In many industries, KPIs are used to define and measure performance and, based on any changes, are used to trigger some action(s). In telecom and networking industries, especially, KPIs are often the only metrics used to measure the performance of the network. The problem with this approach is that a KPI is only useful to measure changes from a given baseline. In networks, however, there is not a baseline available as there is no golden standard for an LTE network.

Network, due to their complexity, is more like a living species; with good and bad days. This occurs because many non-linear and deterministic events impact the functioning of the network: customer behaviour due to the weather, customer behaviour based on events, the weather itself, connected networks, and thousands of known and, perhaps, millions of unknown events.