China Telecom Prioritizes Tudou.com Video Uploads

    

A simple example for video monetization, with the absence of Network Neutrality rules. This time the content owner pays.

China Tech News site reports that "Proving that fairness ends at the Great Firewall, Chinese video website Tudou.com announced that it has reached agreement with China Telecom to increase the video upload speed on Tudou.com for users in Shanghai. According to local media reports, Tudou.com said with the cooperation, China Telecom's fiber network users in Shanghai will enjoy about 4 Mb/S video upload speed on Tudou.com, which is reportedly four to eight times faster than other video websites in China. In the future, the cooperation will be expanded to the nationwide market of the two parties".

"At the beginning of September 2011, China Telecom Shanghai branch officially launched a broadband speed increase program. Under this program, China Telecom's existing fiber network users in Shanghai can enjoy a free-of-charge speed increase to between 10M and 30M; while ADSL users who want to join the fiber network can enjoy a free-of-charge speed increase to above 4M. By the end of 2011, there will be 4.5 million fiber network users in Shanghai"

See "Net Neutrality Rejected In China As Tudou.com Inks Internet Video Deal" - here.

Smarter PCC Solutions Open the Door for Wi-Fi Charging

   

Sarah Reedy interviews for Light Reading Steven Glapa (pictured), senior director of field marketing, Ruckus Wireless who predicts that ".. Wireless operators will be investing up to nine figures in Wi-Fi by next year, and they have to recoup it somehow .. most operators are at least exploring how to charge for Wi-Fi now .. considering bundling in an extra cost for the off-network access into data plans and counting that usage against the data cap .. Once they have the policy management in place to integrate Wi-Fi into [their networks], you have those options". See "Wave Goodbye to Free Wi-Fi" - here.

Recently, Sandvine's CTO referred to the policy enforcement solution for shared access control (here) - "we provide the same consumer policy on all access technologies and on all access vendors. .. Currently they are operating on 2.5G or 3G, 4G or some WiFi offload and some WiMax and these are the types of combinations you are getting. You got a code that is on family plan, or share free to multiple devices and one of those is on a 2.5G and the other one is on a WiFi, and for all of it we can do universal service across all technologies. It is very powerful particularly when there’s transitioning occurring in network technologies like that"

[Exact Ventures]: Diameter Router Market "will double each year through 2016"

    

While the diameter signaling router/controller (or policy exchange controllers) is still young and small market (see "Diameter Routing Explained" - here), it has already gotten the attention of Exact Ventures,  a technology market intelligence company, founded in 2011.

Obviously, the recent $20M Verizon Wireless-Tekelec deal (here, here) is a major recognition and driver for this market, as well as other deals announced this year (Traffix Systems). Other solutions are available from Acme Packet, IntelliNet Technologies and Openet (see the full list here).  

Exact says that "The extraordinary growth in smartphone-based signaling traffic plus the growing number of network nodes that require signaling are creating an urgent need for a new signaling infrastructure. According to the report, the emerging DSC market is forecast to more than double each year through 2016 due to very strong growth in network signaling traffic driven primarily by LTE-based smartphones. Growth revenues from software license shipments over the next 5 years will be partially offset by an almost 20 percent yearly price erosion over the same period as the market becomes more competitive and as products become more cost effective due to economies of scale".

Greg Collins (pictured), Founder and Principal Analyst at Exact Ventures says: “Any failures of the signaling system can spell disaster for the network operator in the form of network outages, poor performance, and system latency, resulting in subscriber churn and lost revenues".

See "Diameter Signaling Controller Market to Skyrocket Through 2016, According to Exact Ventures" - here and more details on the research - here.

DPI Deployments [97]: U. of Exeter Deployed Allot "to throttle or block undesirable or illegal activity"

  

I mentioned few times the universities as a significant market for DPI products (here and here), as in many of them, the IT services are actually very similar to other public ISP services. Nevertheless, universities' IT also has some enterprise-like needs, such as protecting the university assets and preventing illegal activities.
 

Ron Condon reports to SearchSecurity (UK) the story of the University of Exeter ("16,500 full-time students, 40,000 active ports, traffic is doubling about every 18 months"): 

"Exeter had been trying to solve a content piracy problem that had been gradually growing over the years. Some students were visiting piracy sites and downloading material in breach of copyright laws, something the music and film industries are starting to police more effectively ..  So as part of a major network security upgrade this year installed the Allot Sigma-E traffic-shaping software .. product from Allot Communications"

According to Roger Snelling (picture), head of networks - "It allows us to provide bandwidth for legitimate purposes and to throttle or block undesirable or illegal activity .. The system went live just before the start of the new academic year, and it is already paying for itself .. It’s helping us to police the situation very rigorously ..  We have an eclectic mix of services, from researchers moving huge data sets, to the ability to support delay-sensitive traffic, such as VoIP, which we have included as part of our upgrade project"

See "University IT security pros thwart content piracy with traffic shaping" - here.



Source: Allot Communications



Sandvine Presents: YouTube vs. Netflix

Sandvine published the Fall 2011 Global Internet Phenomena Report, with lots of details on real-time entertainment traffic.

"Within fixed networks in the United States, Real-Time Entertainment applications are the primary drivers of network capacity requirements, accounting for 60% of peak downstream traffic, up from 50% in 2010. Rate-adaptive video represents the majority of video bandwidth, with Netflix alone representing 32.7% of peak downstream traffic, a relative increase of more than 10% since spring"

Sandvine also created nice inforgraphic with the report. See it here - and the chart below showing the "fight" between Netflix and YouTube - how is bigger?

See "Sandvine’s Fall 2011 Global Internet Phenomena Report Indicates a Race for Services and Quality Delivery" - here and download the report from here.

World's Top20 Mobile Groups

 

Interesting ranking of MNOs, based on global groups, rather than individual operators. Certainly useful if you sell to the mobile market ..

"Operator groups present in fast-growing mobile markets in Asia and Latin America are continuing to rise up the rankings in the latest Wireless Intelligence 'Scoreboard,' which this month tracked the top 20 global operator groups based on majority-owned assets in Q2 2011. Minority holdings (less than 50% plus one share) are excluded from this analysis". .

Top 5 are shown below. See the rest at "Wireless Intelligence: New 'Scoreboard' ranks top 20 global operator groups by mobile connections" - here

Juniper Integrates Radware's Traffic Management Software

 

Radware announced that it "worked with Juniper to create a scalable ADC software application, based on Radware's Alteon® ADC technology and using the Junos® SDK to fully integrate the ADC with Juniper Networks Junos operating system. The ADC application is implemented on high-performance service cards for the MX Series, enabling Juniper customers to improve their service delivery capabilities while concurrently avoiding the cost and complexity of deploying and maintaining ADC-specific appliances. The ADC and MX Series also share the same configuration and management tools, and the ADC leverages Junos integration with Operational Support Systems (OSS), which further reduces customer costs and risk"

"Juniper's router-integrated ADC employs sophisticated load balancing algorithms that ensure optimal performance and service quality by intelligently distributing and directing traffic based on real time changes in server load and availability. The advanced solution complements the Juniper Networks MX Series comprehensive set of carrier-grade services, and addresses the resiliency and performance requirements of many types of services and applications, including DNS, WAP gateways, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), SIP-based VoIP, as well as many others".

See "Radware Provides Application Delivery Control for Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router" - here.

Spirent Announces 10GE Mobility, Bandwidth Management and Network Intelligence Testing Module

Spirent announced "..  TestCenter HyperMetrics mX [datasheet - here] modules enable carriers and their network equipment suppliers to navigate the complexity of converged network elements, ensuring that they perform at scale with realism .. Spirent TestCenter HyperMetrics mX modules greatly simplify and accelerate high-scale mobility, core network, mobile backhaul, routing, access and application testing .. Spirent HyperMetrics mX ensures:

• Mobility with high scalability of mobile data sessions, delivering high-performance multi-play applications with seamless mobility between 2G/3G and LTE networks, all critical for an uninterrupted user quality of experience (QoE)
   

• Bandwidth Management with emulation of [6]millions of subscribers under real-world network conditions, including an unprecedented number of applications being delivered concurrently, such as QoE-aware live IP video streaming along with voice, web based applications
   
• Network Intelligence with the delivery of the mobile multiplay experience by combining high performance stateful traffic, high-scale routing, access and mobile control plane on a single module

See "Spirent Ensures Performance and Scalability of 4G/LTE Networks" - here. See also "DPI Testing: Sandvine Chooses Spirent" - here.

Onavo CEO: We may Charge for our Data Optimization Service

 

Guy Rosen, Co-Founder & CEO of Onavo, the "3 rd party mobile data optimization service" (here) participated in a panel session during the Mobile 2012 conference held in Israel this week.

According to the report in the Calcalist news site (by Reut Miriam Cohen, here, Hebrew),  Mr. Rosen was asked about how Onavo is planning to generate revenues from the optimization service.

The answer was - "the possibilities are charging for the application download, advertizing during use, or selling services; for us, the third way is very suitable. We save people money, asking some in return makes sense. In the meantime this is free of charge"

UK Court Orders BT to Block Newzbin2 in 14 Days, Using DPI

     

While the UK regulator, Ofcom, believes that "All site blocking techniques can be circumvented" (here), BT was order to deploy methods to block one specific site - Newzbin2, a usenet service - and use IP address blocking as well as DPI based URL blocking techniques.

TorrentFreak reports that "Following a High Court ruling in July, UK Internet service provider BT now has just 14 days to carry out a full subscriber access block of Usenet indexing site Newzbin2. While the ruling will be seen as a victory for the major Hollywood studios behind the action, BT will have to pick up the bill for enforcing the block. The blocking order is flexible in order to reduce the effect of any countermeasures employed by Newzbin2 .. As previously noted, BT will use its ‘Cleanfeed’ system to censor Newzbin2, a technology normally used to block images and sites connected to child abuse".

The blocking order also says that

"The technical means to be adopted are: 

(i) IP address re-routing in respect of each and every IP address from which the said website operates and which is notified in writing to the Respondent by the Applicants or their agents; and
(ii) DPI-based URL blocking utilising at least summary analysis in respect of each and every URL available at the said website and its domains and sub-domains and which is notified in writing to the Respondent by the Applicants or their agents.

 .. For the avoidance of doubt paragraph 1 is complied with if the Respondent uses the system known as Cleanfeed and does not require the Respondent to adopt DPI-based URL blocking utilising detailed analysis"

See "UK ISP BT Given 14 Days To Block Newzbin2" - here.

Bytemobile: Video Optimization Increases Video Clip Viewing Time by 50%

  

Bytemobile published a new edition of its Mobile Analytics report (here), with data collected during the 3rd quarter.

"Compared with data for the first half of 2011, this report surfaces an upward trajectory of demand for higher-quality video resolution and the increasing impact of mobile video on wireless networks worldwide".

The report provides interesting information on subscribers' video consumption behavior:

• On average, mobile subscribers consume their total daily video content in a single session
   
• Video users click through multiple videos before terminating their session
   
• On average, mobile video subscribers watch 10 videos sequentially
   
• On an average day, 17 percent of total laptop subscribers consume video content, compared to 11 percent of total iPhone subscribers and 7 percent of total Android subscribers. Less than one percent of feature phone subscribers attempt to consume video content

And, of course, there are optimization related conclusions:

• Across geographies, subscribers on un-optimized networks view approximately 60 seconds of each video clip, while subscribers on optimized networks watch 90 seconds.
  Note: I guess this can be read in two ways, but the probable explanation is that the "optimized" users see a larger portion of the clip, and not that it takes them more time to view the same clip .. !
   
• During off-peak network hours, an individual subscriber will consume twice as much video content in a single session than they would during peak hours
   

Volubill: "We have chosen to restructure our product suites"

 

Yesterday I reported Volubill's launch of new PCRF and PCEF product lines (here). As Volubill already had such products before the announcement, I asked the vendor for clarification.

The response I got is as follows:

 

".. having sold CHARGE-IT (our charging solution), and CONTROL-IT (our policy solution), for the last 3 years, we have had lots of opportunity to work with our customers to figure out what works and what doesn’t work in terms of structure, functionality etc. It’s also provided 3 years for the market to shake itself down and for the telcos to gain a clearer picture of what they want to buy, in order to solve specific problems, and how they want to buy it. In addition to this, Volubill’s USP is that the company bridges the business and network. We wanted to better communicate this value proposition. 
 Based on these decisions, Volubill has chosen to restructure our product suites to create a more definitive split between a business and network focus. The new product suites VBS and VNS will incorporate our solutions as follows: 

• VBS (Volubill Business System) will incorporate Volubill Policy Manager and Volubill Converged Charging.
    
• VNS (Volubill Network System) will incorporate Core Controller, PCEF, DPI etc.

Cache Deployments [96]: LIME[Caribbean] Selected PeerApp for Cost Reduction

   

The Caribbean Islands, home for the world's greatest sprinters, need a faster internet as well.

PeerApp announced that it has been ".. selected by LIME, the Caribbean’s premier telecommunications company [part of the Cable & Wireless Communications Group], to provide its UltraBand transparent caching platform throughout LIME’s Caribbean operations. UltraBand will help LIME deliver Internet content, including video and multimedia, with improved quality, while reducing associated network congestion and costs".

 

Patrick Bradd (pictured), Chief Technical Officer, LIME ("That's L for Landline, I for Internet, M for Mobile and E for Entertainment") said:

 

“.. UltraBand’s ability to scale from small to very large systems using common software, features and management allows us to distribute the caches to the network edge, for the best possible user experience and savings across the largest part of the network”

See "LIME Selects PeerApp to Speed Internet Content Delivery Throughout Caribbean" - here.

PCRF Announcements: Openet Adds PCC Self-Care Facility

  

Openet announced ".. the immediate availability of the Openet Subscriber Engagement Engine, an industry-first product that gives subscribers real-time visibility into their usage and enables them to directly control, manage and personalize their services, balances and spend .. The Subscriber Engagement Engine acts as a central gateway for extending the integration of Policy and Charging elements to include the mobile device.  The Subscriber Engagement Engine can be specifically branded by the operator and delivered directly on a mobile device".

"Openet Subscriber Engagement Engine enables operators to interact directly with mobile devices leveraging data from existing policy control and charging (PCC) infrastructure and from other network elements. The Engagement Engine enables real-time subscriber access to display customer account data (usage, spend and remaining balances), as well as the dynamic purchase of services".

See "Openet Unveils Subscriber Engagement Engine, Empowers Subscribers to Personalize Data Use and Spend" - here and additional information - here.

DPI Wins - Allot Secures $9.5M Order from Asian Fixed Operator

      

Busy day in Asia for DPI, as Allot Communications also (here) announces a nice win, this time with a fixed operator - that is probably going to be a quarterly/yearly 10% customer, once revenues are recognized. 

The vendor said it ".. has received an initial order worth approximately US$9.5 million from an Asian Tier 1 fixed-line operator. The order includes the deployment of multiple Allot Service Gateway platforms to provide vital network analytics and control".

Allot will publish its Q3 results next week.

See "Allot Announces $9.5 Million Order from Asian Tier 1 Operator" - here.

Volubill Announces new PCRF and 47 Gbps PCEF/DPI System

      

Volubill launched "Volubill Business System (VBS) and Volubill Network System (VNS). Two integrated policy management, enforcement and real-time charging systems for communications service providers (CSPs), which will allow business decision makers greater control in the creation and management of new mobile data pricing strategies within increasingly complex networks".

• VBS is a policy and charging control system, also available in two separate modules - VBS Policy Manager and VBS Convergent Charging.

• VNS (datasheet - here) is a ".. high-capacity 3GPP PCEF compliant system in respect to service flow detection, user plane traffic handling, triggering control plane session management, QoS handling and service data flow management".

  
  The product's DPI function supports "Protocol detection of over 1000 protocols and applications".

Hardware and performance data are:

See "Volubill Unveils Business and Network solutions for Service Provider Policy Management and Charging" - here.

DPI Wins - Procera Wins 2 New Cable/Mobile Tier-1 APAC Operators

   

Procera Networks announced that it has ".. secured initial orders from two new Tier-1 fixed [cable]/mobile operators in the APAC region. Procera provides the customers with subscriber awareness, location awareness and congestion management. The two operators have fixed and mobile assets with more than 40 million subscribers".

Cam Cullen (pictured), VP of Global Marketing at Procera, said: "Customers realize that intelligence -- channel awareness for cable deployment, congestion management and visibility into Content Delivery Networks -- is a requirement for their networks, not an optional capability. Procera was awarded these deployments due to our comprehensive features for the cable and mobile markets"

See "Two New Tier-1 Mobile Provider Wins for Procera Networks in APAC Region" - here.

Are UK ISPs Ready for Netflix?

      

Akamai's recent "State of the Internet" report ranks the UK as #25 globally (and #16 in Europe) in average broadband connection speeds. Ireland is ranked 13, globally

This, however, does not discourage Netflix from establishing its first non-Americas operation in the UK and Ireland "in early 2012".

"Upon launch, Netflix members from the UK and Ireland will be able to instantly watch a wide array of TV shows and movies right on their TVs via a range of consumer electronics devices capable of streaming from Netflix, as well as on PCs, Macs and mobile tablets and phones.  Further details about the service, including pricing, content and supported devices, will be announced closer to launch".

Netflix expanded to Canada (see "Netflix to the Rescue" - here) and Latin America (here), earlier this year. See also - "Netflix: Video Streaming Performance" - here.

See "Netflix to Launch Service in the UK and Ireland for Streaming Movies and TV Shows in Early 2012" - here.

Sandvine CTO: Usage Management for Congestion Control doesn’t Work

  

Don Bowman (pictured), Sandvine's CTO, was interviewed recently to TELECOM Review October Edition, and provided some insights into the DPI business models - or why service providers are implementing policy based traffic management systems. 

Some quotes:

• Our biggest strength is that we are access agnostic; we provide the same consumer policy on all access technologies and on all access vendors. And that is how powerful we are. Currently they are operating on 2.5G or 3G, 4G or some WiFi offload and some WiMax and these are the types of combinations you are getting. You got a code that is on family plan, or share free to multiple devices and one of those is on a 2.5G and the other one is on a WiFi, and for all of it we can do universal service across all technologies. It is very powerful particularly when there’s transitioning occurring in network technologies like that.
   
• We are subscriber aware and service plan aware. We are also using the charging gateway. So we know if you are using an HTC model, and you know that you are a Sing Tel customer and when you are roaming we know whether you are on a prepaid or postpaid or what service plan you are on
   
• We have a case study with Telefonica, where we concluded that the unlimited social networking plan is the best interest and the network consumer saw their best interest with that, and how they were able to charge and have a higher ARPU
    
• If you want to give the best possible experience to users, predictable pricing is important. Users react poorly if they don’t know what the internet is costing them. Users react best if they know what the price is. So for monetization it is a complex set up of partnership, zero rating and charging the user where they can relate to.
   
• We never see success when they use usage management as a way to control congestion, it doesn’t work

See "Sandvine: Focusing on Transparency and Enabling Best User Experience" - here.

Infonetics: Shared Data Plans - an Opportunity with OSS Needs

    

A research paper by Infonetics (commissioned by Tekelec- see press release here) concludes that

"Shared data plans represent a prime opportunity for operators to reduce churn, drive device adoption, and generate more revenue than they have been able to from individual subscriptions—provided they are executed correctly"

Similar view was presented by Sandvine's CTO (here).

 

Infonetics presents "A few public announcements from major mobile operators":  

• Orange Austria, France, Spain: Since Spring 2011, Orange has been offering two devices per data plan, bundling 600 minutes, unlimited texts, unlimited BTZone WiFi access, and 2GB shared data across both devices—iPad and iPhone are named specifically as available devices; cost is £99/month at 16GB rate.
    
• Vodafone Ireland offers shared mobile broadband for business users with a 5GB limit, shared across however many users is required, for a fee of €7.50 per connection per month, with each additional increment of 5GB being another €10.
    
• Optus offers a plan connecting five users each on a 4GB shared plan, with 20GB of data pooled between those five users each month; in addition, if the subscriber has a mobile connected to a Business Mobile Advantage plan, she will be able to share even more data across the account.
   
• Rogers Wireless offers various plans: 1GB + unlimited social networking to seven popular sites for $30/month; 4GB + unlimited social networking to seven popular sites for $50/month; options to add an additional 1GB for $15/month or to add voice.

Of course, this doesn't come for free (for the operator) - the OSS has to support this - "solutions such as policy, subscriber data management, charging, and Diameter routing. Flexible, real-time capabilities in the control plane are the key success factor to the successful implementation of these new service models"

Shira Levine, directing analyst, next gen OSS and policy, Infonetics says - "Shared data plans — whether across multiple devices for an individual or across multiple subscribers — demand that operators rethink their operational systems. Service providers cannot offer must-haves like parental controls, time-of-day management and application-based rules without advanced policies and subscriber intelligence".

In order to meet the performance challenges such complex system is facing - ".. the number of signaling transactions increases exponentially .. operators will turn to Diameter routing agents (DRAs) to better manage the onslaught of Diameter messages exchanged among network elements"

The paper "All in the Family: The New Requirements of Shared Data Plans" is available here.

EU is Getting Closer to Net Neutrality

 

La Quadrature Du Net reports that "The “Industry” Committee of the EU Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution on Net neutrality .. The text adopted today in the ITRE committee vote will now move to be adopted in plenary without the possibility of further amendments, in a vote scheduled for late-November".

• The text is a strong political statement in favour of Net neutrality. It brings a useful definition of Net neutrality and of the network management policies that are detrimental to the users' freedoms and to competition. 

• The resolution asks the Commission to move past its failed “wait-and-see” [see "EU Net Neutrality Study Recommends: "Do not impose any further NN obligations" - here] approach by assessing the need for further regulation on Net neutrality, within 6 months of EU telecoms regulators (BEREC) releasing their study [see "Yet Another ISP Transparency Guide" - here] on the discriminatory practices of ISPs.

See "Net Neutrality Resolution Adopted in EU Parliament" - here.

How to Build DPI Products? (Part XIII - L7 Identification with 4 Bytes)

    

WAND, "a research group at the University of Waikato Computer Science Department" offers Libprotoident (here):

"a library that performs application layer protocol identification for flows. Unlike many techniques that require capturing the entire packet payload, only the first four bytes of payload sent in each direction, the size of the first payload-bearing packet in each direction and the TCP or UDP port numbers for the flow are used by libprotoident. Libprotoident features a very simple API that is easy to use, enabling developers to quickly write code that can make use of the protocol identification rules present in the library without needing to know anything about the applications they are trying to identify". The project is managed by Shane Alcock,

WAND says it collaborates with ipoque (here) - "The [former] CEO and co-founder of ipoque [now CEO of Adyton Systems], Klaus Mochalski, is an ex-employee of the WAND group. ipoque have provided WAND with a research license for their PACE application classification library, which is being used to compare [see chart below] the performance of libprotoident with a commercial-grade DPI product. In turn, WAND is sharing the results of research into application protocol detection with ipoque to enable them to improve their product".

See here how it works and here for an in-depth description.

Syracuse University Research on Deep Packet Inspection

   

Syracuse University has now a website ("The Network is aware" - here) that ".. features the ongoing activities and results of research investigating whether deep packet inspection is changing the way the Internet is governed .. We analyze DPI deployments that generated political, legal and regulatory conflicts. We explore how its capabilities led to strategic interactions among network operators pursuing their business interests, government agencies seeking control, activists fighting for privacy or net neutrality, politicians and regulators responding to publicity, legislators and courts resolving disputes"
 

Analytical model of co-production

 of technology and governance

used in the case studies.

From Bendrath & Mueller (2011)



The research is led by Milton Mueller (pictured) , Principal Investigator, with a team of 5 researches (here) and "funded [here] by the U.S. National Science Foundation, SBER Division, Program on Science, Technology and Society".

See also "Milton Mueller vs. Dan Kaminsky on ISP Traffic Management Detection" - here.

Among other things, the site features [rather old] data from MLab (here, supported by Google), that uses "crowdsourced network monitoring data" to detect possible use of DPI by ISPs for BitTorrent throttling.

Breaking Myths: Mobile Video Tsunami & Monetization

   
While most of my posts show the needs, solutions and deployments of mobile broadband traffic policy management and enforcement, I believe it is important to see other views as well.

The presentation below "The Effect of mobile video on traffic & policy management" (also here) was delivered by Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis, during the Mobile Video Conference held recently in London.

P2P File Sharing is no Longer a [capacity] Issue, Says Bell Canada

Is Bell Canada giving up on an outdated DPI system (see "Bell Canada Throttled hotfile.com (DPI Mistake) and other Net Neutrality Complaints" - here) or P2P file sharing traffic is no longer a capacity issue for fixed networks?

CBCNews reports that Bell Canada "sent a letter to its wholesale customers – independent ISPs that rent access to Bell's network in order to connect customers to their own networks – informing them that effective November 2011, new network links in its expanded network may no longer be affected by equipment designed to slow down peer-to-peer traffic during peak periods .. Bell clarified that it is no longer installing such equipment as it expands or augments its network .. Bell said it does not distinguish between its wholesale and retail customers when expanding its network, suggesting that retail customers may also experience less throttling of peer-to-peer traffic in the future"

"while congestion still exists, the impact of peer-to-peer file sharing applications on congestion has reduced"

See "Bell to scale back throttling of file-sharing" - here.

Romtelecom Launching Personalized Ad Insertion Service, Using Phorm

     

Yes, carrier behavioral advertising is back - as well as Phorm, one of the early players whose acts in the previous round nearly terminated the space for nearly 3 years.

 

Last week we saw that Orange France (DSL) "likes to know you better" (here) - and now - "With no public debate before the launch at the end of September, Romtelecom has presented a new service called MyClicknet, which basically implements the Phorm behavioural advertising solution with an opt-in approach".

All aspects of the new service are very similar to the one Orange is offering, with the same need to look deep into the traffic: " .. almost all traffic (browsing and searches) on port 80 from Internet users that opt-in for such a system will be scanned in order to create a profile that can be sold to interested advertising companies. Romtelecom insists that no personal data is recorded or kept and the user is identified in the ad network based on an anonymous string of characters. Romtelecom also claims that the system will not scan any type of "delicate subjects", such as content related to smoking, pornography, alcohol, drugs, health issues or related to children under 14 years old"

Romtelecom , jointly owned by OTE, Greece (54%) and The Ministry of Communications and Information Society (MCSI), Romania (46%), has close to 1.1M broadband subscribers, 33% of the local market (June '11, here). The carriers' press release - "Surf the web directly to the point: MyClicknet from Romtelecom" - here - says - "The new service is another Romtelecom initiative to enrich its customers’ online experience via new services"

See "Phorm gets back on the European stage" - here.  

Benu Promises to Increase QoE, Optimize RAN and Reduce Costs for MNOs

 

Benu Networks, the 2nd start-up exposed this week, unveiled ".. its disruptive architecture and purpose-built platform that dramatically reduces costs and improves subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE) for 4G mobile networks .. The core of Benu’s innovative architecture is the Mobile Edge Gateway (MEG) – a carrier-grade, purpose-built hardware and software platform that dynamically instantiates standard EPC network functions. Benu’s MEG platform leverages hardware acceleration to provide sophisticated intelligence, optimization, routing, and security with no performance degradation. Maximizing “good throughput” enhances subscriber QoE and more efficiently utilizes the mobile operator’s RAN"

"Benu’s architecture leverages a unique Secure Distributed Fabric that utilizes IP to create communication links between multiple MEGs and allows a single MEG to consolidate and align subscriber management traffic to the Control Plane, thus minimizing the number of northbound interfaces and elements. In essence, this virtualizes the intelligence layers of the 4G network to account for future applications and business models".

"Benu’s solution eliminates the approach of putting a “bump in the wire” between the RAN and the core network to achieve optimization and offload by integrating these functions into the platform, which reduces complexity and lowers CAPEX and OPEX.

See "Benu Unveils Disruptive Architecture that Delivers Higher Quality of Experience at the Lowest Cost per Gigabyte Delivered for the 4G Packet Core" - here.

Qwilt [Partially] Exposed - "identifies, monitors, stores and delivers Internet video"

   

Qwilt, a 2 years old startup working so far in stealth mode, announced that it  ".. has raised $24 million in two rounds of funding from Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Crescent Point Group and other investors .. Qwilt’s products help ease the burden on carriers by providing technology that identifies, monitors, stores and delivers Internet video through one, cost-effective platform. The technology will also help carriers better monetize the video traffic they carry. Qwilt, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has sales offices in Europe, is now testing its products with five global carriers"

As you can seem, the information is pretty limited - as the CEO blog post (here) says - " .. we will keep our product under wraps at the moment". 

Yuval Shahar (pictured), former CEO of P-Cube, the DPI vendor which was acquired by Cisco, forming the SCE product line, is Qwilt's Chairman of the Board and Co-founder.

See "Qwilt Raises $24 Million from Accel, Redpoint, Crescent Point for Pioneering Video Delivery System" - here.