Video has, in just a few short years, become an integral part of most operator market strategies. Already, over 100 operators worldwide have launched Gigabit services. In the last two years, more than 20 of these have begun working on plans to deploy 4K video services. Market opportunities are growing, and will open up, with video already having become a fundamental service for ultra-broadband networks.  

By 2019, video traffic will account for more than 80% of the total online traffic. The large-scale management and maintenance of user video experience is set to become a major challenge facing every operator. According to a user video survey conducted by Conviva (a well-known Silicon Valley solutions company dedicated to online video optimization), 35% of users named viewing experience as their number one priority for video services. A third of users find freezing during video playback unacceptable, enough that they would prefer not to watch the video. 84% of users will stop playback within a minute of their experience deteriorating. Therefore, in order to ensure the success of operators' video services, they must adopt a strategy of competitive differentiation by providing users with a better video experience. 

O&M Transformation: From Passive Response to Proactive Management

The traditional video O&M process is as follows: fault occurs on service —— customer reports fault —— fault is identified —— fault is rectified. This process adopts a strategy of passively responding to potential problems. Fault occurrence, sudden burst traffic, and user complaint timing can be hard to predict, and these complaints are usually just the tip of the poor service quality iceberg. The vast majority of quality problems go unreported by users. According to operator statistics on quality loss, only 2% of quality loss events were reported, in keeping with the tip of the iceberg idea. Therefore, proactive O&M is required to resolve quality problems and improve key customer satisfaction. 

Huawei's VideoSense video experience proactive management solution focuses on three key aspects: experience visibility, network optimization, and proactive O&M. By proactively managing video experience, the solution helps operators to identify quality problems and guarantee better user experience, while reducing O&M costs. 

Innovative O&M Mode: User Experience KQI and Network Quality KPI Correlation Analysis

Based on extensive O&M experience, it is apparent that experience deterioration that only affects a single user does not have great impact on user experience. Operators are therefore more concerned about large-scale user experience deterioration. Traditionally, experience KQI and network KPI degradation analysis is done independently, and cannot be automatically associated. During network KPI deterioration, sometimes user experience may not deteriorate, or the impact of the deterioration may be minimal, making it difficult to accurately assess the fault. VideoSense is an innovative solution that tracks both user experience and network quality, and uses this information to implement proactive experience management, through analyzing user experience deterioration data. User experience data is mapped to the network to achieve more accurate fault analysis and identification.

VideoSense also boasts Huawei's inventive overthreshold KQI & KPI link concept. By comparing KQI data when users watch videos and KPI data of bearer networks that services pass through, both automatic identification and filtering of data links can be achieved, helping to determine the causes of video quality deterioration. After obtaining information on the overthreshold KQI & KPI links and devices, the 30s refined monitoring function can be enabled, to help find potentially faulty network elements (NEs). This makes it much easier to discover problems and implement network optimization compared with the traditional mode.

Hebei Telecom: Proactive Management to Improve User Experience 

On November 30, 2016, Hebei Telecom and Huawei jointly launched the innovative VideoSense proactive experience management platform, with monitored IPTV users reaching 500 thousand. The platform has already helped customers to comprehensively transform their passive troubleshooting services to proactive experience management. 

Hebei Telecom uses VideoSense's unified U-vMOS–based standards to map user experience, and achieve proactive video experience management based on user experience KQI and network quality KPI traffic correlation analysis that examines network KPI information such as traffic trends, deterioration areas, and user distribution. VideoSense thereby improves customers' efficiency at handling quality deterioration problems and provides support for the precise construction of networks.