing providers of WiFi services, a “slow network” rating has a negative impact on the NPC approval rates of a business, service or brand value.

While ITU-T developed MOS for wired networks, some vendors tried to use Wireless-MOS as an indicator, the main problem is that no one agreed on what Wireless MOS really means. Attempts to define WMOS -by some vendors- based on Physical layer status for a session or connection or even number of retransmissions on the Layer 4 is not adequate. ITU-T failed to put an early clear definition for wireless MOS which made it mission impossible to define it properly in such an uncontrolled environment and space While 3GPP filled the gaps in UMTS, LTE, and 5GNR, 802.11 technology still has a big gap to fill.

So, how does one look at wireless technology from the viewpoint of optimal customer experience? How does one examine the customer end-to-end viewpoint along the entire network connectivity lifecycle (3GPP and non-3GPP)? how does one measure the customer satisfaction of a service?

Let me put this question in a different way. What is the best way to measure customer experience across multiple wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, CBRS, LTE, and 5G whether to compare between them or to score an overall user experience?

I will try to answer these questions in Part II.

Toufic Kourbeh