Rohde & Schwarz And Tutela Integrate Drive Test And Crowdsourced Mobile Network QoE Test Solution

Posted by Rohde & Schwarz

A partnership agreement has been reached between Rohde & Schwarz and Tutela, the world’s largest mobile network crowdsourcing test company, to bring the most comprehensive insight into network performance and quality to the mobile industry. The existing benchmarking and optimization drive test solutions from Rohde & Schwarz will be enhanced with crowdsourced network performance data and tools from Tutela, enabling mobile network operators to build a complete picture of end users’ Quality of Experience (QoE), benchmark their network against competitors, and prioritize network optimization investments.

Mobile network operators are facing the challenge of truly understanding their subscribers’ QoE for voice, video, and data. This requirement will expand and become more critical with the emergence of 5G and IoT use cases. To gain deep insight into a network’s performance and quality, data gathered under precise, controlled conditions during drive tests can be supplemented with crowdsourced data collected by applications running on subscribers’ smartphones. After post-processing, the combined data creates a complete understanding of network performance and quality. This robust and insightful intelligence is the basis that helps operators understand their network, benchmark it against competitors, and identify and prioritize investment decisions.

A Memorandum of Understanding between Tutela and Rohde & Schwarz has been signed, providing Rohde & Schwarz with access to Tutela’s crowdsourced data and Tutela with access to Rohde & Schwarz NQDI database structure. As a consequence, Rohde & Schwarz customers will be able to supplement their field-based methods of network testing with Tutela’s global crowdsourced data. In addition, Rohde & Schwarz will be able to use Tutela’s data within its own test and measurement solutions. Tutela’s network collects over 30 billion mobile quality measurements every day, from more than 250 million devices around the world, more than any other crowdsourcing test company. This enables operators to confidently derive insights from a number of customer experience metrics including signal strength and quality, device usage, and download speed patterns.

Hanspeter Bobst, Vice President of Rohde & Schwarz mobile network testing, said: “Tutela has emerged as the leader in crowdsourced mobile network testing and we are extremely pleased to partner with them to integrate its products into ours in order to offer customers the most comprehensive insight into end-user QoE on the market.”

Hunter Macdonald, CEO at Tutela, said: “We’re delighted to be working with Rohde & Schwarz to broaden and extend the range of networking test and measurement tools available to our joint customers. Our crowdsourced data will complement the data collected through Rohde & Schwarz’s powerful field testing equipment and services to give customers the best of both worlds: 24×7 monitoring and benchmarking via crowdsourcing combined with the unparalleled depth and precision of field testing.”

Tutela tests mobile networks in a way that represents the day-to-day usage and experience of mobile users. The methodology and configuration simulate typical mobile user behavior, such as accessing websites or downloading and sending images, rather than testing for maximum potential speeds under optimal test conditions.

Rohde & Schwarz presents its mobile network testing capabilities at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in hall 6, booth #6C51 from February 25 to 28, 2019.―CT Bureau