Interviewed by InterComms, May 2013

Could you talk us through the key benefits of 2solve and how it helps operators to cut costs and save money ?

2solve presents realtime data to personnel in the network operator organisation. Compared to the traditional OSS tools, however, we do two things differently: Firstly, we provide knowledge bases and algortihms as part of the 2solve solution that enables automated diagnostic reasoning. Secondly, we develop special KPIs indicating the impact of network element performance on key services. Both enable personnel who does not have an engineering background (or just not have the time to investigate all data) to verify if a customer complaint is due to a network incident or not, and if so, to pre-diagnose and send it to the right expert with proper documentation. This speeds up incident management and provides better and more accurate response to customers. To put it simple: By having more people looking at the data, its value increases.

Latvij Mobilas in Latvia have chosen you for their deployment could you explain what you are doing for them and the reason why they chose you ?

First of all, LMT is doing a great job providing great services to more than 1 million subscribers. At the same time, they are first in Latvia to deploy LTE, so they are starting to feel the challenge of a more heterogenious network (already having 2G and 3G running). So, they had to find a way to enable the whole customer care organisation to work efficiently on network incidents, from call center to network operations, and at the same time having specialist teams in the loop. LMT chose 2solve because it enables different types of employees to work together and share information in a nice and simple way. 2solve has an integrated trouble ticket engine which supports sharing data with a minimum of overhead. This can be integrated with other trouble ticket systems or work stand-alone. Besides, they were very happy with the support and collaboration with 2operate during the pilot project leading to the agreement.

What are the main problems that you are finding operators are facing ?

Most operators are currently in the process of deploying LTE and/or femto cells to enable the new, bandwidthdemanding services. These are the first steps towards a heterogenious network (HetNet). However, the investments are done while the operator cannot count of significant revenue growth from such data services. So, they need to find new ways to serve customers and operate the network where costs do not explode with the growing complexity of the network. 2solve simplifies things and enables more personnel to understand the network. It comes with similar dashboards for 2G, 3G, and 4G, independent on the network equipment vendors, so also in case of e.g. vendor swapping, the solution helps to achieve productive operations quickly.

Where do you see 2operate in the future ?

2operate is a new player in the network management solutions market, but we have already proven that we have a concept which competes well with traditional OSS tools. I believe that the telecommunications industry as a whole needs to be more cost-efficient, which means that everybody will need to define and exploit their core business and competencies. 2operate is special by its technical skills in software engineering, computer science/algorithms, and network operations processes. This enables us to simplify operations and to add value to network data which includes both performance data and alarms, as well as subscriber data (Big Data) from e.g. probe-based systems. We believe that this will be our contribution to a more cost-efficient telecommunications industry.