Taming unruly Broadband connections

Martin says, “whilst modern broadband technologies have revolutionised the industry by offering high bandwidth, quick installation times, low costs and improved reliability, this reliability can still be variable. Some of our partners describe managing broadband, particularly copper-based connections, as a wild animal that’s difficult to tame.”

Service providers are increasingly expected to build reliable networks from this lower-cost technology which frequently exhibit soft faults. Although no one can guarantee an entirely fault free service, providers need to be working hard to ensure that any red flags are dealt with as quickly as possible so that the user experience is not negatively affected. Customers may be willing to put up with the occasional outage, but if they have to deal with persistently poor performance, the risk of them walking away is high.

The market norm is that few broadband connections are ever monitored. This is due to the fact that it’s difficult to rely on traditional monitoring systems as they aren’t designed to understand the differing characteristics and speeds of broadband connections. Whilst they may spot complete outages, they miss connections that are occasionally unstable or drop below contractual speed.

“In the world of an overworked and under loved service desk, staff are always overstretched with heavy workloads. The last thing they want, or need is their monitoring system generating too many false positive alerts, caused by inadequate monitoring systems that can’t adapt. This brings about chaotic and expensive support issues,” Martin adds.

“Circuits that appear to be ‘up’ can still be experiencing hidden issues but without visibility of what’s going on beneath the surface, providers can’t be proactive. Consequently, they are rarely able to offer compelling guarantees on broadband services.”

Back in February, Ofcom made a commitment to improve broadband services. This introduced a new voluntary code of conduct which compels service providers to give minimum speed guarantees and inform customers of predicted broadband speeds before they buy. If speeds drop below the promised level, providers have one month to improve performance or contracts can be cancelled with no penalty.

Ofcom’s initiative is aimed primarily at the consumer end of the market, but business users will expect the same level of guarantees, especially as they typically pay more for a business grade of service. This changes how service providers deliver broadband services. They must have accurate information readily available at their fingertips. If an end user is experiencing issues, service desk teams need to be able to see the speed of connections as well as historical patterns to determine where issues started and how long they’ve been occurring in order to find a diagnosis.

It’s essential to have concrete evidence that can’t be argued against so that providers have proof of whether a service level agreement credit is due or not. And in the event where there are stubborn faults, providers can raise these with their upstream telcos and not be held accountable for something which may be out of their control.

Martin explains that his company has recently introduced a service called Broadband Clarity that allows providers to give customer the guarantees necessary to comply with Ofcom’s latest code of conduct. “It delivers full visibility and a clear representation of how individual broadband lines are performing with graphs that show how speeds have changed over time,” says Martin.

Highlight’s advanced threshold engine learns the stable speed for each line and automatically applies an appropriate low speed threshold. Alert sensitivity is configurable to ensure the smallest number of false positives.

“This unique ability to dynamically auto-detect line speeds and adjust sensitivity of alerts makes it simple to meet the challenge of managing thousands of broadband connections effectively and efficiently.”

According to Martin, the broadband market is here to stay and will only expand as technologies like 5G becomes more widely available. “Application software is becoming increasingly sophisticated and will jump to the best available network to ensure its optimum performance. So regardless of whether an application travels over broadband or mobile data, it’s no longer acceptable for those delivering the network to be working in the dark, with no visibility as to whether a connection is performing well or at breaking point.”