Astellia was selected by Telefónica first in 2002 to supply GSM test equipment. In 2005, Telefónica complemented its monitoring system to adapt it to its 3G extension. Having the different Cigale software tools installed, they simply added STM-1 boards into the existing probes. Mr Juan Carlos Sequera, Access Networks Technical Support Manager by Telefónica, is telling us more about this collaboration.

Can you briefly introduce your company?

Telefónica is one of the most important telecommunication operators in the world present in Europe, Africa and Latin America . We totalized more than 212 million customers in June 2007, 45.2 of them belonging to Telefónica de España. Telefónica offers an extended portfolio of products and services (fix telephony, mobile telephony, internet access, television, etc..) all over the world.

What is your role/function in this company?

I am responsible for the technical support team of all the access networks in Spain , considering all the access networks technologies and modalities. I manage a 72 people team based in Spain , 22 employees in Telefónica and 50 external consultants. I’ve been working in Telefónica for 16 years, 14 of them related to “Operation&Maintenance” tasks.

Which Astellia equipment was installed? Which service was performed?

Our first order to Astellia dates back to the beginning of 2002. We bought Ocean probes and Manta equipment to capture data on our GSM network and to optimise this capture. Since that time, our network has been extended, mainly with 3G technology. That is why, during the last years, we have updated the Astellia equipment to 3G.

What kind of issue do you (and your team) face?

Related to mobile networks, we mainly have KPI and troubleshooting needs. Having extended our 2G network to 3G technology, we needed to extend our monitoring system accordingly. As the Astellia solution is scalable and modular, we could add supplementary STM-1 boards which support 3G without losing 2G monitor capabilities.

How does Astellia solution help you? How do these solutions/services contribute to improve your business and your revenues?

We must detect, analyse and solve problems quickly on both voice and packet networks. The Astellia KPI tool, Cigale View, is really useful for us to detect the problems in our network and the troubleshooting tool, Cigale Activity Analysis, helps us to analyse and to discover the origin of those problems.

Why did you select Astellia? How did you hear about us?

The first time I heard about Astellia was some years ago when somebody from Alava Ingenieros came to present a new brand; this person did a demo and a presentation which made us think that Astellia could be interesting for us.

After analysing the Astellia products, we realized that from a functional point of view, Astellia answered our needs and, although it was not the cheapest solution, we concluded that the Astellia solution was functionally interesting for us and the ratio quality/price was acceptable; so we decided to make our first purchase.

About Astellia
With strong experience in the telecom activity and a constant in-the-field involvement, Astellia helps more than 130 mobile operators and equipment manufacturers worldwide to maximize the performance of their networks and offer an optimum quality of service (QoS) to their subscribers.

Astellia solutions cover GSM/GPRS/UMTS technologies from radio access part to core networks. Astellia brings easy access to a rich set of independent Key Performance Indicators and enables operators’ operational & marketing teams to anticipate and decrease network troubles to increase revenues (infrastructure optimization, roamers’ capture, subscribers’ loyalty, etc.). Astellia also offers services like network audits and optimization, technical assistance, trainings, etc.

About Telefónica
According to its market capitalization, Telefónica is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the world. Its main activities are fix telephony and mobile telephony, using broadband as the key for their development.

Telefónica is present in 23 countries and has more than 212 million customers all over the world. Telefónica has a strong presence in Spain , Europe and Latin America where it concentrates its growth strategy.

Telefónica is a completely private company. It has more than 1.7 million direct shareholders. Its capital is currently divided into 4,773,496,485 market shares negotiated in the continuous Spanish stock markets ( Madrid , Barcelona , Bilbao and Valencia ) and in the stock markets of London , Paris , Frankfurt, Tokio , New York , Lima , Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo .