Infovista, the global leader in network lifecycle automation (NLA), has announced its innovative Smart CAPEX solution for operators and businesses designing, deploying and operating 5G networks. Smart CAPEX accelerates and increases the return on investment (ROI) from 5G network rollout, expansion and densification by intelligently calculating and optimizing the predicted business outcomes – including revenue, churn and quality of experience. The solution enables senior business and technology leaders to develop a holistic business case for network investments based on a common expectation and understanding of how network investment drives revenue growth. This enables, for the first time, a shift in focus in network planning, from network KPI optimization to business outcomes optimization, by combining diverse and numerous network and business predictions within a single vendor-neutral software application.
The Smart CAPEX solution enables rapid, ROI-optimized CAPEX allocation for the highest predicted customer experience and revenue, through precise roll-out and expansion of radio coverage and performance, at the lowest cost. It reduces the time taken to reach investment decisions by incorporating geospatial revenue potential prediction, automated TCO simulation and modern ‘what-if’ analysis technologies. In combination with its business KPI forecasting capabilities, this accelerates time-to-revenue and optimizes ROI in ways not possible through traditional, manually intensive approaches to network planning. Based on Infovista’s cloud-native application portfolio, the solution enables accelerated roll-outs from one region or market to the next in a consistent, systematic way by applying common models, algorithms and analysis tools from a centrally managed and hosted application. This avoids the need to manually deploy and configure planning tools in each market individually, and provides a single point from which all planning and optimization projects can be visualized by senior stakeholders.
When supporting the expansion and densification of live networks, Infovista Smart CAPEX uses powerful AI/ML forecasting capabilities to combine live ‘operational’ network and traffic performance data with external data to provide accurate insights into the impact of network performance on business outcomes both current and future. Operational and traffic performance data provides intelligence into coverage, quality of service (QoS), quality of experience (QoE) and churn. Business metrics from external data include TCO models, ARPU, crowdsourced data, social media usage and customer lifetime value (CLTV).
The Smart CAPEX solution allows CSPs to undertake ROI-based site prioritization based on an accurate analysis and understanding of revenue potential, the total cost of ownership (TCO), and time to market (TTM) constraints for both greenfield 5G deployments and mobile network expansions. This includes automated calculations of both the TCO, such as radio hardware and fibre length, and TTM, such as site acquisition and site construction time, as well as backhaul cost considerations for both. The Smart CAPEX dashboard provides valuable insights in the form of heatmaps with rich geospatial views. They provide ‘at-a-glance’ information about the current and predicted business performance of network investments in specific areas.
“The telecommunications industry today faces exponential growth in traffic; mobile operators, systems integrators, tower companies, equipment providers and ecosystem vendors are investing heavily in 5G to enable the delivery of new 5G-enabled services. Linking the evolution of radio infrastructure with key business objectives around revenue growth is a must. Each participant in the value chain shares a common interest in ensuring they can capture the revenue opportunities while controlling their cost,” said Franco Messori, Chief Product Strategy and Transformation Officer, Infovista. “Smart CAPEX allows business and technology teams to effectively and efficiently plan, optimize and model different network evolution scenarios to deliver next generation networks with the maximum return on investment.”
“Designed for enabling both greenfield and brownfield operators to quickly deploy high-performance mobile networks that fully exploit the potential of 5G, Infovista’s Smart CAPEX helps them to make intelligent, data-driven RF investment decisions based on the priorities they set to deliver against key business objectives. Smart CAPEX is a significant step towards giving 5G operators the insight and intelligence they need to make informed network investment decisions that maximize their ROI and make 5G work smarter,” added Messori.
The main functionalities and deliverables in the Smart CAPEX solution include:
- Geospatial heatmaps: visualizations of current and predicted business KPIs in the form of heatmaps that users can view at various levels of granularity, from the national level down to the cell-site and ‘pixel’ level. The KPIs include: QoE, Churn risk, Revenue, TCO and ROI
- Digital twin modeling: A model that replicates the live physical network alongside population density and traffic demand
- Nationwide network planning & optimization: Smart CAPEX allows you to dynamically scale 4G and 5G network models to the size of whole countries
- Focus area detection: The identification of both current and predicted geographic areas with problems resulting from insufficient capacity, including insufficient capacity and coverage; insufficient or rapidly declining QoE; rapid capacity demand growth; and low spectral efficiency
- TCO and ROI modeling: The configuration of equipment and associated costs, alongside maintenance overhead data to accurately estimate the overall TCO implication of different planning decisions, to support the identification of the most cost-efficient cell layouts
- ROI Optimization: Leveraging its revenue heatmap and TCO modeling capabilities, Smart CAPEX solution identifies the areas with healthy ROI and visualize that in various formats including ROI heatmaps and network upgrade schedule priorities by ROI
Smart CAPEX is part of Infovista’s Network Lifecycle Automation suite, which enables automation of processes spanning multiple network lifecycle phases, accelerating digital transformation for CSPs and enterprises.
