One of the systems used by both in NOC and SOC is the network management Performance Monitoring (PM) system, which continuously collects PM counter information from each network element. PM counters provide sufficient information for monitoring the node performance, load and node failure issues, as well as basic radio environment issues (coverage, interference) or service-related accessibility or retainability issues, such as network related drops, setup or registration failures. The PM counters are also used for high level troubleshooting. Detailed troubleshooting is usually done by collecting and investigating node and subscriber traces collected from different part of the networks.

Service quality issues can be measured adequately at the subscriber end device. Terminal reports may be collected by the service provider. However, this is rarely available to network operators. Therefore, they perform drive tests to ensure service quality in different parts of the networks. Alternatively, they apply traffic probing to the data path and try to measure the packet level parameters and make conclusions about the actual service quality.

FM and PM based monitoring and analytics systems can have several limitations:

FM alarms are generated directly for node and network failures. Service-related issues that are not related directly to a node or network failure do not generate alarms.

PM systems do not detect service quality issues in the following cases:

• • Where counters are not implemented for the specific service issue;