Alcatel-Lucent: "third party pays favors content providers with deep pockets"; Needs Strong PCC and DPI

 
A blog post by Rich Crowe [pictured], Marketing Director, Alcatel-Lucent IP Platforms, to the vendor's blog, analyses the 1-800 (Zero rate to the subscriber, 3rd party pays) model in mobile data (see ESPN, Facebook).

"A third party pays plan is fair in that any content provider can subsidize the data its content consumes. This assumes that the net is neutral, meaning that data is treated with equal priority once it is on the mobile internet. In reality, third party pays favors content providers with deep pockets. Less well-funded content providers, smaller operations and start-ups that can’t afford to pay for data could lose traffic and face reduced advertiser support .. Content providers that subsidize large quantities of data will almost certainly seek service-level agreements (SLAs) that ensure a minimum level of quality for their traffic. These SLAs could de-prioritize traffic from other content providers, possibly to the point where providers’ services and brands are negatively affected. Subscribers consuming content that is not subject to an SLA could experience a corresponding service degradation"

"A strong policy control function will be essential for determining which subscriber data is zero-rated and billable to the third party content provider. Proper traffic identification is critical to policy control performance. It calls for deep packet inspection or knowledge that the access network identifier is unique to the third party traffic that is subject to the agreement".

See "Third party pays – Six degrees of mobile data plan innovation" - here. Related post - "[Guest Post]: 1-800 Apps Concept: Superficially Appealing but Unworkable" - here,