Monitoring services for Elisa

Elisa is a telecommunications and ICT service company providing to 2.3 million consumers, businesses and government organisations. They are the leader in the mobile subscriptions and fixed broadband access market in Finland. In October 2013, Elisa and Teleste signed an agreement on the monitoring, remote maintenance and capacity management of cable television and cable broadband networks.

Customer need

Elisa wanted to improve the quality of service experienced by the end-users while reducing the repair costs caused by truck rolls. The aim is that faults will be sorted out, to the extent possible, from the control room, and the emergence of any capacity constraints can anticipated before they become noticeable to the customers. Another aim is to cut down on repair costs carried out in the field, speed up such repairs and to improve the final quality of service received by customers.

Solution to customer’s need

Teleste’s Network Operations Center, NOC, monitors Elisa’s entire CATV/cable modem network. All the glitches are carefully analysed by the NOC before any remedial operations in the field are launched. As far as possible, an effort is also made to correct any issues through measures conducted through remote maintenance.

From the viewpoint of the process, a key role is played by Teleste’s Element Management System (EMS) that has been developed specifically to meet the needs of HFC networks. This EMS system allows for remote monitoring and control of the network devices from the NOC. The system supports multiple simultaneous users while the all-around views and features provided by the system’s user-friendly software bring the management of the entire network infrastructure on an efficient basis.

The EMS System allows the network monitoring specialists quickly to locate any network faults and guide the field technician directly to the relevant spot. At the same time, disruptions experienced by the clients can be minimised by preventing the fault from spreading in the network and limiting its scope.

Capacity Management is carried out so that Teleste monitors utilisation of the network components, anticipates any capacity constraints in the network, and if necessary, suggests areas for improvement.

All in all, the service provided to Elisa includes the following functions:

• 2nd level remote  processing of CATV and cable modem fault reports including fault-by-fault analysis and the examination of the possibility to repair the fault  remotely
• Monitoring of several production systems, such as CMTS and EMS 
• Sending the defects requiring repair in the field over to the contractor’s work queue
• Technical support and guidance for the fault repair contractor working in the field
• Monitoring and further development of network quality

Benefits achieved

• The provided service is a means to create a unified, standardised approach for carrying out truck-rolls.
• Thanks to repairs and preventive measures that can be done remotely, fewer truck-rolls per subscriber are needed. Reduced amount of field work brings in cost savings and cuts down on mean time to repair.
• Faster responses to irregularities in the network and problem prevention improve the final quality of service experienced by the customer.