DPI Shares Performance in 2011 - The Phenomenal, Great and Bad

  
2011 was a very good year for the shareholders of 2 of the 3 public DPI players. Procera (NASDAQ:PKT) leads with overwhelming 151.3% return and Allot (NASDAQ:ALLT) follows with 30.6%. Sandvine (TSX:SVC), with 2 lower than expected quarters during the year (see recent announcement here) finished 2011 with a negative return of 59.4%.

The chart below shows the performance of the 3 shares vs. the NASDAQ index (-1.8% during 2011), as a benchmark for the technology market. It shows clearly the impact of the above message from Sandvine on its stock performance.

Sandvine will announced its Q4 (Nov) results (expected revenues of $19.5-20) on January 12 (here). Allot was quick to announce yesterday, before year end, that results will be announced on February7 (here).

Best wishes for Happy and Successful 2012 !

Testing S/W Announcements: Mobile Metrics now Tests Gx and Rx Interfaces

 

Mobile Metrics announced the ".. availability of the Torrent 6100 LTE Test System for the Enhanced Packet Core Network ..  Now in release 1.1, it has been augmented to allow for PCRF and IMS testing over the Gx and Rx interfaces. The 6100 is equally at home with performing simple functional tests such as initial-attach with accompanying visual trace, while also giving the user power of generating high capacity load tests with complex traffic profiles involving millions of UEs and thousands of eNBs .. In initial tests, the Torrent 6100 was demonstrated to achieve well over 30,000 (and in some configurations 37,000) initial attaches per second"

See "Mobile Metrics Announces New LTE Test System for the Evolved Packet Core Network" - here.

[Update] [Rumors]: Which IMS Component Caused Verizon's LTE Outage?

 
[Update]: Tekelec informed me that "Our Diameter Signaling Router was not responsible for the Verizon Wireless outage".

In a recent post to the Gigaom blog, Kevin Fitchard interviews Verizon Wireless VP of network engineering Mike Haberman, trying "to shed some light on the LTE network’s recent problems and explain how Verizon was taking the necessary steps to ensure that they don’t happen again" (see "Verizon explains its string of LTE outages" - here).

Haberman told Gigaom that "All three outages were caused by problems in Verizon’s service delivery core — in telecom-speak called the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) .. The first outage on Dec. 7 was caused by the failure of a back-up communications database. The second, last week, was the result of an IMS element not responding properly, while Wednesday’s outage was caused by two IMS elements not communicating properly .. once each problem was fixed, it never recurred. Every subsequent outage is a result of a new bug, and it just so happens that December was the month many of these bugs chose to reveal themselves .. "

"Veizon’s IMS systems are a complex network of databases, servers, routers, gateways and policy managers supplied by multiple vendors. Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks, Acme Packet and Tekelec all provide different parts, but Haberman declined to identify which particular elements or which particular vendors were responsible for the problems. In fact, Haberman defended Verizon’s vendors saying that they were experiencing the same LTE growing pains as Verizon".

A 2nd hand rumor I heard, claims that one of the IMS elements that failed this week was Tekelec's Diameter Signaling Router (DSR).

For background - see "How does/will Verizon Wireless Use Tekelec's Diameter Router?" - here.

PCRF Deployments [112]: SK Telecom [Korea] Signs a $1.7M Deal with ntels for LTE

   

My daily search came up today with a message in Korean, for which I could not find any English source, and had to trust the Google translator.

According to the translation, ntels, closed a PCRF (probably this product) contract with SK Telecom, for 1.95B Won ($1.69M).

The report to the Korean stock market (here) explains (to my best understanding)" This Agreement is for the 4G mobile networks (LTE) wireless policy traffic management, to provide a system for efficient QoS control function"  

See (and correct me if I am wrong) "엔텔스, SKT와 19.5억 규모 공급계약" - here.

See also "Complaint against SK Telecom & KT for Blocking VoIP over 3G (Using DPI)" - here.

[Update 48: Allot PCC Partners - Comverse, Oracle] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

       

Based on Allot's partners list (here), I am adding Comverse and Oracle as compatible PCC solutions to Allot's DPI.  For both, this is the first publically announced DPI partnership.

Allot also lists CJSC Peter-Service as a PCC partner.

See also "Comverse Adds PCRF Interfaces to its Policy Manager" - here and "Oracle Launches PCRF" - here.

Unrelated to the above, but still interesting - "Amdocs and Oracle After Comverse Billing" - here (Amdocs, through Bridgewater, is also a partner of Allot).

[Globes]: Riverbed to Buy Expand for $10M

   

Shmulik Shelach reports to Globes that "Sources inform ''Globes'' that Riverbed is about to acquire Expand Networks for $10 million, three months after the company was put in receivership. The sale is due to be closed next week, after Expand special administrator Adv. Paz Rimer submits the deal to the Haifa District Court for approval .. This is the second time that Riverbed has considered acquiring Expand Networks. In late 2009, there were talks to acquire it for $30 million, but nothing came of them. If the court approves the sale, this will be Riverbed's first acquisition in Israel". 

Background - "Optimization Vendor Expand Goes into Urgent Assets Sale" - here.

See "Riverbed to acquire Expand Networks for $10m" - here.

ByteMobile's Analytics: Central Reporting Dashboard

 

Back in June Bytemobile announced its analytics tool (see "Bytemobile - Adds Analytics Features, Finds that Video Traffic is on the Rise" - here).

It appears that additional information was added to the web site recently, naming the new facility as "Central Reporting Dashboard" and presenting some of its reporting capabilities. 

"The CRD helps operators measure, at a content level, the impact of different traffic types, device types, and video formats [2nd chart below], as well as optimization. All of these metrics are vital in planning, managing and maintaining mobile data networks for maximum performance, efficiency and subscriber quality of experience (QoE)"

CRD is used in conjunctions with Byte's Data Loader (top chart below).

EFLAG's Network Intelligence Solution for MNOs

 
I am not sure if this is a new product or not, but I've just noticed NetVision, a DPI based Network Intelligence product from EFLAG, a Chinese "global provider of engineering services and innovative solutions for mobile network planning, optimization, and more .. The company is providing consultancy and managed services to Tier 1 equipment vendors, such as, Nokia Siemens Networks, Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, and Alcatel-Lucent".

EFLAG classifies NetVision as a "subscriber & service centric turnkey solution for Customer Experience Management based on the Deep Packet Inspection technology".

"NetVision helps mobile operators to unveil the information buried into their subscriber data in order to generate more revenue, reduce costs and increase overall customer satisfaction through a unique approach to Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring. Based on a massive statistical data analysis, subscriber information is extracted at core network interfaces and specifically target 2G/3G/4G mobile data applications (HTTP, DNS, MMS, WAP, FTP, Streaming, email, IM, etc...)"

"Through Deep Packet Inspection technology (DPI), NetVision reassembles every subscriber application session at OSI layer 7 and evaluates the performance perceived by each subscriber .. can be deployed on both portable hardware for short-term network monitoring, optimization and troubleshooting projects, or as a complete OSS platform for long-term E2E monitoring, subscriber management and Service Level Assurance (SLA) ..NetVision is performing deep traffic analysis through massive data captures at IP-based core network interfaces (Iu-PS, Gb, Gn, Gi, Gw, MMx "

China's Plans for 2015: IPv6 ($25B investment), 5X Access Speed

 

Gao Yuan and Chen Limin report to China Daily that ".. The country will put the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-based network into small-scale commercial pilot use by the end of 2013, and deploy and commercialize the IPv6-based network on a large scale between 2014 and 2015, according to a statement released after an executive meeting of the State Council that was presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao .. By 2010, China had about 278 million IPv4 addresses, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Center. That was far fewer than the 450 million Internet users who live in the country".

Hu Qiheng (pictured), director-general of the Internet Society of China said: "The development of IPv6 is one of the most important tasks for China's Internet industry during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, from 2011 to 2015".

See "New Internet protocol to undergo test" - here.

According to Shenyin & Wanguo Securities, "China's development of the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-based network will attract 160 billion yuan [$25B] investment" (here).
 

In parallel, Zhu Shenshen reports to the Shanghai Daily that "China is to increase Internet access speed by five times and cut broadband costs .. By 2015, China's average broadband bandwidth will hit 20 megabytes [megabits] per second (Mbps) in urban areas, almost five times the current level. In rural areas, the bandwidth will reach 4 Mbps .. By the end of November, China had 155 million family broadband users and 119 million 3G phone users .. 11 million Internet Protocol TV users and 40 million mobile video users "

See "Internet faster, cheaper by 2015" - here.    

 

US Government will Spend $6.7B on DPI Based Security for 2013-2018

    

A new research by Market Research Media finds that "The U.S. Government Deep Packet Inspection market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 31% from 2013 to around US$ 1.8 Billion by 2018. The market will see a few good years of explosive growth in all segments before going flat"

"While technological advantages of the DPI technology leave no doubt about its significant role in cyber security, lawful interception and data leakage protection, the perception of DPI as “postal employees opening envelopes and reading letters inside” and privacy concerns hurdle its deployment."

While the report shows a nice annual growth, the numbers are smaller comapred to the previous report, which projected $7.2B spending from 2010 to 2015 (here).

See "Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): U.S. Government Market Forecast 2013-2018" - here.

Why Global MNOs Deploy Policy Management?

 
Elitecore published a whitepaper describing the current state of policy management. The document describes in detail the use cases enabled by its PCRF product, NetVertex, (covered here) as well as some general market information.

An interesting part is the research done (see table below) on the use cases are already adopted by global MNOs related, or could be supported by, policy management:

See "A handbook of Emerging Policy Management Use cases" - here or here (registration required)

Resource: Overview of PCRF

  

A very-well articulated general overview of PCRF and its Gx interface with PCEF presented by Chris Reece from LTE University.

See "EPC Overview Extended Edition: PCRF" - here.

2012 - Usage Based Billing Starts for US DSL Services

 

End of year is the time for either predictions (which I disregard as they usually made by vendors and say that the products they sell will be the hottest trend next year; extreme example - here) or summarizing the year. 

For the latter,  a story by  Sean Buckley to FierceTelecom provides the current status of Usage based Billing in North America DSL services.

Unless we will see last minute changes, AT&T, Frontier and CenturyLink will introduced UBB for "2% of their customers using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth .. will get a 150 GB allowance, while U-verse subscribers have a 250 GB cap on services .. Any subscriber that exceeds the new usage cap three times over the life of their account will be charged $10 for every 50GB over the 150 GB or 250GB limit. (AT&T case). Verizon and  Sonic.net are not going to charge overage fees.  

During the year I followed the case of Bell Canada (see "Canada: Final(?) Decision - No UBB for Bell Canada Wholesale Service" - here) in which, during the year long saga, led Netflix to offer optimized streaming video flow that will reduce volume by 66% (here).

To understand the effect of UBB we can learn from an experiment in New Zealand, in which TelstraClear removed data caps for one weekend. The result - "Customers used two and a half times more data overall than the previous weekend" (here and chart).

On the other hand we also saw a research claiming that "Data caps are a very Unfair Tool when Targeting Disruptive Users" - here.
 

See "Year in review 2011: Usage Based Billing (UBB) will punish all broadband users" - here.

Freescale - Pattern Matching Based DPI @10Gbps

  

An interesting training presentation from Freescale shows some of the DPI mechanism available for developers. Sam Siu, Systems and Applications Engineer, describes the internals of the QorIQ P4080 Processor and shows the simplicity of developing application identification using pattern matching.

See some slides below and the full document "Enable Deep Packet Inspection and Policy Control with the QorIQ P4080 Processor" - here.

Singtel: Theoretical LTE Download - 75Mbps, Actual 3.4-12Mbps

 

Singtel continues to be transparent, practical and honest with its customers when it advertizes its mobile broadband services (see "SingTel Discloses Real Mobile Speeds and Offers a Premium Mobile Broadband Service" - here).  

The MNO announced the ".. commercial launch of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband service. Named Broadband on Mobile Prestige 75, it is the first LTE service in Singapore to be available to both consumer and business customers .. The service offers theoretical download speeds of up to 75Mbps and typical download speeds between 3.4Mbps and 12Mbps .. It provides mobile Internet access that is more than three times faster than existing 3G-based services, with one-fifth of the network latency .. Broadband on Mobile Prestige 75 will initially be available for USB dongle modems only. It will be enhanced to support LTE-enabled smartphones and tablets when they become more readily available in the market."


See "SingTel launches commercial LTE mobile broadband service" - here.

[Infonetics]: Service Providers Increase Security Spending; DDoS Prevention CAGR - 23%

   

Jeff Wilson (pictured), Principal Analyst, Security, Infonetics Research forecasts that "Global revenue for DDoS prevention solutions will end the 2011 year up 52% compared to 2010 .. Combined, all segments of the DDoS prevention appliance market are forecast to grow at a 23% CAGR during the five years from 2010 to 2015; mobile leads with a 42% CAGR .. Arbor Networks leads the overall DDoS prevention appliance market as well as some (but not all) of the segments by deployment location".

A second report by Jeff provides "insight into incumbent, mobile, security specialist, competitive and cable operators’ security investment plans and how they perceive various vendors in the network security market". 

The survey shows that "Nearly every service provider interviewed by Infonetics expects to increase security spending over the next year, in absolute dollars and as a percent of capex ..  The biggest drivers for service providers to deploy new security solutions are protection of customer data, network uptime, changes in the data center, and the increasing number and complexity of security threats"

See "DDoS prevention market up 52% in 2011, mobile networks deployments " - here and "Service provider security plans, views on security vendors revealed in new survey" - here.

driving growth

Related posts: 

• Arbor: Badly Designed Firewalls Creates A DDoS Risk to MNOs  - here
• Security Win: $2M Wireless Tier1 Deal for Radware's Attack Mitigation System - here.
• TelePacific Shares Details of DDoS Attacks Against its VoIP Services - here
• Gartner: "it is time to have DDoS protection considered" - here.

 

Bell Canada will Stop Shape "diminishing" P2P Traffic on March 2012

   

After Bell Canada said that "P2P File Sharing is no Longer a capacity Issue" (here), could not deploy Usage based Billing to its served ISPs (here), and had application identification failures in its DPI system (here) the Canadian carrier decided that there it should no longer use its DPI system (which they call ITMP - Internet Traffic Management Practice) for P2P shaping.

In a letter to the Chris Seidl, Executive Director, Telecommunications, CRTC , Denis E. Henry, Vice-President – Regulatory, Government Affairs and Public Law and Philippe Gauvin, Counsel – Regulatory Law & Policy explain (see below and here):

"With the increasing popularity of streamed video and other traffic, P2P file-sharing, as a proportion of total traffic, has been diminishing. This is not to say that it no longer has an impact on network congestion. Nevertheless, and in light of the extensive investments the Companies have made in additional network capacity, and given economic ITMPs in the marketplace, the Companies will withdraw the shaping of P2P traffic on the Companies' networks, with regards to both retail and wholesale traffic, effective 1 March 2012".

DPI Announcements: 40GE DPI Cards by Telesoft Technologies

    

Telesoft Technologies announced  "the availability of a new range of high-speed packet processing cards that have been designed to significantly accelerate the performance of deep packet inspection applications .. Using dynamic filtering, the MPAC-IP cards can be configured in real-time to only select the packets that are of interest, eliminating the need for applications to identify and discard irrelevant packets. Advanced buffering ensures that 100% of packets can be captured, with zero loss, in real-time and at transmission rates of up to 40Gb/s from each input source. More than 32,000 dynamically configurable filters are available to provide complete user control of a range of applications that depend on line-rate deep packet inspection such as QoS/ QoE monitoring, packet monitoring, policy management and cyber security"

Interfaces: 

• 4x1GbE, 4x10GbE, or 2x40GbE monitoring inputs (Ethernet card)
• 4xSTM-16, 4xSTM-64, or 2xSTM-256 or SONET rate monitoring inputs (SDH / SONET card)

See "Telesoft Technologies launches new, high-speed 40Gb/s packet processing cards" - here.

Done, For $268M in Cash [Rumors: Akamai to Buy Cotendo for $300M]

  

Rumors (here) became reality - "Akamai Technologies  and Cotendo announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire Cotendo. .. Akamai will acquire all of the outstanding equity of Cotendo in exchange for a net cash payment of approximately $268 million , after expected purchase price adjustments, plus the assumption of outstanding unvested options to purchase Cotendo common stock".

Paul Sagan (pictured) president and CEO of Akamai said: "As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization .. Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world"

See "Akamai to Acquire Cotendo" - here.

Optimization Win: Vantrix Selected By Tier1 NA Operator for Video Optimization and Analytics

      

Vantrix announced that "it has been selected by a Tier 1 Operator in North America for its video mediation platform. Under the agreement, Vantrix will provide mobile video usage analysis, policy enforcement, and bandwidth optimization for 3G and 4G Networks"

Earlier this year Vantrix announced it was selected by Ericsson as its partner in video optimization (here) and that Mobifone[Vietnam - here] and Vimpelcom [Russia - here] have selected their solutions.  

See also a guest post by Vantrix CEO, Allan Benchetrit, "Bringing Order to Mobile Video Explosion" - here.

Key capabilities of Mediadvance include:

• Intelligence on the video traffic and its usage, via Deep Media Inspection
• Control and Policy Enforcement function for video services
• Video Optimization capabilities to increase efficiencies and improve user experience

See "North American Tier 1 Operator selects Vantrix for Mobile Video Mediation" - here  

[Globes]: Allot Negotiates Acquisition of Flash Networks for $100-120M

   

Shmulik Shelach and Batya Feldman report to Globes that "Allot Communications is in advanced negotiation to buy Flash Networks at $100-120M, some of it in Allot stock .. to date, Flash raised a total of $61M and can add Orange, T-Mobile and other leading mobile operators to Allot's Customer base".

As expected, Allot refused to comment and Flash did not respond to Globes.

Recent posts on Flash Networks - here, here and here; On optimization market - here.

An integrated Allot-Flash solution may compete with Bytemobile's recent solution - see "Bytemobile Launches Integrated DPI, Caching, Optimization and NI Solution" - here.

See "Allot in talks to buy Flash Networks" - here and here, Hebrew

Kineto Wireless Makes Wi-Fi Offload Easier; Used by Orange UK and T-Mobile US

 

Kineto Wireless (see "We are running out of spectrum .. we need Wi-Fi offload" - here) announced "it has added new capabilities to its Smart Wi-Fi Application that enhance the end user service experience when connected to public Wi-Fi networks include .. Smart Connect feature that assists users with accessing hotspots when additional log-on information is required ; Smart Offload that enable selective service offloading to specific Wi-Fi networks based on operator policy and subscriber preference"

".. Smart Wi-Fi is available from leading mobile operators around the world, and the Smart Wi-Fi application is available for Android-based smartphones from leading handset manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG, Huawei and ZTE.".

The company says that Kineto’s Smart Wi-Fi technology is behind Orange UK’s “Signal Boost” and T-Mobile US’ “WiFi Calling” (see video below).

See "Kineto Enhances Smart Wi-Fi Application for use in Public Wi-Fi Networks" - here.

Congestion Management: Cell Level vs. Core Network Traffic Management

   

An article by Monica Paolini (pictured), founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting, analyzes the ways operators may manage mobile network congestion.



According to the analysis, since traffic has consistent time-of-day and location usage patterns (see chart below), network wide traffic management policies are not efficient, and "to fully benefit from traffic management tools, operators will have to move to real-time, cell-level traffic management in the radio access network (RAN) .. And moving one step further, operators need to actually act ahead of time, using predictive data to prevent congestion, especially when due to unexpected traffic spikes"
 

Time-of-day traffic distribution by type of location. Source: Nokia

However - is this a particle, technically available, ROI worthy approach? I am not sure, and so is the author.

the article admits that "Most mobile operators I talked to would rather avoid to do this and reasonably so. Tracking and acting traffic in real-time at the cell level inevitably adds complexity and today traffic data is available but only offline"

".. Today operators are just starting to implement traffic management, policy and content optimization to increase the efficiency of their networks. These tools allow them to use their network resources more efficiently, i.e. to pack more data within their existing pipes. The cost per bit goes down, and, if properly implemented, QoE is improved by sharing resources more fairly among subscribers"

Also, the marketing and regulation aspects (Net Neutrality, transparency) should be considered: "it is imperative that the resulting traffic management strategy is sufficiently simple and transparent that it can be easily communicated to subscribers, and that they perceive it as a way to make the distribution of network resources fair--rather than the result of the capriciousness or greediness of the mobile operator"

See the rest - "Paolini: Managing data traffic in real time, down at the cell level" - here.

Ovum: Operators Dissatisfied with SDM Solutions; Expect More Business Value

   

While the Subscriber Data Management market is "is forecast to grow rapidly over the next few years" (here) and supported by giants such as Oracle and Amdocs, it seems that something is still missing and operators do not find the solution they really need.

 

Shagun Bali (pictured), Analyst, Telecoms Technology, Ovum recommends vendors in the SDM space to "..revisit their marketing and partnering strategies. As the telecoms industry evolves toward more subscriber  personalization, operators have similar expectations from their suppliers as well".

"A key message from the recent [SDM and Data Warehousing Summit] was that operators are dissatisfied with vendors’ current [SDM] offerings. Operators’ focus has shifted from reducing costs to delivering value and managing customers’ experience over their networks. They expect vendors to understand and help them deliver business value. Vendors also showcased their SDM capabilities to help operators overcome their data management challenges. But overall, operators’ challenges outpace vendors’ current solutions"

"Operators were enthusiastic in discussing the potential they see in using subscriber data in more sophisticated ways. Operators treat such data as a strategic asset – the oil that will fuel their future growth. Some take the idea so far as to see themselves transforming in five years or so into companies that primarily manage data and also provide communications services"

See "Big Data is a big challenge for operators and vendors" - here.

PCRF Deployments [111]: Pelephone [Israel] Selected Ericsson's SAPC

    

Doron Kurtz, Pelephone's VP Engineering & Technology announced during a press conference that the mobile operator selected Ericsson's PCRF system, SAPC (covered - here), "the first PCRF in Israel".

Amitai Ziv reports to The Marker (and twitted me the slide - thanks!) that according to Pelephone's presentation, the system enables personalized charging (according to the subscriber profile), volume base service plans, real time notifications and a Turbo Button (Bandwidth on Demand) feature.

See here (Hebrew).

Earlier this week, customers of Pelephone's first MVNO (Ramy Levi) complained that Pelephone reduced their download speed to 2 Mbps, vs. 7.2 Mbps when using the native Pelephone service (here).

Optimization Deployments [110]: Comteco[Bolivia] Uses DiViNetworks to Expand International Bandwidth Capacity

  

DiViNetworks announced the 2nd deployment of its DiViCloud (see "Isocel Telecom[Benin] Uses DiViNetworks’ [new?] Solution to Reduce International Bandwidth Costs" - here).

"Comteco .. selected DiViNetworks as its data capacity expansion provider .. To meet the booming need for bandwidth Comteco required additional data capacity from Miami.  DiViCloud, providing data capacity from the cloud, eliminating the excessive investment in networking infrastructure. Network operators and ISPs will obtain data capacity at half the market price, at any location, and over any set of physical capacity providers"

Comteco is the leading service provider in the Bolivian department of Cochabamba, serving over 100,000 corporate customers, providing internet, voice and TV services.

See "DiViNetworks provides Comteco (Boliviatel) VIRTUAL DATA CAPACITY along 3 wireline and wireless hops with a single system" - here. The new product will be launched on 10 January, 2012 - see here for the details of the event.

[ALU]: Control Wireless Congestion by Deprioritization of Heavy Users

 

An article by Hai Zhou, Kevin Sparks (pictured), Nandu Gopalakrishnan, Pantelis Monogioudis, Francis Dominique, Peter Busschbach, and Jim Seymour all from Alcatel Lucent "evaluates the concept of deprioritization of heavy users in wireless networks for congestion management, the difference between deprioritization and throttling, and the enabling technologies to implement the feature in real-world networks"

CONCLUSION

 

The results of our investigation highlight the challenges operators face in safeguarding their networks against heavy users and the two major approaches in doing so: 

• Throttling acts at the gateway level and is unable to exploit the temporary traffic gaps of typical users. Therefore, it continues to rate limit heavy users even if there is no reason to do so.
   
• Deprioritization, on the other hand, has the visibility offered by the scheduler at the (e)NodeB and is also self-organizing, allowing control transparency and better upswing potential of the heavy and typical users.

Many issues in this critical field remain open such as ensuring fairness across the population of users, which points to the design of a classification function that offers substantial room for differentiation between vendors and/or operators.

 

 

See "Deprioritization of Heavy Users in Wireless Networks" - below or here.

 

Heavy Users

Gartner: "Major OSS investment areas include policy management"

 

A recent report by Martina Kurth (pictured), Research Director, Gartner (curtsey of Oracle) "evaluates the capabilities of end-to-end vendors in the global market for OSS service assurance and fulfillment, a market characterized by simultaneous consolidation and vibrant innovation by startups".

"Overall, we expect the worldwide OSS market to grow from $25.3 billion in 2010 to $32.9 billion in 2015".

"Major OSS investment areas include order to fulfillment processes across logical inventory and adjacent product and service catalog domains, and policy management. On the other hand, we see a major revitalization around service quality management and the corresponding network performance and capacity planning, which often revolve around enterprisewide CEM initiatives, by adding an additional analytics and data correlation layer"

See "Magic Quadrant for Operations Support Systems" - here.

Regulation Improves Performance - the FCC/Cablevision Example

   
Last August the FCC published a report on US ISP's "actual vs. advertised" performance (see "FCC: "Most ISPs delivered actual download speeds within 20% of advertised speeds" - here). A major exception to the generally good results (80+%) was the performance of Cablevision (see chart below).

 

It seems that public monitoring helps. In a post to the FCC blog, Joel Gurin (pictured), Chief, Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, reports that "As we had hoped, our [August] results quickly began informing the marketplace. Our findings were reported not only on the news and on the websites of consumer groups, but also in television commercials, radio ads, and press releases from Internet service providers themselves .. We are pleased to note that the performance of one company—Cablevision—markedly improved from earlier this year. .. During October 2011, the most recent month for which data is available, subscribers to Cablevision’s 15 Mbps service were receiving average download speeds during peaks hours at over 90% of the advertised speed" 



Source: FCC,
Measuring Broadband America,
August 2011



See "Broadband Speed: FCC Data Is Improving the Market" - here.



In the meantime, Cablevision filled a lawsuit against Verizon - "for allegedly making false claims in advertisements for its FiOS high-speed Internet service .. Verizon's ads [see below] misleadingly presented Federal Communications Commission data to suggest Cablevision service runs exceptionally slow. The FCC figures actually show Cablevision Internet running near or above advertised speeds even during peak usage hours"  (see WSJ article "Cablevision Sues Verizon Over High-Speed Internet Ads" - here).  

  

[Israel] Pelephone Limits Download Speeds of its MVNO Subscribers

  
Earlier this month I reported on the new age of mobile competition in Israel - the launch of the first MVNO service, by the retail food chain Ramy Levi, served by Pelephone's network (see "Competition Leads Partner [Israel] to Offer Reduced Speed Mobile Internet Instead of Overage Fees" - here).

Amitai Ziv (picture) reports to The Marker that Ramy Levi's customers are complaining that the download speed of the new service is limited to 2Mbps vs. the promised 7.2Mbps.

"When switching from a Ramy Levi's to a Pelephone SIM card, speed goes back to 7.2Mbps .. tested in numerous places .. Both companies did not deny the facts .. Pelephone hinted that limiting speed to 2Mbps is part of the contract with Ramy Levi"

Article - here, Hebrew.