Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has planned to procure automated quality of service (QoS) monitoring and benchmarking tool which would also have support measuring audio and video services, including live streaming as well as social media, including emerging over-the-top (OTT) communication services testing.
According to the official documents, the automated system will bear the specifications including the capacity to test and benchmark QoS across number of mobile operators (i.e. simultaneous and continuous measurement of at least five mobile networks), with the objective to reproduce end user experience in different mobile networks, device types and wireless technologies (i.e. 2G/3G/4G) operational in Pakistan.
The system will have data collection and data analysis (post processing) modules and related services to benchmark voice, SMS and data QoS KPIs for at least five operators simultaneously and will have the capability to expand to include more operators, if required. It would have the capability to perform field tests, measure, benchmark and report QoS Key Advance Indicators (KPIs) as defined in mobile services licensees issued from time to time to cellular mobile operators (CMOs) in Pakistan, as well as global industry standards and best practices.
The system will be required to measure all the QoS KPIs and should support all the technologies including but not limited to Global System for Mobile (GSM)/ Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)/ Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA)/ High Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA)/ High Speed Upload Packet Access (HSUPA)/ High Speed Packet Access+ (HSPA+)/ Long Term Evolution (LTE)/ Voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE)/ Long Term Evolution Advance (LTE-Advance) etc, (i.e. 2nd, 3rd & 4th generation wireless technologies) in all bands/spectrum, carrier aggregation in contiguous/noncontiguous bands/technologies and should be upgradeable to 5G.
The equipment would be able to determine and plot the route and map it with respect to its GPS coordinates. Plotting will only show the relative movements with reference to a starting reference point. The equipment should be interface able with off-the-shelf digitized map of the region, at any time in future with minimum hardware and software up-gradation. All instances have to be time and day stamped. The system should have power measurement accuracies of up to ± 1/2 dB (min). The system should have time dependent measurements accuracies of one-second minimum.
The specification will explicitly indicate the minimum and maximum levels which can be measured by such an instrument. The system should have an extension for indoor / walk test service quality and coverage measurement.
The system would have capability of being up-gradable to consider upcoming mobile network technologies and related Advance parameters, such as VoLTE and 5G etc and active and optimized power control for phone charging. The installation of the QoS system should be in such a way that the set up provides optimal conditions for uninterrupted data collection in a stable environment for reliable test results.
The equipment should be capable of benchmarking multiple scenarios of voice, SMS and data services of least five networks simultaneously and continuously. Moreover, it should have capability to expand and include more operators, if required.
It should support both perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) and perceptual objective listening quality analysis (POLQA) voice/ video quality mean opinion score (MOS) for both narrow and wide band.
The system would support application based testing like, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Netflix etc and should provide flexibility to support multiple device types of multiple vendors including but not limited to smart phones, modems and mini-cards etc.
It should be able to benchmark all possible testing scenarios in auto technology and locked mode. All the technologies 2G/3G/4G and all the bands can be locked also there should be flexibility to lock/unlock any desired technologies.
Further, the tool should be able to lock and test specific Broadcast Control Channel (BCCH)/ Primary Scrambling Code (PSC)/ Physical Cell Identity (PCI)/ Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number(ARFCN)/ Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service (UMTS) Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number (UARFCN)/ Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) Absolute Radio Frequency Channel Number (EARFCN).
It should support minimum 16 handsets for Voice, SMS and Data services simultaneously, besides have the capability to benchmark data services of all the operators simultaneously without any dependency on laptop's modem and without any degradation.
The system should have ability to load Geo Maps, Google Maps, tab/shape and network files etc. Any parameter can be exported in multiple formats like CSV, Txt, Tab, KML/KMZ, etc, both as image and point.
Source: https://www.brecorder.com/2020/01/01/557922/pta-plans-to-procure-automated-qos-monitoring-tool/