Astellia Optimizes Bouygues Telecom's Radio Network

Astellia announced recently that it "..affirmed today its position as preferred vendor for network optimization by performing successful, in-depth radio optimization campaigns for Bouygues Telecom, France. Astellia’s monitoring solution is already deployed on Bouygues Telecom’s 2G, 3G and 4G networks and analyzes network performance from RAN to Core. 

Astellia now further strengthens its partnership with Bouygues Telecom by performing well targeted radio optimization campaigns. Astellia’s highly skilled radio experts analyzed the activity of more than 2 million subscribers to optimize RF coverage & quality of Bouygues Telecom’s 2G and 3G networks in Paris. 

Astellia’s radio optimization activities focused on the detection of cell overshooting, crossed sectors, PSC/BSIC clashes. Reducing the need for costly drive tests, Astellia pinpointed coverage holes, traffic hotspots and detected bad RF conditions.

See "Astellia and Bouygues Telecom strengthen partnership with collaboration on radio optimization" - here. 

Bouygues Telecom Adds QoS Optimization

Astellia announced today that it is ".. deepening its relationship with Bouygues Telecom. Bouygues Telecom [see "Bouygues Telecom [France] Monitors LTE with Astellia" - here] has selected Astellia’s Nova suite to complete its network quality of service monitoring system, go further in optimizing quality of service for its customers and perfect its knowledge of customer usage".

See "Bouygues Telecom chooses Astellia to complete its network monitoring and service quality optimisation system" - here.

Bouygues Telecom Deploys GENBAND's fring OTT Service

GENBAND, that acquired recently the VoIP service fring (estimated price is $40-50M) announced that "French operator Bouygues Telecom has selected the fring Over the Top (OTT) service to provide Bouygues customers with free phone calls and SMS on Wi-Fi while abroad"

Benoît Torloting [pictured], Head of digital & B&YOU at Bouygues Telecom said: “Leveraging the fring OTT solution, we eliminate cellular network roaming charges and deliver our commitment to quality-cost competitive advantage even when our customers are travelling worldwide.”

See "fring Eliminates Roaming Costs for French Mobile Users" - here.

NI Deployments [261]: Bouygues Telecom [France] Monitors LTE with Astellia

 
Astellia announced its ".. collaboration with Bouygues Telecom during its LTE network trial phase to help them guarantee the best quality of service. Astellia’s Nova monitoring solution allows Bouygues Telecom to analyze network performance, handset behavior and mobile applications usage and how they interact with each other".

See "Bouygues Telecom partners with Astellia for 4G service launch" - here.

A "Bizarre" French Idea – Data Caps on Fixed Service

  
The press reports that "Three major internet service providers in France are discussing plans to introduce caps on "unlimited" web access - making heavy users pay a surcharge .. SFR, Orange and Bouygues are looking at the case for bringing in new limits on the packages they offer to domestic customers, in order to better control traffic levels .. Free said it had "reservations" and Numéricable said it was "not involved" in the talks".

We use to see this strategy with wireless providers, but this one refers to fixed service. Nevertheless, we have seen this before in other places (Comcast, Canada, AT&T - DSL)- but still Arcep, the regulator said the idea was "bizarre".

"One of the most vocal critics of the idea this weekend was Marine Le Pen (pictured), the leader of the far-right Front National. She is drawing up an "internet freedom" law including a clause that would make web access "a fundamental right for every citizen" (here, French). 

   

See "Operators plan cap on 'unlimited' web" (here) or "Bientôt la fin de l'internet illimité à domicile ?" (here, French)

Traffic Management Deployments (33): Bouygues [France] Uses Openwave to Manage Smartphone Traffic

    

Openwave announced that "Bouygues Telecom [3rd largest mobile carrier in France, 10.5M mobile subscribers] .. has expanded its existing Openwave Traffic Management solution .. Bouygues is expected to manage their rapidly growing mobile data traffic with more dynamic control of a diverse range of IP data flows for both operational improvement as well as the delivery of new service offering ..With Openwave’s traffic management solution, Bouygues Telecom is applying IP data policies for Smartphone subscribers; including service, content, volume, and time based policies."

See "Bouygues Telecom Expands 3G Data Traffic Management Capabilities with Openwave" - here.

“Openwave’s solution serves as a central control point for Smartphone traffic mediation directly in the data path,” said Jean-Christophe Reversat, Director of Core Network and Services Engineering, Bouygues Telecom. “With Openwave, we are able to apply dynamic application level policy rules through a rich set of data sources, including existing policy and traffic management systems, while effectively managing the overall cost of service delivery. Collaborating with Openwave ensures we are continuously improving the user experience and managing traffic growth for the long-term.”

A bit cryptic quote, isn't it? Actually most of the press release uses terms such as "expected", "will enable", "will potentially allow", "also allows" - from which I can't understand what is the actual or planned use of the Openwave system (which is not fully identified), and whether the "existing policy and traffic management systems" are Openwave's or not.

France: Mobile Data Speed Increased by 50% During 2009

 

ARCEP, the French regulator, published the results of Quality of service of 2G and 3G Mobile Networks survey for 2009.

See the press release - "QUALITY OF SERVICE OF MOBILE NETWORKS"- here and the report (here, French)

Regarding data services, the survey finds that - "File transfer tests were performed in the 12 largest metropolitan areas in France, and in 20 towns and cities with a population of between 50,000 and 400,000, using USB keys or PCMCIA cards plugged into a laptop computer, or directly via the netbooks that telecom carriers sell. The results of these tests reveal average speeds that are more than one and a half times higher than those obtained in 2008: an average download speed of 2.2 Mbit/s and more than 5 Mbit/s for the fastest services and, for sending files, an average upload speed of 1.2 Mbit/s and more than 1.7 Mbit/s for the fastest services. These speeds were achieved using the most high-end solution that each telco markets in its retail outlets. These bitrates are comparable to the access rates supplied by entry-level ADSL fixed network services.

The following tables show the results of uploading a 1MB and downloading a 5 MB files in the top 12 cities of France (map below), by the 3 mobile operators (First line is the % of files received;  next lines are 90, 50  and 10 percentile speeds). The two big players, Orange and SFR,  results are similar, while Bouygues is significantly lower in all categories.