User-Centric Methodology for Objective Assessment of Service Quality in Established Wireless Mobile Communication Networks

Abstract

Public wireless communications have undergo tremendous growth in terms of deployment and subscription by end-users since the emergence of second generation (2G) system networks such as GSM in the early 90’s to the present-day mobile broadband networks. However, the subscribers’ experience and satisfaction from the service quality being provided by the network service operators has not been commensurate with the tremendous growth. This in turn has led to high subscriber’s churn rate. Thus, network service satisfaction assessment especially from the end-users perspective is necessary to judge the network performance and maintain service quality standards from one location to another. In this contribution, the relationship between quality of service level and the end-user satisfaction in operational Global system for mobile communication (GSM), Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) cellular networks are presented. We report our findings based on measurement study performed on the commercial GSM/UMTS/HSPA networks in four different cities for a period of one year. The measurements were conducted with field test equipment (a Laptop with enhanced field measurement test mobile system software, two Sonny Ericson mobile phone handsets, GPS and network scanner) in the operational commercial networks. Based on enhanced screen post-data processing, CS and PS based performance metrics were explored to assess and present the level of satisfaction the end-users derived from using the mobile networks operating across the investigated Cities. Our methodology can also be applied to conduct performance benchmarking between to different mobile network operators.