By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Quality of Service is no longer a representative performance metric for the true experience of a broadband services end-user, which is why it must be replaced by the user-centre metric ‘Quality of Experience’. The WHY and HOW of doing exactly that – and how this benefits broadband operators and their customers – is the subject of a new white paper just released by QoE platform provider Aprecomm. The white paper is available here.
Broadband service providers may be completely satisfied with their QoS – meaning bandwidth, latency, jitter, packet loss, etc. – and yet the service as experienced by the end-user may be far from up to scratch. The main issue – says Aprecomm – is that performance beyond the CPE is not visible to the service provider while being the only thing that really matters to the subscriber. Enter QoE: The true measurement of the end-user’s level of satisfaction.
But without a true measurement of QoE, it is of course not possible to introduce improvements in the perceived service quality. Understanding, measuring, and knowing how to optimise QoE is today a critical market differentiator for CSPs, says Aprecomm – and they are right, of course.
The new (and highly recommended) white paper – goes into detail on how to go about this transformation but in essence it has to do with profiling “application behaviour based on real-time demands and their tolerance to network parameters such as jitter, speed, inter-packet gap, packet loss, and queue lengths,” Aprecomm says. The company has to this end developed and patented ‘HISense’ or ‘Happiness Index Sense’, which is a direct measure of the QoE.
One of the most important differences between this and QoS – says Aprecomm – is that HISense is not based on pre-determined thresholds (like in QoS) but based on user perception, behaviour, and real-world conditions, which vary over time and from household to household. The solution uses AI to introduce “self-healing, intuitive’ traffic management that learns and adapts in real time,” Aprecomm says.
For more make sure to download the white paper “Beyond QoS: Why QoE is the Future of Internet Performance Monitoring” here. Also don’t miss Aprecomm speaking at Wi-Fi World Congress Dubai this November 17-19 and read more about Aprecomm’s rapid expansion into the world of AI-based Wi-Fi management here.
/Claus.
