SDP Market Size: Infonetics Research vs. Analysys Mason

     

"Infonetics Research’s forecast for the worldwide service delivery platform (SDP) services and software market has been increased slightly, with the market expected to hit $4.7 billion in 2014" in a new research, by Shira Levine, Infonetics Research’s directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy that says:

"Traditionally, the service delivery platform is seen as a tool to deliver services to the end user, but I see a growing interest in the concept of the two-sided business model, in which operators generate additional revenue from developers by providing access to network capabilities and subscriber information. This trend is driving investment in solutions that not only allow operators to expose assets like call control, location, and messaging to third-party developers to create a more dynamic content ecosystem, but also allow them to bill for that exposure”

See "Mobile apps, third-party developers, cloud services drive SDP market" - here.

The report finds that "Oracle is the #1 vendor for worldwide SDP software revenue, and Ericsson is the #1 vendor for SDP services revenue"

Peter Mottishaw, Principal Analyst at Analysys Mason, sees larger numbers. In a new report he concludes that "The global service delivery platform market generated $3.4B in revenue in 2009 and is forecast to generate $6.8B in 2014, growing at a CAGR of 14.8%"

See "Global service delivery platform market to grow 14.8% annually from 2009 to 2014, says Analysys Mason" - here.

NSF Funds Research on DPI

 

The Internet Governance Project website reports that "Syracuse University Professor Milton Mueller was awarded $304,000 by the U.S. NSF for his research on “Deep Packet Inspection and the Governance of the Internet" The research will take place over two academic years, 2010-11 and 2011-2012"

See "U.S. National Science Foundation funds research on social impact of network surveillance technologies" - here.

"The project will contribute to an understanding of how new technological capabilities interact with politics, public policy, regulation, and law. Drawing on research literatures in science, technology and society studies (STS), Internet governance studies and political science, it will test and improve theories about the co-production of technology and governance institutions, especially theories which assign agency to technological artifacts .. Mueller’s research will investigate whether the use of DPI by Internet service providers is producing major changes in the way users and suppliers of Internet services are governed"

See a Mueller's previous work on DPI - here and a related post - "The Legality of DPI - Paper by Angela Daly" - here

NSN CEO: “Finding ways to support the 10,000% increase in smartphone generated data traffic by 2015 is vital for operators worldwide”

 

Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks announced yesterday the creation of a “Smartphone Experience Lab” based in Telefónica premises in Madrid.

See "Future lies in “smart networks for smart devices” - here.

“Smartphones are taking off everywhere, and Spain happens to be one of the fastest growing markets, outpacing Germany, Sweden, the UK and US Networks need to transform - now - to cope with the huge amounts of signalling and data traffic smart devices generate. Our approach is the only one that can cope with this explosion, while preparing operators for the fast-approaching roll-out of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.”

Most consider the amount of data traffic generated by smartphones as the main issue for mobile operators (here). However, smartphones also generate non-productive traffic - "keep alive" signaling packets which consume network equipment resources (such as IP addresses and PDP contexts) with little value to the user and almost no revenues to the operator (and it also drains the smartphone battery)

"Many always-on smartphone apps generate eight times as much signalling traffic as laptops with mobile connections. This can overload network elements so that they no longer support additional data or voice calls, degrading network quality. This phenomenon can be seen in many smartphone-heavy networks around the world and, unless addressed, could become increasingly common."

"The Smartphone Experience Lab was recently started in Telefónica premises in Madrid with its objective to find the ideal configuration between mobile handsets, applications and networks to minimize any negative network impact from smart devices, improve resource consumption as well as better handset and application performance, and to ultimately provide people with the best possible user experience. The outcomes from the Lab’s activities will include guidelines on the optimum network and handset configurations and application development."

Lightreading: Cisco QoS for Mobile Under Test

 

Lightreading published the results of a comprehensive test of Cisco Mobile/RAN solution. One of the scenarios tested was QoS performance - "demonstrated that the ASR 9010 and 7609 platforms could appropriately classify and prioritize five classes of traffic during link congestion"

See "Testing Cisco's Next-Gen Mobile Network QoS in the IP-RAN" - here.

I do not see anything about the ability to classify applications - they were probably using tagged or marked headers.

The tests were conducted by European Advanced Networking Test Center AG (EANTC).

3GPP Based QoS for E-Health Services

     

A new paper, by Lea Skorin-Kapov, Maja Matijasevic (picture) from the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing analyses the QoS requirements in order to enable E-Health services over 3GPP compliant networks.

See "Analysis of QoS Requirements for e-Health Services and Mapping to Evolved Packet System QoS Classes" - here (PDF) and authors' profile - here

Looks to me like a real life tiered service and significant revenue opportunity to the carriers!

Abstract


E-Health services comprise a broad range of healthcare services delivered by using information and communication technology. In order to support existing as well as emerging e-Health services over converged next generation network (NGN) architectures, there is a need for network QoS control mechanisms that meet the often stringent requirements of such services. In this paper we evaluate the QoS support for e-Health services in the context of the Evolved Packet System (EPS), specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a multi-access all-IP NGN.


We classify heterogeneous e-Health services based on context and network QoS requirements, and propose a mapping to existing 3GPP QoS Class Identifiers (QCIs) that serve as a basis for the class-based QoS concept of the EPS. The proposed mapping aims to provide network operators with guidelines for meeting heterogeneous e-Health service requirements. As an example, we present the QoS requirements for a prototype e-Health service supporting teleconsultation between a patient and a doctor, and illustrate use of the proposed mapping to QCIs in standardized QoS control procedures.

Allot: Use-Cases Implemented by Mobile Operators

     

A recent document from Allot Communications lists "5 specific use cases that have been implemented in the networks of our mobile customers".

The document is available at Allot's resource center (subscription required) and provides some insight to what is actually implemented by operators. This may be compared to the recent Openet-Cisco presentation "The Business Case for Policy and Charging Controls" (here).

Allot's 5 use-cases are (the PCRF vendor name is not mentioned):

1. Fair Use for all subscribers - assure network resources availability for all subscribers by preventing overall bandwidth throttling by few specific subscribers
    
2. Cell Backhaul overload - Bandwidth control per cell
     
3. Safe and low-cost web access for students - Time/Volume based service packages
     
4. Shifting usage to non peak hours - Based on “Happy Hour” concept
     
5. Avoiding Bill Shock (roaming) - Self - controlled data usage for roaming subscribers

Related posts: 

• Cisco/Openet Presentation - "The Business Case for Policy and Charging Controls" - here.  
• Bill Shock Prevention - Vendor Offering Review  - here

[Update16 - Elitecore NetVertex] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

  

I am adding Elitecore's NetVertex (here) to the list of PCRF vendors.

"NetVertex provides policy orchestration functions that allow providers to define policies based on network and usage attributes, subscriber attributes and service attributes. NetVertex Policy manager is compliant to 3GPP Release 8 (PCRF), WiMAX PCC and ETSI TISPAN standards with redundant and failover deployment architecture. With integration with leading DPI vendors NetVertex is highly flexible solution that can be deployed standalone. "

There is no list of the supported DPI platforms.

PCRF Vendor	PCRF Product	Allot	Arbor	Cisco	Procera	Sandvine
Alcatel-Lucent	5780 Dynamic Services Controller (DSC)
Aradial Technologies	Aradial Mobile/APC	●		●
BandWD	BwDRC - Dynamic Resource Control	●		●		●
Bridgewater Systems	Policy Controller/PCRF	●	●	●		●
Broadhop	Quantum Policy Server		●	●
Comability	ComAbility neXus			●
Comptel	Comptel Policy Control™			●	●
Cisco (Starent)	Policy and Charging Control
Digital Route	MediationZone Policy Control
EliteCore	Netvertex (PCRF)
Ericsson	Service-Aware Policy Controller (SAPC)
Flash Networks	POLICY MANAGER
FTS	Leap™ Policy Control	●		●		●
HP	HP Policy and Charging(IUM)	●
Huawei	Open Control & Charging Gateway	●
Kabira (Tibco software)	Policy Server			●
Mobixell (724)	X-treme Framework Platform (XF)	●		●
Nokia Siemens Networks	PCS 5000	●
Openet	FusionWorks™ Policy Manager			●		●
Orga Systems	Next Generation Control Point
Redknee	Policy Manager (PCRF)			●		●
Tekelec (Camiant)	Multimedia Policy Engine	●	●	●	●	●
Telcordia	Telcordia Bandwidth Manager
Volubill	CONTROL-IT Policy Manager
ZTE	ZXUN RCP	●