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www.iberdrola.es 1 September 2017 Managing complex and diverse telecoms to deliver excellent customer service
www.iberdrola.es 1
September 2017
Managing complex
and diverse telecoms
to deliver excellent
customer service
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Table of Contents
1. A Hybrid Network. A Must?
2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
3. How to Face Complexity?
4. Iberdrola Spain Use Case
5. Conclusions
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1. A Hybrid Network. A Must?
• Before ICTs impregnated all life aspects, telecommunications were not widespread.
• The progress in ICT has brought along the generalization of telecommunication services,
mainly at residential level.
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1. A Hybrid Network. A Must?
• In this context, telecommunication services are claimed to reach everywhere.
• It is not difficult to find today generic services that seem suitable for the electrical grid
applications.
• Existing commercial telecommunications appear to some as the straightforward solution to
the telecommunications for utility services and applications.
• So, to which extent should the mix of private networks and commercial services be
developed in a Hybrid Network?
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1. A Hybrid Network. A Must?
Why are commercial services supposed to ‘work’ for utilities?
• Commercial telecommunication services are fully operational. This is, in the places where
the service is effectively delivered, and in the absence of incidents, the applications of the
utility, “work”.
• The immediate investment in public / commercial telecommunication services is lower than
the cost of deploying a network for the provision of services.
• It may be assumed that the existing competition in telecommunications domain might
render economic benefits in the cost of the services.
• The assumption that telecommunication services are ready available in the existing public
networks, might make utilities quickly and timely deliver services.
• The lack of telecommunication expertise within some utilities.
• In the case of radio networks, expensive or difficult access to spectrum is another reason
that might make utilities rely on TSP’s.
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1. A Hybrid Network. A Must?
However …
• Have we considered territory spread services: urban vs. rural or extremely distant areas,
…?
• Have we considered the nature of the premises to cover: residential customer regular
premises, underground, industrial or extreme environmental conditions, etc.
• Which bandwidth is needed? kbps vs. Mbps vs. Gbps.
• Which traffic amount a day? Bytes, kB, MB, GB, …?
• Which latency is affordable? milliseconds, hundreds of milliseconds, seconds, …
• Which traffic pattern in the day?
• Availability? Expected resiliency?
• …
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1. A Hybrid Network. A Must?
… and in Utility terms, this is translated into:
• Corporate needs do not have the same requirements as Operational activities.
• Teleprotection is not the same today as Metering applications.
• Not all metering systems have or need the same telecommunication means.
• Remote control performance is tunable at application level, as real time can also be a
flexible concept.
• Not all the parameters of the telecommunication services received are measured. Root
causes of user experience are not always easy to find.
• …
And NOW the SMART GRID …
… Or should we say now the DIGITAL GRID at the moment where many refer
to Digital Technologies?
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
• The Smart Grid has been a complex concept for years:
o From plain remote meter reading to grid automation, with various degrees of
remote control at certain voltage levels and meter reading frequency and
control in the middle.
o Not only grid assets, but also business transformation through a different way
to drive network operations.
• Smart Grid is probably just the mix of Digital Technologies to drive the Grid
evolution; and that once technology is there, the changes and the new ideas will
just flow one after the other.
Change is the only stable fact in the Smart Grid domain, in an industry where slow
motion was typical What is more Complex than to adapt to the unpredictable?
The telecommunications network needs to be prepared to be the
solution, and not the problem; the ‘driver’, not the ‘stopper’.
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
COSTS. The complexity of the TCO, when qualitative aspects need to be quantified.
Private Commercial
Investment ↑ ↓
Costs ↓ ↑
Control ↑ ↓
Reliability ↑ ↓
CPX+
OPX
years
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
Cost considerations
• Not only up-front costs, but the recurrent operational expenses (the later, usually
higher as the data exchange increases This happens when new applications
appear).
• First installation and the eventual need to replace the telecommunication terminal
(e.g., change of technology; quick cycles not controllable) or to move to another
TSP for commercial reasons:
o Pervasive deployments: Smart Grid assets in utilities are not always easy to
locate and access, may require the access to be performed by more than one
individual (safety).
o Standardization: Not all the telecommunication terminals can be re-used from
one Telecommunication Service Provider (e.g., some satellite-based services).
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
Network Adequacy
• No commercial network for residential market has been designed to cope with
utility type of services.
• Many of the premises where utility services need to be delivered are difficult for
some technologies, or only reachable with important investments that need to be
considered.
• Residential traditional M2M is still poorly prepared for unattended continuous use;
and IoT is still a framework (standards, market, technology, networks, etc.) under
development.
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
• Priority?
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
¿ ?
Special days and events?
• Congestion?
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
Poles without coverage
• Coverage?
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
• Underground?
Date Failure rate Timeouts > 30s Average (ms) OK?
05/04/2012 4.35% 0.05% 67 1063.29 NOK12/04/2012 3.00% 0.00% 1 923.82 NOK19/04/2012 3.55% 0.00% 39 969.24 NOK23/04/2012 2.98% 0.00% 4 957.31 NOK30/04/2012 4,54% 0,00% 25 951.79 NOK02/05/2012 3,91% 0,00% 27 949.09 NOK21/05/2012 3.92% 0.00% 57 1232.23 NOK
Minimum threshold 1%Secondary substations in Urban environment. Underground scenarios are bad in commercial mobile networks.
Real Example
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SS
2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
• Installation? Additional investment?
SS
Much better!
Cabinet
≈15 dB
Better
(gain antenna)
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
• Need to adapt to the network providing the service: the service is not transparent.
Received Power (dBm) Fading
≈15 dBThreshold?
1 hour
Base Station change
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
• M2M?
CPU = Central Processing Unit. The brain of the computer.
Which is the ‘CPU’ of this device?
BatterySIM card
The user, … yet
The user is far away from our premises, and does not visit them.
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
• The chicken and the egg …
Recloser
BTS
Power supply
2G/3G cellular
Will it work?
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
RESILIENCY
• Mission-critical services, or those requiring availability or QoS higher than the
average are not easily found in the Telco portfolio. E.g., focusing on the wired
infrastructure:
o Standard services offer a variable degree of redundancy.
o Redundancy of services from different telecommunication carriers in the
same location cannot be assumed, as many back-up systems are provided
over the same physical media (e.g., the same cable).
o The “last mile” (the segment from the local exchange to the customer
premises) is usually the single point of failure even in networks with a high
level of resilience.
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
INFLUENCE: How important are utilities in terms of revenue for Telcos?
Voice&Data
Voice only
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
UTILITY USE CASES: Distillation process … It is not the first time!
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2G
3G
4G, 5G,…
Telco 1
Telco 2
Telco 3, …
Radio vendor 1
Radio vendor 2
Radio vendor 3
Radio vendor 4
Radio vendor 5
Vendor 1
Vendor 2
Vendor 3
Vendor 4
Vendor 5
Mobile Network Telcos
Radio module vendors
Technology aspects
Equipment vendors
Multiple factors and
stakeholders … and low
influence in the hands of
the utilities
TodayTomorrow
2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
INFLUENCE ON THE SOLUTION: Equipment and network.
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
PERFORMANCE: Expectations need to be controlled. Network unavailability.
Global context
• 30/10/15: APN related.
• 18/11/15: Planned work, not supposed to affect.
• 24/11/15: Planned work, not supposed to affect.
• 14/02/16: M2M environment down.
• 29/04/16: Planned work, not supposed to affect.
• 05/05/16: Network configuration change. Loop.
• 17/06/16: Service delivery points, down.
• 08/08/16: Service delivery points, down.
• 18/08/16: Network task to expand capacity.
Local context
• 13/10/2015: BGP session down.
• 31/01/16: BGP massive unavailability.
• 04/02/16: Network incident.
• 12/02/16: Network incident.
• 10/06/16: Single Network access down.
• 07/07/16: Massive network incident.
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
… and WHAT NEXT: the status quo changes every day.
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2. Where does the Complexity Come From?
REGULATORY ASPECTS: The affect service delivery constraints. E.g., regulated
xDSL Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
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3. How to Face Complexity?
• Understand silos are not sustainable.
• Integrate network and services as a single entity.
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3. How to Face Complexity?
• Deep technical knowledge: Private and Commercial network technologies.
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3. How to Face Complexity?
Develop credible commercial alternatives.
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3. How to Face Complexity?
Manage your network:
• Single network vision.
• …
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3. How to Face Complexity?
Manage your network.
• Commercial services control mechanisms.
• ...
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3. How to Face Complexity?
Manage your network:
• Access to third parties’ network management data.
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ADSL vs. PLC
ADSL
PLC
3. How to Face Complexity?
PRIMEBPL
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3. How to Face Complexity?
• Create, where nothing exists or nobody else can: Telcos are not the only ones to
innovate. Utilities do have a unique environment they cannot access.
