WSJ: "Several buyers, including Oracle are eyeing the assets of Comverse"

 

The Wall Street Journal says that Oracle, Amdocs, IBM and HP may be interested in buying some of Comverse's assets.

See "Oracle, Others Eye Comverse's Assets "- here.

 

Comverse (CMVT.PK) is up 15% during Thursday trading, with 6x average volume. See also my previous coverage - "Oracle Shopping List - Comverse as an Entry Pass to the Telecom Space" - here.

Virgin Media [UK, cable] Prioritizes Video Streaming - by Throttling P2P

 

Virgin Media announced today a new (and free!!) "network management unveiled to help optimise online video"

See "Virgin Media boosts broadband for free... again" - here and its traffic management policy- here (with details of the continued fair-usage policy)

"Virgin Media will be rolling out a new traffic management system at peak times, designed to adapt to network conditions to ensure time-sensitive and interactive uses – such as surfing or streaming high-definition video – remain unhindered by non-time-sensitive traffic such as peer-to-peer and newsgroup activity, reducing the possibility of annoying buffering that can occur when trying to watch TV online at peak times. Using smart network monitoring, the system will reserve at least 75 per cent of network resources for time-sensitive traffic, adjusting dynamically to overall network usage to ensure consistent performance for more customers"

In addition "Upload speeds boosted by up to 3x for faster sharing"

Cisco Recommends: Partner, Enhance QoE and Monetize OTT Video

  

A new brochure from Cisco "Premium Mobile Video Services" (here) explains how mobile operators may drive new revenues by differentiated service delivery.

Cisco recommends mobile operators to:

1. Partner with OTT video content providers
    
2. Use an intelligent mobile gateway  (Cisco ASR-5000, for example - here) with application awareness capabilities and a Policy and Charging Control to  identify when subscribers are watching the OTT partner content, enforce a "better than best-effort data connection" and charge "a small fee to the user"

It seems like everybody is happy with the Google-Verizon idea of not applying Net Neutrality to wireless services.

See also -

• Cisco Presentation: Deploying ASR-5000 - Policy, DPI, Inline Services - here
• Analysys Mason: CSP Say They should Partner with VAS and Content Providers - here
• TeliaSonera's New Business Model: Value-based Pricing  - here
• Deutsche Telekom CEO: OTT providers should pay for High Quality - here 

S.O.S Call from Openet

 

Openet suggest that to create a "new category within the BSS/OSS market" - named Subscriber Optimization Software (SOS)".

"The SOS category unifies four interrelated markets that have previously been served separately, despite their interdependence on one another: Mediation, Subscriber Data Management (SDM), Policy Management and Real-Time Charging."

See "Openet Announces Creation of Subscriber Optimization Software Category" - here as well as the first post to Openet's new blog - here. 

Michael Manzo, CMO of Openet said: “We are issuing a call to action to all of our competitors, large and small—it’s time to stop providing disparate solutions, and begin to think holistically about servicing the SOS market. Without a change in what vendors offer, operators will struggle to derive ROI from technology, and cannot realize the full extent of subscriber value and market opportunity.”

It makes sense for Openet or the other pure player policy/charging vendors (here) to come up with this initiative - showing potential customers their advantages over the equipment makers – DPI, routers etc - with the holistic, multi-vendor, standard complaint approach vs. proprietary (but cheaper) point solutions.

In his blog post, Michael says "The competitors that have the best shot at leading this market with Openet are players like Comptel, Volubill and Redknee [where is Bridgewater??] . Like Openet, these are smaller firms than their brethren discussed above [refers to "one of the largest players in the B/OSS market―that aren’t very happy with Openet right now" - i.e. Amdocs], but they have all the right ingredients of a Subscriber Optimization Software market leader. I challenge these companies to get on the SOS bandwagon and―pardon the SOS double entendre (“Save Our Souls”)―help Openet rescue more operators from missed opportunities to attract subscribers, provide them a great experience, maximize revenue from them and minimize the cost to serve them."

See more on the Amdocs - Openet conflict:

• [Light Reading] Openet CEO: "We're not intimidated (by Amdocs)"  - here
• Amdocs Suing Openet for Patent Infringement  - here

[Update21 - Sandvine Bridgewater Announcement] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

 

The compatibility table already had indicted interoperability between Sandvine and Bridgewater, but today the two vendors will issue a joint press release announcing "that the two companies have successfully completed integration and interoperability testing enabling intelligent policy control solutions for 3G and 4G mobile operators".

See "Bridgewater and Sandvine Partner for Policy Control Solutions" - here. The release is very similar to many other we saw, describing the benefits of the interoperability between Sandvine's PTS DPI device and Bridgewater's PCRF.

In 2005 the two had a similar press release (here). Back then, Sandvine was focusing (over 90% of its business) on the cable market, the term PCRF was not used and mobile operators were not considered as a market for broadband traffic management.

5 years later, the DPI landscape is very different - as we can see from the new release "The interoperability testing showcases the two companies' commitment to delivering 3G and 4G policy control solutions that are standards compliant and address next generation services requirements for mobile operators" and from David Sharpley,  Bridgewater Systems' Sr. Vice President, Marketing and Product Management quote:

"Bridgewater and Sandvine have successfully worked together in a major 4G operator deployment and we are now expanding this relationship to include integrated policy solutions."

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 Subscriber, Network and Application Policy	●
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	●