Network Revenue Assurance

Network RA Assessment

Completing a network revenue assurance assessment can be unobtrusive. Simply by gaining access to copies of scheduled CDR reports an analyst can usually detect any areas worthy of further investigation. More invasive measures, such as installing probes on switches, can then be considered.

The key to any assessment is that it must minimise the impact on normal operations and be approached in a purely investigative [no blame] manner.

Remedy

Remediation of network related leakages can often be relatively easy and low cost. Using network control tables, databases and matrices, activities across diverse domains can be co-ordinated to ensure they hold the right values and that the values are consistent across the enterprise. This is akin to a SBV library in any BI project.

This can be assessed using one time spot check to immediately validate the accuracy of network components, or create a control table reconciliation system that periodically monitors and reports the accuracy and coordination between points.

Switches

To further investigate and resolve issues around the performance and accuracy of switches:

Test calls – [manual or automatically generated] can be traced through CDR management chain from switch to mediation and billing.

Probes – devices installed on the switches to provide a separate, auditable activity trail against which CDR’s may be reconciled. This is an expensive option and is only worthwhile when severe issues in integrity are suspected.

CDR Trail Integrity

A simple audit of the CDR generation and distribution trail. This aims to identify:

Any dropped, lost or duplicated CDRS as they move from the switch into the mediation system.
Audit and tracking of pre-defined sets of CDRs at each point in the CDR Management Process. This analysis of the files and contents is restricted to a particular scope and time.

Network Inventory

Poor network inventory management is a major source of network leakage. This commonly results from rapid expansion and reconfiguration – the result being that over 20% of network inventory is not accounted for.

Network inventory management remedy involves the creation of a central network element data warehouse. This collects and stores information from the many different OSS, network element management systems and manual inventories. This data identifies where different elements are located and how they are configured.

Each of these network assurance assessments should be completed with the network operations support team, who assist in identifying how they can be completed most effectively and efficiently.

NEXT: Mediation Revenue Assurance