DPI Deployments [151]: 3UK Identifies and Controls File Sharing, Tethering and High Data Use

    

While 3 UK mobile data plans are "all you can eat" plans, the UK operator decided that some restrictions should apply. 3's network is "designed for data" but "it’s a fact that no mobile operator has an unlimited amount of network capacity, so while we’ll continue to invest, we also have a responsibility to make sure the network we already have is used wisely".

3 UK launched recently a new management tool, TrafficSense, which "..looks at types of data traffic and behaviour that stop other users from enjoying a fair allocation of our network. TrafficSense™ will only manage a very small percentage of users on our network – and the vast majority will actually benefit from higher speeds and a better internet experience".

TrafficSense identifies "File sharing, Tethering and High data use". See " About TrafficSense" - here.

File Sharing includes "peer-to-peer download services like BitTorrent or Napster [see "Napster, the Service that Started DPI, is Gone" -here] and downloading and sharing files using certain sites specifically set up to share files". See more below. 

TeliaSonera Likes OTT. However, …

Mobile Business Briefing reports from the Open Mobile Summit 2012, held in London this week on TeliaSonera's mobility head, Hakan Dahlstrom (pictured) presentation.

Mr. Dahlstrom spoke about their LTE success ("140,000 4G users in Sweden"), smartphone data consumption (" the average smartphone user in the Nordics is consuming 300MB of data per month and that this is set to increase to 3GB per month in just a few years"), mobile broadband consumption ("Mobile broadband users are on track to consume 45GB per month within five years").

The more interesting statements were about the complex relations with Over the Top content providers: ".. The OTT players are increasing the value of the access we are providing to the end user [and] our role is to support this behaviour .. Access is separate from services. We will treat [the OTT players] like our own services but we will provide alternatives .. To this end, he said that TeliaSonera was planning an RCS-based communicator to compete with the likes of WhatsApp and Skype .. Not everyone needs to go with our communicator but our customers are asking for this".

See "TeliaSonera touts 4G progress and OTT alternatives" - here.

BEREC: "traffic management and differentiation practices are capable of being used for questionable purposes"

     

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) published ".. the results of an investigation into traffic management and other practices resulting in restrictions to the open Internet in Europe". (for background see "The EU Takes its time with Net Neutrality: It is Important, but Let's Monitor and Study First" - here and "BEREC: Blocking/throttling P2P and VoIP with DPI is Frequently Done in Europe" - here).

"The total number of operators considered within the scope of the exercise is 381 - 266 fixed and 115 mobile operators .. The customer base of the respondent operators covers a total of about 140 million fixed broadband subscribers and 200 million mobile active Internet subscribers".

The traffic restrictions reported by the operators are divided into 4 categories:

1. P2P/VoIP and Other contents/applications (e.g. file sharing, FTP, etc.)
    
2. Measures reported by operators as allowing a more efficient protection and management of networks - Congestion management and Security and integrity 
    
3. Measures put in place by operators in order to implement specific business models, either concerning the bundling of specialized services with Internet access, or with respect to data volume pricing - Specialised services in fixed networks and Data caps
    
4. Restriction that is not at the operators’ initiative, but is required by public authorities (measures upon legal order)

BEREC concludes:

• Competition is expected to discipline operators, and ensure the best offers for consumers, but this critically relies on effective transparency and the ability of endusers to easily switch service providers.
    
• Both NRAs and end users should be able to monitor the performance of the Internet access service, and of the applications used via that Internet access service.
   
• Where competition and transparency are inadequate or insufficient to address concerns, existing regulatory tools (including quality of service requirements) should enable NRAs to address net neutrality related concerns for the time being (though not all of these tools have been fully tested yet). NRAs are ready to act without hesitation  if necessary.

See the press release "BEREC publishes net neutrality findings and new guidance for consultation"- here and report - here.

[Light Reading] Rumors: Tekelec Seeking a Buyer

Ray Le Maistre (pictured) reports to Light Reading that "the new private equity owners of Tekelec Inc. are believed to be seeking a buyer for its Broadband Network Solutions business, which includes the company's policy control, diameter signaling router and subscriber data management (SDM) assets".

".. Tekelec was acquired for $780 million in January by a consortium of investors .. Now, according to a number of industry sources, the owners are looking to cash in on the growth part of the business and manage the older side of the company that should generate cash-flow for a few years yet ..  industry sources, though, say the Broadband Network Solutions unit has been offered to a number of companies, including the IP router vendors and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) players .. One industry executive ventured a potential sale tag of $500 million".

The Broadband Network Solutions unit includes the Policy Management product line [ex Camiant], Diameter Singling Router (see "Tekelec: 10 New Diameter Router Customers; Total of 19" - here) and SDM products.

"Tekelec is saying nothing about the speculation".

See "Tekelec Back in M&A Mode" - here.

Procera - $3M Follow-on Order; Analyzes the DPI market

 
Procera Networks announced that it has ".. received a $3 million follow-on order from a leading North American Cable MSO for continued geographic expansion of the MSO’s PacketLogic™ deployment. Procera will recognize about half of the order as revenue in the second quarter of 2012"

See "Procera Awarded $3 Million Follow-on Order by Tier-1 North American MSO" - here.

The company has also uploaded an updated investor's relations presentation (here), confirming it "expects to exceed 30% revenue growth YoY in 2012". As we approach mid-year, then level of confidence in this number should be more established.

Procera also shows a model for DPI projects size and sales cycles, based on operator's size: 

 

Allot Presents New Monetization Use Cases

Allot Communications updated its "Optimizing, Monetizing & Personalizing Broadband Services - Use Cases" handbook (see previous edition here) with new use cases.

The new cases are focused on revenue opportunities, and are related to the Allot's recent product announcement ("Allot Enables Better Monetization with Granular Usage Analytics and Subscriber Profiling" - here):

• Subscriber Behavior Analysis
• Targeted Promotions and Advertising
• Collaboration and Revenue Generation 

According to Allot "This handbook presents a selection of real network use cases that leverage the power and innovation of Allot’s technology and products". This should include the "politically sensitive" cases, which may raise concern over privacy issues (targeted advertising) or net neutrality (paid prioritization of content by its  providers - see also "Tekelec Adds Secured "2 Sided Business Model" to DSR" - here).

NI/Security Announcements: NIKSUN Analyses LTE Core

 
NIKSUN announced its new ".. NetMobility product .. NetMobility provides a deep, real time analysis of EPC and IMS traffic. It reports on system load and performance metrics, and at the same time performs comprehensive security analysis that immediately identifies unusual system activity. Established performance and security alarms can trigger actionable notifications when anomalies are detected .. NetMobility enables you to create practical, positive, real-world alarms that notify administrators of security and performance issues when they occur. These comprehensive alarms, which are geared toward the industry's most common security and performance issues, can be easily integrated with existing notification systems".

  

See "NIKSUN Introduces NetMobility from LTE World Summit Show Floor in Barcelona" - here.

NI Announcements: Movik's RAN Intelligence and Control

 
Most traffic management/DPI solutions for mobile networks (PCEFs) do not have location, or mobile awareness. As a result, they have to make some  assumptions as for the actual load on network elements in order to manage traffic where it is really needed ("reasonable traffic management").

Simply put - these solutions cannot track when subscribers move to a different cell or backhaul link - the expensive and congested elements of the network. Recently, several vendors added some technology to support subscriber location/mobile/cell awareness including Sandvine and CommProve to their traffic management solutions.

Movik Networks, unveiled its "REACH (Report, Export, Act, Control, HetNet) architecture, the foundation of its intelligent RAN solution. Exposing real-time intelligence from the RAN, the part of the network that can impact efficiency and QoE the most ,.. With Movik’s REACH architecture each individual element of the access network, down to the sector" 

"Movik’s REACH architecture provides the following key functions: REPORT: Movik extracts intelligence from multiple sources including the RAN, UE, circuit and packet networks, content types and deep application awareness .. EXPORT: trigger real-time actions on an operator’s existing policy, content optimization, and traffic management platforms ..ACT: autonomously with a broad range of capabilities from admission control to relevant content delivery. As an active PCEF, Movik can be used to simultaneously reduce traffic to congested sectors while turbo-boosting subscriber connections in unloaded regions .. CONTROL: provide input into multi technology heterogeneous networks (HetNets) including SON (Self Organizing Networks) deployments and HetNet: delivers a multi RAT heterogeneous overlay network that is optimally loaded across disparate wireless verticals in real-time, based on UE demands to drastically lower an operator’s CAPEX and increase subscriber QoE".
 
See "Movik Introduces REACH™ Architecture, the Foundation of the Intelligent RAN" - here.

BTM Survey 2012: How will MNOs Monetize OTT traffic?

    

During January 2012 I asked my readers to participate in a survey on Broadband Traffic Management (BTM) trends - DPI, policy management, Value-added Services, Over-the-Top competition and congestion management for mobile and fixed operators. The main focus of the survey was on how operators will be using the technology (see the executive summary here).

One of the questions was about the opportunities for MNOs to increase revenues from delivering OTT services to their subscribers -  "MNOs will be able to monetize OTT traffic by:". Several options were presented, allowing responders (N=81) to mark more than one answer (see the chart below).

The most popular opportunity was "offering subscribers premium services, based on higher QoE for OTT services" (83%) while 44% think MNOs can "encourage subscribers to upgrade to higher  service plans" (tiered services). The two may be connected, although "service plans" were not defined in the 2nd option, and may be a higher data cap or other service factors.

"Charging subscribers for the use of certain applications" (for example those that compete with legacy services, such as voice, messaging or video), seems to be a less popular method (25%).

  

The FCC Forms a Committee (w/Comcast, Netflix) to Review Net Neutrality Policies

While Comcast challenges the Net Neutrality rules ("We do not prioritize our video .. we just provision separate, additional bandwidth for it" - here), OTT providers protest (Sony, Netflix) and the FCC chairman says that "Business model innovation is very important" (here) it seems that the US needs to re-examine its Open Internet laws (see "FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Made Official; Start on Nov. 20" - here).

The FCC announced the "composition of the Open Internet Advisory Committee (OIAC). The OIAC’s members include representatives from community organizations, equipment manufacturers, content and application providers, venture capital firms, startups, Internet service providers, and Internet governance organizations, as well as professors in law, computer science, and economics".

"Jonathan Zittrain (pictured), Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and CoFounder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, will serve as Chair of the OIAC"

Among the members are Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer, Netflix; Kevin McElearney, Senior Vice President for Network Engineering, Comcast ; Chip Sharp, Director, Technology Policy and Internet Governance, Cisco Systems; Marcus Weldon, Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel-Lucent and Charles Kalmanek, Vice President of Research, AT&T.

"Since the Open Internet Order was adopted in 2010, the broadband economy has flourished. In 2011, investment in wired and wireless network infrastructure rose 24 percent. The United States now leads the world in 4G wireless service adoption. There has been a dramatic increase over the past few years in the deployment of fixed broadband networks capable of very high speeds—100 Mbps—from being available in less than 20 percent of U.S. homes in 2009 to approximately 80 percent today. In 2011, Internet-specific companies attracted nearly $7 billion in venture capital funding, a 68 percent increase in dollars and 24 percent increase in deals from 2010. The “app economy” that has grown around applications for Internet-based smart phones and other wireless devices has also thrived. This market barely existed in 2009, yet it now accounts for nearly half a million U.S. jobs. The OIAC will track these trends in our broadband economy and make recommendations for how the FCC’s policies and practices can best support this tremendous innovation and growth"

See "ANNOUNCEMENT OF MEMBERS ON OPEN INTERNET ADVISORY COMMITTEE" - here.

ALU: We can Optimize OTT Traffic in a Fully Net-neutrality Compliant Way

 
Steve Hawley reported to telecompetitor.com from Alcatel-Lucent’s annual industry analyst meeting. Among the many quotes, one comes from Wim Sweldens (pictured), President, ALU’s Wireless Division, regarding application awareness:

".. Application enablement helps operators optimize their opportunities with OTT .. by being able to treat different types of bits differently, based on the profile of the user, how busy the network is, which content is being consumed, from which source, on which device, over which access; and to do it in a fully network neutrality compliant way by embedding regulatory logic into applications".

ALU's  "Open API QoS use case" (here) refers to the above - "This Application Enablement use case integrates the Open API Platform and Consulting Services as well as an array of QoS enablers listed below: 7750 Service Router [here] and related products for subscriber and policy management, for R1; 5780 DSC for R2; and deep packet inspection (DPI) as well as consulting services and third party DPI products, if needed"

See "Impressions from the Alcatel-Lucent 2012 Technology Symposium" - here.

NI Deployments [150]: Orcon [New Zealand] Uses ALU for CDN Video Quality Assurance

 
Alcatel-Lucent announced that "Orcon .. has selected the AppGlide Online Video Analytics solution from Alcatel-Lucent to examine the quality of streamed video offered by its content-delivery network (CDN) customers, using the detailed insights provided to accommodate a better service experience and increase consumer satisfaction .. [The] solution that looks at the relationship between a broad range of video data sources, combining data from video player plug-ins, quality-of-experience (QoE) agents and content-delivery network (CDN) assets to deliver a holistic view of the end-user online video experience".

See also "Orcon  Uses Velocix [ALU] to Improve Video QoE" - here and "Orange: "[video] Quality of service to the end user is our best differentiator" - here

  

See "New Zealand’s Orcon selects Alcatel-Lucent analytics solution to ensure online video quality meets consumer expectations" - here.

Research Shows the Need for Application-aware Networking

Telstra's "Application Assured Networking" (here and here) provides "organisations with a clear view and more control over the increasing number of financial, relationship management, IP telephony, video conferencing and other business applications on their network".

A new research, Killer Apps 2012, conducted by Ipanema Technologies and Easynet shows the potential demand for such technology, either as a service (Telstra's example, with Alcatel-Lucent equipment) or by deploying a Wan Optimization solution.

   

Source: Killer Apps 2012

The research discovered that "performance problems are highly prevalent across networks, with 74% citing enterprise critical applications such as line of business (26%), ERP or CRM (26%) and video-based applications (22%) being those most at risk. In addition, the results unearthed a worrying trend on how such problems are discovered, with user complaints the second most common source of monitoring issues across networks".

In addition to the lack of visibility ("69% do not have visibility of the bandwidth requirements each network application requires"), there of course performance problems as well - "82% of respondents report speed and responsiveness problems in the past 12 months, 43% of companies highlighted that these issues are becoming ‘more frequent. The vast majority of companies (86%) report increasing bandwidth requirements". 

See "New study finds 82% of European organizations suffer application performance problems" - here.

Telstra's Application assured Networking Uses ALU

Alcatel-Lucent announced that Telstra's Application Assured Networking (see "QoS Deployments [147]: Telstra Offers Application Aware Control to Enterprises" - here) was deployed using ALU's products and technology.

"Telstra’s new Application Assured Networking™ service, which is built on Internet protocol (IP) routing technology from Alcatel-Lucent, will bring a new level of intelligence to network management, giving enterprises invaluable information they can use to improve efficiency and operational integrity, while identifying technical issues that could impair operations and drive up expense .. The solution from Alcatel-Lucent eliminates the need for enterprises to buy additional performance monitoring hardware, which can be costly to purchase and manage. Instead, that capability can be offered by service providers".

"Alcatel-Lucent’s Application Assurance solution is offered on top of the industry-leading Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router (SR) and 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS). The solution is based on the Multiservice Integrated Service Adapter (MS-ISA) - which extends the intelligence of the 7750 SR (see "Alcatel Lucent 7750 DPI Technology"-  here) and 7450 ESS - in combination with the 5670 Reporting and Analysis Manager (RAM), which provides extensive tools and capabilities to analyze and process detailed, application-level statistics per-subscriber".

See "Alcatel-Lucent supports Telstra in the launch of a new ‘smart’ service helping Australian businesses manage their data network resources" - here.

DPI Announcements: Tektronix (ex. Arbor/Ellacoya) is Back!

Tektronix Communications announced the ".. Deep Packet Classification (DPC) solution, which enables operators to clearly understand what services are consuming the valuable network bandwidth on a per-subscriber basis enabling them to protect and maximize their revenue-generating potential .. Tektronix Communications’ DPC offers best-in-breed data services classification across the Company’s award-winning suite of network, service and customer assurance applications. This capability provides real-time visibility of consumption and Quality of Experience on a per-customer basis to sales and marketing, and real-time visibility of resource consumption and network utilization to engineering and operations".

I was unable to reach additional information on the new solution.

See "Tektronix Communications Manages Revenue Drain From Over-the-Top Content" - here.

Openet Deploys PCC with VoLTE Support (QoS & Charging)

Openet announced a "successful tier one PCC deployments supporting Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services. Openet’s market leading suite of policy and charging products deliver the advanced Quality of Service (QoS) control and flexible charging required to implement VoLTE at scale in tier one mobile networks .. Delivering profitable VoLTE services requires a deep integration between Policy and Charging functions. To ensure a high quality, the policy management system needs to dynamically manage unpredictable mobile resources associated with each VoLTE call, while simultaneously ensuring the charge is based on voice call rates rather than data consumption".

See also "PCRF Manages VoLTE QoS: RooX Announces Interoperability ALU" (June 2011, here).

"To date, a tier one operator in North America has deployed Openet to support its VoLTE services, while a technology Proof of Concept has been delivered to a VoLTE carrier serving the Canadian market .. A second North American tier one deployment and a trial with an Asia Pacific tier one carrier will begin later this year".

See "Openet Leads Policy Market with VoLTE Support" - here.

Allot Enables Better Monetization with Granular Usage Analytics and Subscriber Profiling

Allot Communications announced the "..expansion of its Proactive Analytics suite to include granular usage insights such Facebook applications traffic, ad network performance or content publishers popularity. In addition, the release features new segmentation capabilities based on device, interest, usage and location, designed for marketing management. With Behavior and Web Analytics". operators can now easily spot trends and identify specific needs of different subscriber segments such as iOS users, light/heavy users, and movie lovers. Advanced, usage-based segmentation enables operators to introduce value-based service plans, better targeted advertising campaigns, revenue-sharing content partnerships, and customer retention activities". 

Andrei Elefant (pictured), VP of Marketing and Product Management said: “We have been working closely with our customers on pricing innovation. These new segmentation tools, combined with the performance of the Allot Service Gateway, are the engines required for operators to evolve their network monetization models”

See "Allot Supercharges Proactive Analytics Suite" - here.

Tekelec Adds Secured "2 Sided Business Model" to DSR

   
The "two-sided" service model (carrier and OTT service/content provider) is seen by many (who do not care much about Net Neutrality) as the definite business model for profitable mobile data services (example - "DT Believes in "Two-Sided" Business Model - OTT to Pay for QoS" - here). We are still not there, but the product infrastructure is introduced, step by step, by the relevant vendors.

 

Tekelec brings us closer by announcing it has expanded the functionality of Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) to ".. act as the secure interconnection point for OTT applications such as social networking, video streaming and multimedia communications running over operators’ mobile networks". 


"This new functionality, called the DSR Over-the-Top Proxy, enables several innovative business models including “Toll-free” data, where third parties subsidize subscribers’ application usage .. Quality-of-service based tiers .. subsidizes data usage for a guaranteed level of quality, Promotional offers and Loyalty programs".

"Each revenue-sharing model requires a service provider to expose policies that define service rules and subscriber data that personalize services to an application provider. The messages carrying usage data communicate using the industry-standard Diameter protocol. Tekelec’s DSR OTT Proxy adds network intelligence and security functions to the delivery and receipt of Diameter messages. It provides a central point to manage traffic handoffs between operators and applications and acts as a secure firewall for all Diameter traffic coming into operators’ networks. This allows operators to hide the IP addresses of their equipment and prevent an application from flooding the network with a signaling storm of Diameter messages".

See "Tekelec launches over-the-top solution for new diameter network" - here.

Guavus: Characterization of OTT Traffic without DPI

 
Guavus announced it will "..demonstrate its Reflex Big Data Analytics platform, along with a suite of analytics applications tailored for cable operators' needs in customer experience management, network capacity planning and content & media optimization. At a glance, various use cases include:

• Characterization of OTT traffic without deep packet inspection (DPI)
• Subscribers' quality of experience via second-screen apps (iPad, Android and IP)
• Customer care interaction drivers (calls, tickets and truck rolls)
• Churn impact based on usage behavior, subscribed services and customer care interactions
• End to end visibility to content delivery and performance metrics

"The Guavus Reflex platform (chart below) is an end-to-end solution that provides actionable, contextually aware insights into customer behavior, network performance and application usage to enable timely, optimal decisions"

In February Guavus announced "..with growing traction in the US, Guavus currently counts three of the top four mobile operators and three of the top five Internet backbone operators as key accounts .. n addition, Guavus recently raised $25 million in a series-B growth round led by Intel Capital, Artiman Ventures and Sofinnovia Ventures" (here)

See "Guavus to Demonstrate Big Data Analytics Applications at The Cable Show" - here.

CEM Announcements: Comptel Adds Contextual Intelligence

The CEM trend continues ... this time suggesting a revenue opportunity.

Comptel introduced a new concept of "..Contextual Intelligence for Telco (CIQ4T), which was created to help communications service providers (CSPs) take customer experience management to the next level .. CIQ4T builds on Comptel’s proven expertise in collecting and processing large volumes of data and automatically executing actions involved in the deployment and launch of rich communications services. Key characteristics of CIQ4T include contextual, real-time data, advanced predictive analytics and automated actions".

".. IQ4T uses predictive analytics to allow communications service providers (CSPs) to better understand individual subscribers and convert that knowledge into business opportunities. For instance, CSPs can combine historical and real-time data with predictive modeling to gain unique insight into current and future customer behaviors. In turn, this enables CSPs to better segment customers for more targeted mobile advertising and offer personalized service bundles, and open up the possibilities for many other revenue opportunities".

"Comptel implements this approach with its Customer Engagement solutions that includes event data processing and real-time action-taking tools. Already, trials of Comptel’s predictive analytics product have demonstrated a 21% reduction in churn and 25% increase in revenue among CSPs".

See "Comptel Raises the Bar for Telco Customer Experience Management with Advanced Analytics-Based Approach" - here.

Vodafone: 35% of Data is Streaming, Most Backhaul Links < 1Gbps

Vodafone has some interesting statistics in its March 31, 2012 report:

• Nearly 2/3 of traffic is streaming and Web

• Data traffic grew by 35%, Data revenue +22.2%, with mobile internet +47.8%

• Today, 60% of European backhaul links speed is still less than 1Gbps  

See "Vodafone Group Plc Preliminary results" (here).

Tekelec: 10 New Diameter Router Customers; Total of 19

  

Tekelec announced "Ten new customers – six mobile operators and four hubbers – have selected Tekelec’s Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) since the beginning of March. The wins more than double Tekelec’s DSR footprint and bring the customer count to 19 across 10 countries .. the new customers include tier one operators in Europe and the U.S., a U.S. tier two operator and four hub providers".

"The 19 total customers are comprised of 14 operators across Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Americas, including multiple national properties in one of the operators, and five hub providers: 

• All 19 customers will use the DSR to route Diameter messages in the network core. One U.S. tier one made two separate core network routing purchases: one for its LTE network and one for its IMS network. In addition, 11 DSR customers have selected the product to act as a secure interconnection point for roaming between partner networks, and four will also use it to intelligently scale policy deployments to enable usage-based services. 

• Two U.S. tier one customers selected the DSR to provide the subscriber locator function (SLF) in the LTE architecture that maps between a subscriber identity and a Home Subscriber Server (HSS), a database of subscriber profile information. One of these operators also purchased a DSR system to provide the SLF in an IMS network. Another customer will scale its 3G and LTE charging systems with the DSR. 

See "Tekelec Announces Ten New Diameter Signaling Router Customers" - here.

CEM Announcements: ALU Offers Managed QoS Assurance Service

The recent popularity of CEM (as Shira Levine tweeted today "At #nokiasiemensnetworks analyst day, where #CEM is the phrase of the day") encourages creativity.

Alcatel-Lucent announced it is "launching a new managed service for telecommunications operators and service providers that will allow them to assure consistent quality of service for their subscribers. Drawing on Alcatel-Lucent’s Motive Customer Experience Solutions portfolio – launched in February – as well as patent-pending methodology developed by Bell Labs, the new managed service will monitor and improve aspects of a consumer’s experience that have the most impact on their satisfaction with the service provider – anything from dropped calls to issues with video downloads and connecting to the Internet".

See "Alcatel-Lucent launches new customer experience service to assure consistent quality for users of smartphones and tablet devices" - here.

US Anti-Piracy Delayed; ISPs will not Terminate Accounts;

Source: CCI

Just two months ago it was stated that the agreement ("voluntary MOU", July 2011) between US major ISPs and the MPAA and RIAA will start on July 2012 "Most of the participating ISPs (Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other bandwidth providers) are on track to begin implementing the program by July 12" (here).

     

So volunteering work is not what it used to be.
  
TorrentFreak reports that "..it now appears that the much-discussed July start date will have to wait until later in the year as the parties involved may fail to meet the provisional deadline .. TorrentFreak asked the CCI (Center for Copyright Information) about the upcoming target date, and their response suggests that things may take longer than expected .. " We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly and able to be implemented in a manner consistent with all of the goals of the MOU. We expect our implementation to begin later this year", CCI told TorrentFreak. 

    

"The CCI, however, ensured TorrentFreak that none of the ISPs has plans to terminate the accounts of subscribers. Temporary disconnections remain as one of the possible punishments".
 
See "US “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme Delayed" - here.

TM Forum's “Real-Time Charging for High Volume Mobile Data" Architecture to be Exposed

 
MATRIXX Software announces it will 'demonstrate a TM Forum Catalyst project at Management World 2012 to show how mobile broadband data traffic can be cost-effectively monetized .. The project, called “Real-Time Charging for High Volume Mobile Data" will demonstrate how high volumes of data traffic being driven by Smartphones and tablets can be profitably handled by Communications Service Providers (CSPs)"

".. The Catalyst project is championed by France Telecom-Orange and includes participants Capgemini, DigitalRoute and Vedicis .. Demonstrating a new reference architecture for integrated DPI, policy and online charging, the project offers new opportunities for carriers to reduce OPEX, monetize broadband with tiered services, and create interactive customer experiences".

According to the TM Forum project page (here) the project "demonstrates real time user feedback and policy enforcement on user mobile data consumption that integrates innovative solutions covering:

• Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) and Deep Packets Inspection (DPI) for user bandwidth control, usage metering and APPs classification
   
• Active mediation and Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) for portal integration, multi network and policy orchestration
    
• Online Charging System for customer and offer management

With the following Demonstration Scenarios:

• Scenario 1 – User once authenticated on the portal, accesses contents and follow his consumption in real time on the web portal or the Smartphone application.
   
• Scenario 2 – User is notified when his quota is over, he can purchase in real time data package, within the same session.

See "MATRIXX Software demonstrates mobile data Catalyst project at Management World 2012" - here.

[Infonetics]: SDM Market to Reach $1.9B by 2016; Oracle and Amdocs Compete

A new research by Shira Levine (pictured), directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy at Infonetics Research concludes that "The global subscriber data management (SDM) market, including SDM software and services for mobile and fixed line networks, reached $570 million in 2011, up 57% from 2010 .. [and] forecasts the SDM software and services market to grow to $1.86 billion by 2016, driven increasingly by network modernization initiatives, particularly LTE deployments, which are prompting mobile operator interest in the separation of back-end SDM databases from front-end applications to consolidate subscriber data".

Last year's forecast by Infonetics was $1.5B for 2015 (here), and $1.5B for 2014 forecasted in October 2010 (here).

See also - "Ovum: Operators Dissatisfied with SDM Solutions; Expect More Business Value" - here and "Heavy Reading: SDM - "We're Just Getting Started""- here.

Recent deployments announcements - StarHub (by NSN, here), Vodafone Egypt (NSN, here), TIM Brazil (Tekelec, here)

"SDM will play a key role in operators’ offload strategies by supporting subscriber preferences and entitlements regardless of which network is actually carrying the subscriber’s traffic .. Traditional SDM vendors are facing intensified competition from IT players like Oracle (here) and Amdocs, who are looking to leverage their capabilities in master data management (MDM)"

    

See "LTE to boost subscriber data management market; Subscriber data seen as “killer API” for mobile operators" - here.

DPI Deployments [149]: i wireless Manages Bandwidth Hungry Subscribers

3 months ago, Sandvine announced ClearSky Technologies (a managed services provider to regional wireless carriers) as a customer for its DPI products (see "ClearSky, Nex-Tech Wireless [USA] Use Sandvine" - here). A recent announcement by ClearSky shows one of the deployments (although it does not mention the DPI gear supplier).

ClearSky announced "the signing of a multi-year agreement with Iowa Wireless Services, LLC (dba i wireless) for Total Traffic Manager (TTM) .. i wireless, along with many other rural carriers, has been challenged with the need to increase data capacity to satisfy a small number of bandwidth-hungry users, which is not cost effective. ClearSky’s TTM will allow i wireless to manage their existing network resources more efficiently while increasing revenue from newly conceived data plans based on subscriber usage trends".

Maggie Squires (pictured), i wireless Director of Marketing said: “The popularity of video streaming and peer-to-peer file sharing sites can quickly tax a carrier’s resources, and cause a major inconvenience to the remaining subscribers who are left with congested airwaves. ClearSky’s TTM allows us to assign policies on data traffic in a way that promotes fair allocation of resources while retaining the extreme heavy users, thus providing excellent service for all our subscribers and avoiding the high cost of additional capacity”

According to Sandvine, the policy manager typically used in these deplyoments is Sandvine's own policy manager.

See "i Wireless Chooses ClearSky for Traffic and Policy Management and Renews Long-term Contract" - here.