UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) is often referred to as 3G, and enables the continued support of voice, text and MMS services in addition to richer mobile data services such as music & video streaming and entertainment content. UMTS based network architectures utilize the existing GPRS core network architecture and nodes but introduce new access technologies, architectures and nodes in the radio access network. HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) extends and improves the performance of existing UMTS WCDMA based radio access networks and supports increased peak data rates of up to 14 Mb/s in the downlink and 5.8 Mbs in the uplink. HSPA+ provides data rates up to 42 Mb/s in the downlink and 11 Mb/s in the uplink. Together, UMTS and HSPA network technologies provide mobile operators with greater capacity and performance to meet subscribers' every-growing need for more feature-rich interactive, multimedia services.

Both UMTS & HSPA enable operators avail of greater capacity and performance compared with GPRS/EDGE technologies and offer true broadband services based on new devices such as datacards and modems. The increase in capacity and speeds for data services has also driven the rapid adoption of Smartphones such as the Apple iPhone and other similar devices offering a wide variety of data intensive services such as video sharing and VoIP. HSPA and HSPA + also allow operators to upgrade their mobile broadband capacity and speeds through software upgrades of WCDMA nodes; avoiding the need for the deployment of completely new network infrastructure as in the case of deploying WiMAX.

As mobile data usage increases exponentially across UMTS and HSPA networks, understanding and managing the data usage at a subscriber, service and network node level is becoming a key challenge for operators. The Now Factory's Sourceworks probing technology supports a number of IP interfaces in the UMTS Core including Gn, Gp, and Gi interfaces. On the Gn/Gp interfaces, Sourceworks provides full visibility of GTP-C and GTP-U transactions within the GTP Tunnel, including complex correlations across control and user plane tunnels to present a sessionised view of all data traffic at a per subscriber, application, network node and device level.

Sourceworks forms part of The Now Factory's Active Intelligence Platform (ASI) that dynamically produces in-depth subscriber intelligence across a host of different IP devices, networks and services. In combination with the Smartworks platform, Sourceworks enables a host of different business and operational applications including The Now Factory's Mobile Moments suite, which empowers operators with the ability to holistically manage the subscriber data journey right across their UMTS/HSPA networks.

With The Now Factory's ASI platform, operators can:

• Manage service and network performance across multiple correlations of IP services, applications and devices.
• Deliver an optimal Quality of Experience (QoE) to all mobile data subscribers
• Align UMTS/HSPA investment with revenue generation by identifying those network locations with the potential to generate the most revenue
• Launch innovative multimedia IP services and marketing campaigns based on actual subscriber behavior that drive greater penetration and subscriber loyalty.