Ericsson Q4 '13: 18 New SSR 8000 Contracts, 6 in Fixed

Ericsson's 2013 4th quarter report states that: "The demand for the multi-application router, SSR 8000 [see "Ericsson Enhances SSR 8000 with Multi-application Card" - here] , continues. 96 SSR contracts have been signed to date, of which 18 new in the quarter, including six for fixed networks. As operators are preparing for Voice over LTE (VoLTE), including video communication and other service enhancements, the need for upgrades in the legacy voice network is increasing".

See "ERICSSON fourth QUARTER REPORT 2013" - here.

Qwilt Adds Live Streaming Caching

Qwilt unveiled the ".. industry's first transparent caching solution for live-streamed events online: Qwilt Live Stream Cache .. enabling the efficient delivery of high-quality live OTT event streaming to broadband subscribers worldwide ..  This uniquely helps service providers scale their infrastructure and optimize the flow of VOD and live video traffic across their networks, while improving QoE for their subscribers. Qwilt's QB-Series Video Fabric Controllers deliver an optimized network architecture to support popular live-streamed video events such as sports, concerts and online gaming from sites such as YouTube Live and ESPN.com. The new Qwilt Live Stream Cache lets network operators support live streaming events to reach millions of subscribers faster, and with vastly more improved QoE.

.. Traditional live streaming protocols use unicast transmission, an inefficient and bandwidth intensive architecture that requires a dedicated HTTP session for every subscriber. In contrast, Qwilt Live Stream Cache quickly and efficiently identifies trending and popular live OTT video streams, enabling the QB-Series to instantly direct those streams into the controller's FastCache, a dedicated control and storage path optimized for quick delivery of live streams. The Qwilt Live Stream Cache then establishes a local live video transmission point in each neighborhood that can serve a very large population of nearby subscribers using a single seed stream, offloading significant strain on operator network infrastructures".

See "Qwilt Unveils Industry’s First Transparent Caching Solution for Live Video Streaming" - here.

Amdocs Expands PCRF Deployments in Deutsche Telekom; Explains Celcite/Actix Business

Quotes from Amdocs' Q1 2014 earning call, by Eli Gelman [pictured], Director, CEO and President of Amdocs Management Limited:

• "We have similar trends [expanding inside large MNO groups] with Deutsche Telekom on our policy product that we implemented. We signed a contract with their corporate and then we implemented in certain affiliates. And now I think it's about 6 or 7 affiliates already of Deutsche Telekom all across Europe are using the same for policy standardizing on Amdocs as a certain component of the business. But not less encouraging is the fact that you see some business that we announced in Luxembourg or in Telekom Austria, A1 in Austria and in other places. So you see kind of variety of different businesses"
   
• ".. the topic or the space of RAN optimization, radio access network optimization, have been on our agenda for quite some time. We just eventually managed to find the right assets and we completed this deals [see "Amdocs Acquires Actix ($120M)", here, and Amdocs Acquires Celcite for $129M" - now reported as "cash consideration of $141 million", here]
    
• The nature of these deals are relatively different from the one you expect on BSS transformation or even OSS transformation project. Usually, each one of the deals are relatively small. Could be in the $1 million, $2 million, $3 million each. Usually, the tendency is to augment it with addition projects. Now in some cases, you will see a company streamlining around an Actix product, for example, for 3G optimization, 3G network optimization. And they will then pay a different or subsequent license for the 4G and then LTE. That could be something different from small serves and different technologies. Same goes about the regions. It usually could be pure segments of market or subsets of markets. And that's kind of the trend with the Actix product.
   
• With the Celcite, it's similar but on the services side. So usually, we provide optimization services around Celcite tools and now we're combining it with the Actix infrastructure product but we'll basically offer the services to a certain market or submarket for a certain technology, sometimes certain network equipment providers. 

See "Amdocs Limited Management Discusses Q1 2014 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpah, here.

Citrix: Traction in Bytemobile Business; Need to Wait for Revenue Recognition

 
Quotes from Citrix' Q4 2013 earning call regarding the Bytemobile business, by David James Henshall [pictured] - Acting CEO, CFO, EVP Operations, Principal Accounting Officer and Treasurer:

• "In our ByteMobile business showed good traction in Q4, signing multiyear contracts with large telcos in Japan, Pacific and EMEA. Although revenue for these contracts is going to be recognized over extended periods of time, we still beat our revenue goal for the year [see also "Bytemobile deals are large and infrequent" - here]
   
• Yes, the primary offset was around ByteMobile. Q4 a year ago, we had one really large transaction that it was actually be -- we're able to recognize it all in that order [see "Citrix Outlook for Bytemobile Business ($15M/Q4)" - here].
  
  This quarter, we had strong bookings, but very little of that was recognized in the period. They were all -- well, not all, but the vast majority were multiyear transactions that will come in over the next 1 to 3 years. So that's the primary delta. If you look at that business as a standalone, the recognized license revenue would have been down 50% or so due to these rev recs that we talked about".

See "Citrix Systems Management Discusses Q4 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha, here.

[Update 70: Siemens Convergence Creators Added] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

Siemens Convergence Creators PCRF product, Policy Manager, was added to the PCRF-DPI Matrix (here).
Basic features:

• Performance:
• Up to 500.000 sessions in Item Store per GByte back-end memory
• More than 10.000 transactions per second on each front-end server
• More than 30 customers worldwide
• Connecting approx. 200 million subscribers
• Policy templates – easily address the most common use cases 
• Flexible business logic
• Network protection with DPI – make your network bigger than it really is 
• Modular architecture – integrate into any network

Citrix Adds Zettics' Big Data Analytics to ByteMobile

Citrix announced the ".. establishment of a strategic partnership with Zettics .. leverage Zettics’ best-in-class analytics capabilities to enhance the ByteMobile portfolio of traffic management and analytics solutions for mobile network operators. The agreement is expected to result in new product offerings during the first half of 2014 .. will improve operators’ ability to capture and analyze all of the data usage on their networks and to take action based on that analysis. The partnership will further enable the combination of rich experiential data from ByteMobile platforms and subscriber-centric data from other network sources to deliver sophisticated new mobile analytics solutions"


See "Citrix Boosts Mobile Analytics Capabilities with Zettics Partnership" - here.

AT&T: 30% Discount on Gig, for Being DPI'ed

AT&T announced that ".. Austinites have a need for speed and data consumption, and that is helping drive stronger than expected demand for the fastest consumer broadband service delivered over the new AT&T network – AT&T U-verse® with GigaPower. AT&T plans to expand the all-fiber network to reach twice as many Austin area households in 2014" (here).

The GigaPower service in Austin was announced in December with the following plans:

• Premier**: Internet speeds up to 300 Mbps – download an HD movie in less than two minutes² – for $70 per month, includes waiver of equipment, installation and activation fees. Customers who also select U-verse TV will receive free HBO, HBO GO for 36 months, and HD service for $120 per month with qualifying TV services.
  
  **U-verse with GigaPower Premier offer is available with your agreement to participate in AT&T Internet Preferences. AT&T may use your Web browsing information, like the search terms you enter and the Web pages you visit, to provide you relevant offers and ads tailored to your interests.
  
  "We've established electronic and administrative safeguards designed to help make the information we collect secure"
   
• Standard: Internet speeds up to 300 mbps – download your favorite TV show in less than nine seconds² – for $99 per month.

JDSU/Arieso, Devicescape: LTE Users are Hungry for Data

Several reports have been published recently showing trends in bandwidth usage:

• [JDSU/Arieso]: 

• 4G users are 10 times more data hungry than 3G users: Just 0.1% of 4G users consume more than HALF of all 4G downlink data measured
  
• Phone 5s users are ‘hungriest’ data consumers finds study of more than 150 devices in developed and developing markets
   
• iPhone 5s users consume seven times as much data as benchmark iPhone 3G users in developed markets, and 20 times as much data as benchmark iPhone 3G users in developing markets
  See "iPhone 5s users and 4G network users now most ‘data hungry’ globally, JDSU research finds" - here.
  
    

• David Nowicki [pictured], CMO at Devicescape - “According to our research, both mobile data and Wi-Fi usage increase dramatically, as users upgrade from 3G to 4G, and at almost the same rate. On average 4G smartphone users consume 2.1 times more mobile data per month and twice the amount of Wi-Fi that 3G smartphone users consume.
  
  Smartphone users tend to be divided into distinctive groups with heavy data users and early adopters leading the pack and light users, which make up a significant percentage of the subscriber base, lagging behind in terms of usage. Light users are typically held back by some combination of cost, performance and complexity. These users don’t care to distinguish between Home Wi-Fi, Public Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G – they just want to be connected wherever they are".
   
• See also - [Amdocs/Actix]: "Newer Smartphones are Hungriers (for Data)" (here)

P2P Traffic Shaping is Still There; South Korea Leads

 
A recent report in TorrentFreak shows that DPI and traffic shaping is still a popular practice, globally. The report also finds that South Korea and Japan, known for their high speed broadband connections, are in the top 5 countries where ISPs are limiting the use of file sharing.

".. fresh data from the Google-backed Measurement Lab, which provides new insight into the BitTorrent throttling practices of ISPs all over the world. The data show that many ISPs still interfere with file-sharing traffic, but to varying degrees. Hundreds of ISPs all over the world limit and restrict BitTorrent traffic on their networks. Unfortunately, this is something that most of these companies are quite secretive about".

See "Is Your ISP Messing With BitTorrent Traffic? Find Out" - here.

Netflix: "Unfortunately, Verizon successfully challenged the U.S. net neutrality rules"

In the 2013 annual report to its shareholders (here), Netflix challenges the recent ruling on Net Neutrality (if nothing else works, "more regulation would clearly be requires").

Netflix believes that ISPs will not discriminate Netflix subscribers - and will actually work together with them on improving QoE (in order to go up in Netflix ISP chart? - see "Netflix CDN Customers have More Fun" - here).

Netflix also suffers from another aspect of Net Neutrality data caps (see "Netflix CEO: "Comcast no longer following net neutrality principles"" - here).

"Unfortunately, Verizon successfully challenged the U.S. net neutrality rules. In principle, a domestic ISP now can legally impede the video streams that members request from Netflix, degrading the experience we jointly provide. The motivation could be to get Netflix to pay fees [see "FCC Chairman re-defines Net Neutrality: "we're going to see a two-sided world"" - here] to stop this degradation. Were this draconian scenario to unfold with some ISP, we would vigorously protest and encourage our members to demand the open Internet they are paying their ISP to deliver.

The most likely case, however, is that ISPs will avoid this consumer-unfriendly path of discrimination.
ISPs are generally aware of the broad public support for net neutrality and don’t want to galvanize
government action.

Moreover, ISPs have very profitable broadband businesses they want to expand. Consumers purchase higher bandwidth packages mostly for one reason: high-quality streaming video. ISPs appear to recognize this and many of them are working closely with us and other streaming video services to enable the ISPs subscribers to more consistently get the high-quality streaming video consumers desire. 

In the long-term, we think Netflix and consumers are best served by strong network neutrality across all networks, including wireless. To the degree that ISPs adhere to a meaningful voluntary code of conduct, less regulation is warranted. To the degree that some aggressive ISPs start impeding specific data flows, more regulation would clearly be needed" 

NSN: How can MNOs Deal w/OTT Resource Consumption and Lost Revenues?

A post by Andrew Burell [pictured], Nokia Solutions and Networks, to the company blog says that "OTT is certainly not a lost cause to MNOs".

" .. [MNOs] see OTT applications such as Skype, WhatsApp and NetFlix piggy-backing on their network investments, clogging up resources and stealing their revenues. The figures themselves are certainly frightening. Every day 2,371 new applications are born, and a single ‘rogue’ app can generate 2,422 signaling messages per hour. By 2017, there will be 32 trillion messages sent by OTT messaging applications, and by 2020, operators stand to lose a cumulative total of $479 billion to OTT players.

.. With the right tariff structure for data-services in place, there are a number of different strategies that operators can successfully adopt to turn threat into opportunity. For example:

• Partnering with OTTs: ‘3’ offers subscribers a ‘Roaming Pass’ that allows them to use Whatsapp abroad with an inclusive data allowance
   
• Operators can launch proprietary services of their own: Verizon has followed this approach with its ‘Viewdini’ service – a mobile video aggregation portal that delivers mobile content from Netflix, Hulu and others.
   
• .. [NSN] Smart Labs and NPO (Network Planning and Optimization) expertise with performance proof points such as:
    
• Smart Labs research has shown that activation of WCDMA software suite features like Fast Dormancy Profiling can reduce signaling loads by 40%  [see "NSN: New Radio Software Reduces WCDMA Network Signaling" - here]
   
• Our NPO video optimization service was able to reduce content buffering by 30% for a major European operator

See "OTT – Horror movie or romantic comedy?" - here.

Huawei: Over 3B Subscribers Served by Our SDM

Huawei announced that its "subscriber data management (SDM) solution, Huawei SingleSDB, has passed the 3 billion subscribers mark ..Huawei SingleSDB covers various deployment scenarios, including LTE, VoLTE, Policy Control and Charging (PCC) [see "Huawei's PCRF Customer list" - here], M2M, Identity Management (IDM), Rich Communications Suite (RCS), mobile Internet, Value-Added Services, and Customer Experience Management (CEM), etc. As one of the leading SDM solutions on the market, Huawei SingleSDB provides services for more than 290 carriers in over 130 countries".

See "Huawei's SDM Solution Reaches 3 Billion Subscriber Mark" - here.

DigitalRoute Diameter Signaling Router Added

DigitalRoute's Routing Control solution, a Diameter Signaling Router, was added to my Diameter Routing product list (here).
 

DigitalRoute Routing Control allows users to:

• Consolidate their businesses and synergize their infrastructures by bridging their Radius -> Diameter AAA signaling.
• Improve service availability with intelligent load-balancing, over-load protection and failover handling.
• Deliver new signaling services with a system that is configurable in a very short turn-around time (ARP-EU Roaming Regulations, Policy over S9, Network analytics feeder, OCS integrations).
• Simplify signaling architectures by controlling the routing logic in one platform optimized for the purpose.

Cache Deployments [282]: Telefonica Media Networks [Latam] Selected PeerApp

PeerApp announced that it has been "selected by Media Networks Latin America, a B2B unit of Telefonica Digital, to implement its UltraBand caching system across the company’s Latin America Satellite Broadband Internet access network".

Fernando Blácido [pictured], ISAT Technical Manager of Media Networks said: “We offer wholesale satellite residential broadband service to operators in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru .. With UltraBand we can ensure that the most popular content will be delivered at the advertised speed of our service. PeerApp caching is enabling us to fully leverage our larger infrastructure investments.

See "Telefónica Media Networks Selects PeerApp to Ensure Quality of Experience for Broadband Subscribers" - here.

[Update 69: DigitalRoute <-> Allot, Cisco, Sandvine] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

Thomas Vasen [pictured], VP Product Management and Marketing, DigitalRoute, updated me that "As we are a based on a Data Integration platform communications our superior integration capability. We can integrate to any network node over diameter. There is no difference between complying to a policy interface and a charging interface towards a P-GW. The tables below show our production diameter references, which should be much more valuable than closed lab IOT’s performed between two friends/partners". 

The matrix (here) was updated to reflect the interoperability with Allot Communications, Cisco and Sandvine in addition to Procera.

  

[TeleGeography]: Skype’s International Traffic Continues to Soar

TeleGeography reports that "According to new data .. Skype’s international traffic volume continues to soar ..  Skype’s on-net (Skype to Skype) international traffic grew 36 percent in 2013, to 214 billion minutes .. While the volume of international telephone traffic remains far larger than international Skype traffic, Skype’s minutes are growing much more rapidly. Skype added approximately 54 billion minutes of international traffic in 2013, 50 percent more than the combined international volume growth of every telco in the world. Given these immense traffic volumes, it’s difficult not to conclude that at least some of Skype’s growth is coming at the expense of traditional carriers.

Such strong traffic growth more than 10 years after Skype’s launch is particularly impressive in light of the growing acceptance of a wide range of alternative over-the-top (OTT) communications applications for mobile devices. OTT messaging applications are among the most popular mobile apps, and several, including Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Line, Tango, Google Hangouts, and Samsung’s ChatOn, have been installed more than 100 million times from Google’s online Play app store, alone".

See "Skype traffic continues to thrive" - here.

Qosmos Added 21 OEM Customers in 2013; Claims for 70% Market Share

Qosmos announced that it had been "selected by 21 technology companies during 2013 for inclusion in their products for the telecommunications and security industries. This record year confirms Qosmos’ position as the dominant supplier of embedded DPI software .. The recent series of wins consolidates Qosmos’ market share at 70% of the worldwide embedded DPI market .. Qosmos’ flagship product ixEngine is the most widely used DPI and metadata engine in telecoms, cloud and SDN architectures"

See "Qosmos Confirmed its Leadership on the Market for Embedded DPI and Network Intelligence During 2013" - here.

Allot CEO: US Sales will Grow Slowly

The recent ruling against the FCC on Net Neutrality (see "Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules; Ruling lets ISPs "block and discriminate against customers’ communications" - here) generates new hopes for the DPI market in the US where the larger MNOs and ISPs were reluctant so far to deploy large scale, application and subscriber-aware traffic shaping solutions.

Allot Communications CEO, Rami Hadar [pictured], told the Israeli paper The Marker (reported by Yoram Gabizon, here, Hebrew) that "the demand for our products in the US will grow in the medium to long term .. so far we sold to US carriers Value-added solutions that do not interfere with Net Neutrality; however these services generate only 28% of our revenues". Hadar "expects the revenues from Allot's base solution to grow slowly over the next quarters, due to the slow sales cycle with the larger US operators".

[Strategy Analytics]: OTT Messaging will Reduce SMS Revenues by 20%

A new report by David MacQueen [pictured], Director, Media & Apps, Strategy Analytics  finds that "Global expenditure on operator messaging services, which includes SMS and MMS, declined for the first time in 2013 following its peak in 2012 ..  operator revenue from messaging services fell by almost 4 percent last year to just below $104 Billion. Continued intense competition for subscribers between operators combined with the fast growing popularity of over-the-top instant messaging services like WhatsApp, Line Messenger and Tencent’s WeChat will drive a 20 percent fall in global operator messaging revenue by 2017".

"While RCS/ RCS-e enables mobile operators both to evolve mobile messaging beyond SMS and MMS and keep operators relevant in mobile messaging, it will not offset the current decline in messaging revenue. We forecast that by 2017 there will be just below 180 million users of RCS/ RCS-e based services. However, RCS/ RCS-e messaging will contribute little direct revenue for mobile operators. To offset lower consumer spend levels, carriers should aim to tap opportunities such as mobile marketing, or increase innovation by opening up SMS platforms to businesses and the developer community"

See "Operator Messaging Revenue to Decline 20 percent by 2017" - here.

[Amdocs]: Newer Smartphones are Hungriers (for Data)

Actix (recently acquired by Amdocs) reported some interesting findings from a research it has conducted during 2013 analyzing 100,000 devices in Europe and North America:

• "Smartphones launched in 2013 consumed more than seven times the data of those launched in 2009 and 40 percent more data than 2012 models, according to Actix’s latest research on global mobile users
   
• Apple handsets dominate data use with almost twice the data per session than the average Android phones
   
• Tablet users consume more than twice as much data as smartphones, while MiFi devices drive almost nine times more data consumption"

See "2013’s Smartphones consumed seven times the data of 2009’s" - here.

[Rumors]: Sandvine Won a DPI Extension at Rostelecom/elk

A rumor I heard says that Sandvine closed an extension contract at Rostelecom/ETK, According to the rumor, the contract valued at $500K.

ETK, a subsidiary of the giant Russian MON, Rosetelcom (more than 100 million subscribers in 80 regions), is the largest mobile operator in Krasnoyarsk and Altai Territory, Taimyr, Kemerovo region, the Republic of Khakassia, Tuva, Altai (see Krasnoyarsk coverage map below) with more than 2M subscribers.

6 months ago Rostelcom issued a DPI tender. An article in Vedomosti (here) says that Rostelecom issued a tender for the DPI project, and the project is planned to be completed by April 30, 2014. Rostelecom will be able to use the DPI systems to offer new Tariff plans, quota plans with speed based penalty, and more.- See "Rostelecom Issued a $33M DPI Tender for 3G Network" - here.

In February 2013, Etk launched a (DPI related) - parental control service "Service enables parents to exercise control over their children, thus ensuring their safety and comfort .. fee is 1.5 rubles per day" (see  "Rostelecom launched PARENTAL CONTROL in Norilsk" - here).

[Survey]: 2/3 of Vendors Now Believe DPI is a Must-have Technology

A new survey by Graham Finnie [pictured], Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading (sponsored by Qosmos) finds that:

• Two thirds of vendors now believe DPI is a must-have technology.
   
• The largest use case (by number of vendors citing it) is service assurance for QoS/QoE; the second largest is policy control (PCEF), which we believe is the largest use case by volume

• The proportion of vendors choosing to source DPI from a third party is gradually rising, and a majority of those doing so prefer to use a pure-play supplier of DPI components
   
• Half of respondents said that encryption of protocols is reducing the effectiveness of DPI. Packet metric analysis (heuristics) was identified as the main remedy
   
• More than 90 percent said ETSI NFV would affect next-generation product design, and more than half said availability of standardized virtualized network function (VNFC) components would likely lead them to source more third-party components, including the proposed ETSI DPI VNFC
     
• Most vendors expect to use several hardware platform types, including in some cases proprietary or ATCA platforms, as they shift to virtualization 

• More than two thirds said the virtual switch would be important in future product designs, and most also said it should be application-aware

The survey was conducted in October/November 2013 and asked executives from telecom suppliers a range of questions about DPI/traffic analysis, virtualization and the relationship between the two.

See "DPI & Traffic Analysis in Networks" - here.

Based on NFV and SDN

FCC [on AT&T's 1-800]: "Let's look at what this is"

   
Brian Fung reports to The Washington Post that the FCC recently appointed chairman, Tom Wheeler [pictured], won't rule our AT&T's recent "1-800" initiative (see "[Rumors]: AT&T "Sponsored Data" is Based on Openet's PCC" - here).

This is not the first time we hear such comments that may not agree with the "Open Internet" (Net Neutrality) concept, although the current US rules do not apply to MNOs. Obviously, subsidizing user's traffic gives an unfair advantage to the larger and richer content providers, even if they pay lower wholesale rates.

Last month, weeks before the AT&T's announcement, Mr. Wheeler said that "I am a firm believer in the market. I think we're going to see a two-sided world where Netflix might say, 'I'll pay in order to make sure that you might receive … the best possible transmission of this movie'. I think we want to let these kinds of things evolve" (here)

Now, after the announcement was made, the Chairman says: "My attitude is, let's take a look at what this is Let's take a look at how it operates ... If it interferes with the operation of the Internet ... if it develops into an anti-competitive practice ... if it does have some kind of preferential treatment given somewhere, then that is cause for us to intervene"

See "Will the FCC strike down AT&T’s Sponsored Data plan?" - here.

Frontier Adds Traffic Prioritization based on User-defined Applications

Frontier Communications ".. continues to enhance its Ethernet portfolio, now offering traffic prioritization based on user-defined applications. New Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities significantly improve network efficiencies and availability by prioritizing critical applications.

Frontier is introducing two new Ethernet offerings for Retail and Wholesale users:

• Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) Gold focuses on businesses needing point-to-point design within Frontier's QoS-enabled markets, requiring service level agreements (SLAs) surrounding bandwidth guarantees, a limited delay in traffic prioritization and monthly reporting.
   
• Frontier's EVPL Platinum offers premium point-to-point service for customers with real-time data delivery requirements and corresponding SLAs".

See "Frontier Communications Enhances Ethernet Portfolio" - here.

[Update 68: MATRIXX-Cisco] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

MATRIXX marketing informed me that their PCRF is interoperable with DPI products from Cisco, Vedicis and Alcatel-Lucent. 

The PCRF-DPI (here) matrix was updated.

4GIsrael Highlights

Yesterday I attended IMA's 7th 4G Israel Event (here). This year the event focus was on the extra value LTE is expected to bring to MNOs.

I collected the following highlights:

• Rani Wellingstein, Cisco (Co-Founder, CEO Intucell - see "[Cisco Acquired] Intucell CEO Speaks about SON Opportunity" at 4GIsrael 2013 - here): "Cisco SON activity is based in Israel, with 150 people".
   
• Shira Levine, Directing Analyst, Infonetics Research provided information on innovative LTE (and 3G) business models around the world - many based on policy management solutions. 

• Lauri Oksanent, VP Research and Technology, NSN LTE-Advanced vision:

• Paulo Lamberti, Head of Regional Offering LTE & Heterogeneous Networks, Ericsson on small cells

• Glenn Booth, VP & GM LTE Business Unit, Alcatel-Lucent on the fast success of LTE

• Leonid Burakovsky, Sr. Director, Strategic Solutions, F5 Networks explained why "LTE is less secured than 3G":

• Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis, described the voice opportunity in LTE - "Voice is not Telephony":
   
• VoLTE: "Right idea, five years late", 
• WebRTC: "The most exciting thing in web communication in 10 years"

• Dr. Ron Marquardt, Vice President Technology, Sprint introduced Sprint's LTE netwrok - Spark 

How will Pirate Bay Avoid Blocking?

 
As once said "All site blocking techniques can be circumvented" (here). Apparently we are going to see one more way to do that.

Ernesto reports to TorrentFreak that "The Pirate Bay’s PirateBrowser just hit 2.5 million downloads but the notorious torrent site has much bigger plans in store for the new year. The team behind the site is developing a new tool that doesn’t rely on domain names or server farms. Instead, users will serve as the P2P hosts of the sites, with the system running its own alternative DNS. Today, the Pirate Bay team shares some more details on the technology.

Over the past few years The Pirate Bay has had to deal with its fair share of censorship, mostly through court-ordered blockades [see "UK ISPs Ordered to Block Pirate Bay" - here] . In response to these efforts the site launched the PirateBrowser last summer.

“The goal is to create a browser-like client to circumvent censorship, including domain blocking, domain confiscation, IP-blocking. This will be accomplished by sharing all of a site’s indexed data as P2P downloadable packages, that are then browsed/rendered locally,” a Pirate Bay insider explains .. The new software will be released as a standalone application as well as Firefox and Chrome plugins.

See more "How The Pirate Bay Plans to Beat Censorship For Good" - here,

Sandvine: $10M Orders from a Tier 1 Operator in North America.

   

$4M to Allot (here), $10M to Sandvine. Sandvine announced that it has "received follow-on orders for approximately $10 million from a Tier 1 operator in North America. The orders were received in Sandvine’s first quarter of 2014.  To support an expanded set of policy use cases to be deployed in the network, the operator has ordered additional software from Sandvine’s Service Creation portfolio, the Service Delivery Engine (SDE), and Sandvine’s Policy Traffic Switch (PTS) platform".

See "Sandvine Receives Approximately $10 Million In Expansion Orders From Tier 1 North American Operator" - here.

[Rumors]: AT&T "Sponsored Data" is Based on Openet's PCC

AT&T plans for 1-800 data service have been materialized.

Some of my previous posts show us how the process of developing the new product evolved over two years:

• [Feb 12]: AT&T Considers "1-800" Model for Mobile Data
• [Jun '12]: AT&T CEO: 1-800 Data will "Catch Fire in the Next 12 Months"
• [Dec '12]: AT&T Asks Subscribers about 1-800 Data Service 
• [May '13]: AT&T 1-800 Maybe Based on Advertising Revenue Sharing.

So it is ready now. AT&T announced it has "unveiled a new way for eligible 4G customers to enjoy mobile content and apps over AT&T’s wireless network without impacting their monthly wireless data plan. Similar to 1-800 phone numbers or free shipping for internet commerce .. data charges resulting from eligible uses will be billed directly to the sponsoring company .. The service is easily integrated into existing platforms and services and will be available across many mobile devices and operating systems. Additionally, the unique developer portal website includes intuitive features which allow sponsors to manage their offers, check billing and measure impact of offers using a robust analytics engine".

According to my sources, Openet's PCC solution supports the new AT&T service. Openet refused to comment, although AT&T is listed as a customer in its client list (here).

See also "Openet: NFV based PCC Deployment by NA Tier1 (AT&T?)" - here and "AT&T Tests Openet & Cisco for LTE: Session based Pricing, Speed Tiers" - here.

"Customers will see the service offered as AT&T Sponsored Data, and the usage will appear on their monthly invoice as Sponsored Data. Sponsored Data will be delivered at the same speed and performance as any non-Sponsored Data content"

Related guest post by Dean Bubley: "1-800 Apps Concept: Superficially Appealing but Unworkable" - here.

See "AT&T Introduces Sponsored Data for Mobile Data Subscribers and Businesses" - here.