Delivering Quality of Experience in Multimedia Networks

Next-generation multimedia networks need to deliver applications with a high quality of experience (QoE) for users. Many network elements provide the building blocks for service delivery, and element managers provide performance data for specific network elements. However, this discrete measurement data is not sufficient to assess the overall end user experience with particular applications. In today's competitive world of multimedia applications, it is imperative for service providers to differentiate themselves in delivering service level agreements with certainty; otherwise they run the risk of customer churn. While QoE for well-established services like voice and Internet access is well understood, the same cannot be said about newer multimedia services. In this paper, we propose parameters for measuring the QoE for newer services. We propose and justify parameter values for satisfactory end user experience and show how standard measurement data can be collected from various network elements and processed to derive end user QoE. (C) 2010 Alcatel-Lucent.