VPIsystems: Second Wave of Wireless Expansion Calls for Transport Planning

As the non-incumbent wireless operator in Russia, Sky Link’s backhaul expenses were becoming unbearable. Like many wireless operators in what Holmdel, N.J.-based VPIsystems’ vice president of carrier operations, Casem Majd, called the second wave of wireless expansion, it was time for Sky Link to turn its attention from growing the radio access network to refining its backhaul architecture.

Two factors are driving wireless operators to begin addressing the planning and network design issues around backhaul. The first is that it is simply overdue; the second is a response to next generation services.

“The first wave of growth was of a geographic nature. Operators wanted to reach as big a market as possible in the shortest period of time. That was the 2G strategy — just grow,” Majd said. “Now with second wave of expansion going to 3G and expanding service portfolios of high-bandwidth services that are generating huge amounts of traffic, they have to continually look for new ways of managing backhaul and core infrastructure.”

Operators like Sky Link have to strike a balance between adding sufficient backhaul support to ensure the quality of experience for users and minimizing backhaul expenses. Sky Link is using VPIsystems' network resource planning system, OnePlan, to strike this balance.

The CDMA operator leases its backhaul from other carriers. This accounts for approximately 30 percent to 40 percent of its operating expense.

“They are very keen to reduce their dependency on those operators and maximize their own fiber network,” said Jim Hobby vice president of sales in EMEA for VPIsystems.

OnePlan helps Sky Link optimize its network for peak efficiency. And although it is too early to tell how much savings VPIsystems can provide them, the company has recently demonstrated in a recent test on a U.S.-based wireless service provider’s network, that it could eliminate 36 percent of a metro market’s leased lines, which represented an average of almost $1 million in savings per year for the first three years in that one market alone.

Majd said that for another major U.S. wireless operator the company redesigned the backhaul for one of its Wi-Fi markets and saved the operator $4 million over three years. “Multiply that by 10 markets and you are talking abut $20 million to $30 million,” he said.

With OnePlan, Sky Link will be able to simulate multiple network congestion and failure scenarios, enabling the provider to plan for and ensure service quality and continuity for its customers. Sky Link CTO Nikolai Golovkin said his company was the first service provider to launch next generation mobile services in Russia. Using VPIsystems’ OnePlan, the operator will be able to deliver more valuable services to subscribers while ensuring that its network delivers them efficiently and at a quality level that clearly differentiates them from competing offerings.

OnePlan integrates information and requirements from wireless service providers’ business planning, marketing and engineering departments to aloow for the proper planning and desig for next generation services. “Everyone knows what the final destination will be — a converged data centric network — but how to get from Point A to Point B is where the complexity is and why you need good planning tools,” Majd said.