Why I Never Start Troubleshooting With Throughput

“If the first KPI you check is Throughput, you may already be heading in the wrong direction.” That statement usually surprises people. After all, low throughput is one of the most common customer complaints in mobile networks. But after more than two decades working across RF Design, RAN Optimization, SON, R&D, and Network Automation, I’ve learned that throughput is often the symptom—not the root cause.

When I begin troubleshooting, my first objective isn’t to explain what users are experiencing. It’s to understand why they’re experiencing it.

Before looking at throughput, I usually ask questions like:

• Is the problem affecting one cell, an entire cluster, or a wider geographical area?
• Is it related to accessibility, mobility, interference, congestion, or coverage?
• Did the issue appear after a network change, a software upgrade, or a traffic pattern shift?

Only after understanding the context do I start analyzing performance KPIs. Why? Because poor throughput can originate from dozens of different causes.

• Interference.
• Coverage imbalance.
• Overshooting cells.
• Missing neighbor relations.
• Scheduler limitations.
• Transport bottlenecks.
• Configuration errors.
• Or simply traffic demand exceeding available capacity.

If we jump directly to throughput, we risk treating symptoms instead of solving the actual problem. One lesson I’ve learned throughout my career is that effective troubleshooting is not about finding the first abnormal KPI.

It’s about asking the right questions in the right order. That mindset becomes even more valuable as AI-driven optimization, SON, and SMO continue to evolve. Automation can process millions of data points. But engineering judgment is still what transforms data into the right decision. The best engineers don’t start with conclusions. They start with context. Have you ever discovered that the KPI everyone was focused on wasn’t actually the root cause of the problem?

#5G #RAN #RANOptimization #RFEngineering #NetworkAutomation #SON #SMO #ORAN #TelecomLeadership #AIinTelecom