PCC Deployments [355]: Linkem [Italy] Selected Amdocs' Virtual Solution

  

Amdocs announced that "Linkem, an Italian provider of wireless broadband services, has selected an Amdocs virtualized network control solution to support the company's transition from WiMAX to LTE, and provide subscribers with a superior data experience based on differentiated service quality for high-bandwidth content.

The pre-integrated, virtualized solution combines Amdocs Policy Controller, an industry-leading policy control (PCRF) solution [see "Amdocs Announces Virtualized PCRF" - here], with Amdocs Home Subscriber Server for dynamic subscriber management. As a result, Linkem can deliver application-specific quality of service (QoS) to improve subscribers' end-to-end experience with streaming HD video, voice over IP, gaming and other data-intensive multimedia applications.

Source: Amdocs

Rino Buccio, CTO, Linkem said: "Amdocs' virtualized Policy Controller allows us to provide wireless data plans with tiered quality of service, enabling a consistent and optimal user experience in any network condition .. This implementation supports our strategy to launch advanced LTE data services today while laying the groundwork for a full network functions virtualization (NFV) architecture for even greater cost efficiencies and faster time to market for future technology enhancements"/

See "Italy’s Linkem Selects Amdocs Virtualized Solution for Premium LTE Services" - here.

PCC Deployments [301]: Aircel [India] Uses EliteCore for Service Differentiation

Elitecore Technologies announced that it has "..deployed NetVertex PCRF with Aircel India which has mobile presence across 23 circles .. Aircel went through a detailed evaluation process with leading Policy Control vendors, which also involved in running tests to exhibit compliance on the features and requirement. Elitecore’s Netvertex PCRF scored very high in this evaluation.

On February 2014, Aircel had over 69M GSM subscribers (here), or 9.7% if the Indian market (711M subscribers)

Robert Sewell [pictured], Head, Network Architecture, Aircel said, 'At Aircel our prime focus is on delivering a great customer experience with service differentiation [see "Aircel [India] Offers Facebook Aware Service" - here]. For this we selected Elitecore’s Netvertex PCRF and have been very pleased with the quick implementation of the platform in our network. The support extended by Elitecore’s team during deployment and operations in our network and the platform’s performance has been outstanding'”.

See "Elitecore deploys NetVertex PCRF at AIRCEL" - here

PCC Deployments [286]: Robi Axiata [Bangladesh] Expands Tango Telecom System

 
Tango Telecom announces a ".. major upgrade and expansion win with Robi Axiata Limited to increase capacity and to provide new and innovative Policy Control use cases such as Dynamic Pricing for Data Services to the operator’s rapidly growing subscriber base .. Tango Telecom’s Policy Control solution enables Robi Axiata’s subscribers to benefit from highly innovative plans and promotions such as tiered service level packages, roaming controls to prevent bill shock, volume and time based quotas, pay-per-use packages and dynamic on-demand self-care options.

   

The new features also include Tango Telecom’s Dynamic Pricing for Data Services giving the operator the ability to price and promote mobile data services dynamically based on cell load, location, time of day, subscriber type and/or subscriber activity

See "Tango Telecom awarded major Policy Control expansion deal by Robi Axiata Ltd" - here.

Singapore Telcos Plans for Data Monetization: Tiered Services, Music and Gaming

How will operators increase their revenues in 2014? Joyce Hooi, The Business Times, interviewed the 3 telcos in Singapore:

• Kevin Lim [pictured], Chief Commercial Officer, StarHub: "We are primed for data monetisation next year as we expect more customers to adopt tiered data plans".
  
  See "PCRF Deployments: Starhub Selected NSN" - here and "StarHub  Selected Neuralitic for Usage Profiling and Monetization" - here.

• Chua Sock Koong [pictured], CEO, Singtel : "In Singapore and Australia, we are actively promoting data usage, including the use of innovative plans that help customers' avoid bill shocks like Optus My Plan .. In the emerging markets that our regional mobile associates operate in, we are rolling out 3G networks to accelerate data usage"
  
  See "Singtel: 10% of Subscribers Consume 64% of Data; Implements Tiered Services" - here and "Optus Uses Cisco and BroadHop" - here.
   
• M1 - "The telco will bank on mobile games, music and video content to drive data usage, said Chua Hian Hou, its assistant general manager for corporate communications".

See "Data monetisation: Telcos' holy grail in 2014" - here.

[Survey]: LTE Drives Majority of Operators to Replace Billing and Real-Time Charging Systems

   
A new survey (by Openet, based on 80 operators) finds that "70 percent of operators surveyed said that IN based charging systems will be replaced within the next four years with real-time online charging systems (OCS) .. 87 percent of respondents indicating that most operators will replace existing billing solutions with real-time charging .. 79% saying that real-time charging enables service innovation"

  

Source: Openet

"As operators continuingly seek to create new revenue streams and attract customers, the rise of realtime charging and its integration with policy control has seen many innovative services and charging models introduced. Figure 8 highlights key use cases that operators are currently offering or planning to offer. It reveals that the most popular use cases are multi-device plans and data passes (e.g. 50MB for 1 day) which more than 90% of the operators are either offering or would like to offer. However, data passes appear to be the most widely offered type of services, already launched by 62% of the operators, whilst only 30% of them are currently offering multi-device plans. The next most popular use cases are Shared data (e.g. Family plans) and Speed tiers which 87% of the operators surveyed have launched or would like to launch".

"Cloud technology is growing and when it comes to charging and billing, it seems to have a bright future, with over 83% of operators thinking that it will become widely used in the next three years .. 37%, predicting that they will use a combination of both cloud and on premise systems".

See "Openet Research Confirms LTE Requires Advances in Operators’ Charging and Billing Systems" - here report (here, registration required)

Survey: 2/3 Interested in a Premium, Enhanced Quality of Service (QoS)

"In February 2013, Alcatel-Lucent asked mobile broadband consumers in six countries about the concept of service level-based data plans. Globally, two-thirds of respondents said they would be interested in a premium service that could provide an enhanced quality of service (QoS) .. Survey analysis showed that the optimal price for a premium subscription is about $10.00 per month (all prices in US dollars). For an application boost, it’s approximately $6.50 per month, about the same as the optimal per-use price for the turbo boost service. The comparatively high turbo boost price may indicate that those interested in this service don’t think they’ll use it frequently but are willing to pay for it in specific instances." 

See also "[Signals Research] Users are Willing to Pay for Personalization" - here.

See "Service level-based plans: Six degrees of mobile data plan innovation", By Rich Crowe, Marketing Director, Alcatel-Lucent IP Platforms - here.

[YG]: Policy on Device - "an essential element in their overall policy architecture"

   

A new report by Jennifer Pigg [pictured] , VP, Yankee Group, concludes that "Service providers should approach policy on the device (PoD) as an essential element in their overall policy architecture. Wi-Fi offload should be the MNOs’ trial balloon for PoD, but MNOs should look to enhanced PoD use cases to provide differentiated services. Hotspot 2.0 will simplify Wi-Fi roaming, but at the same time will exacerbate the challenge of controlling the user experience when the subscriber roams off the network. MNOs will need PoD to maintain control of their subscriber base.

"A new class of policy on the device (PoD) vendors has emerged. These vendors use a variety of product, pricing and go-to-market strategies. Their PoD solutions will enable new revenues streams across a wide variety of usage models".

Related posts:

• Openet Acquires Routing Policy Technology - here and Openet Extends Policy Enforcement to the Device; Reduces Signaling Congestion - here
• GOS Networks: DPI & Policy Control won't Help - Control Needed at the Device - here
• Ovum: Operators Look for a Device-based Policy Solution for Wi-Fi Offload - here

See "Extending Network Policy to the Device" - here.

What's Behind Sandvine's "we are 1-2 years ahead of competition in service creation" Statement?

In its recent earning call, Sandvine CEO, David Caputo [pictured] stated that "we believe we are ahead of folks on service creation… don't know what investments they are making… i suspect we are a year to two years ahead of folks" (see "Sandvine Q2 Conference Call Notes" by douglasm, here).

Sandvine defines service creation as "Enhance the Internet experience while unlocking new revenue opportunities with personalized value-added services. Service Creation helps operators better meet subscribers’ needs by deploying tier-based or targeted service plans that retain existing customers and attract new ones".

As all DPI vendors offer and sell such solutions to mobile and fixed operators world-wide, I asked Sandvine what make their more advanced compared to others. 

Here's what Dan Deeth told me:

I think there are a number of areas where we are well ahead of our competitors, but three spring to mind immediately:

• Direct Gy integration – Because we interface over Gy directly with an OCS, rather than via an intermediary node as many of our competitors do, we are able to offer reliable, real-time charging in prepaid with no revenue leakage. Why is this important? Competing systems are forced to check how much is left in a subscriber’s wallet at a certain time interval (often 15 minutes), while we do so in real-time. In a high-cost, high speed, high-data example, if I only had $1 left in my pre-paid wallet, but was roaming on an LTE network and watching Netflix, a network using Sandvine would be able to stop my data usage as soon as I ran out of credit, while a competing solution that uses a time interval could overshoot by multiple gigabytes, resulting in the operator having to absorb those costs.
   
• Our policy language SandScript - Much more than the typical rules-based systems that severely restrict the user and cannot execute orthogonal policy conditions, SandScript allows freeform policy expression to link any condition to any action. Whether via our ServiceDesigner GUI or via a command line interface, it allows operators to quickly define new and innovative service plans without the need for expensive and time-consuming custom code to be written by a third party integrator. We purpose built our products from scratch around service creation, which is what lead to the creation of SandScript. Our competitors tried to build service creation into traffic management, which leaves them with clumsy concepts of ‘pipes’ and ‘virtual circuits’.
   
• A good example here would be our work with Vox Telecom. Our products helped them partner with a local retailer, so that when consumers purchased a video game in a retail store, the received a free trial of their new gaming tier.

• Our proud history of innovation – Over the past 10 years, we’ve helped make over 200 network more intelligent, and over 80 of them through our Usage Management product specifically. Our people take the knowledge gained from all of those deployments and it not only guides the products we make, but also makes us a valuable consulting sales resource to our customers. In 2011, we were the first to bring application based service plans to market for Telefonica’s Movistar [here] properties, and those plans are still cited as the benchmark for innovation, by industry analysts and even our competitors (See pg. 12 of Allot’s Q2 2012 MobileTrends Charging Report attached below) to this day.
   

NSN Reality Check: 3 Types of Unlimited Data Plans

 
Leslie Shannon (pictured), Senior Strategic Marketing Manager, Nokia Siemens Networks, covers the current trends in unlimited data plans, as ".. after luring customers with unlimited data plans, operators soon discovered the downside for their networks: more congestion. This eventually led to a worldwide shift away from unlimited data plans, particularly with the introduction of LTE, which many operators used as an opportunity to pull back on these plans".

"But not everyone. There are still three categories of unlimited data plans out there: Looks unlimited but isn't ..( T-Mobile USA) .. Looks unlimited and is (Sprint, US; LG U+, Korea) .. Unlimited data with varying speeds (Swisscom, DNA Finland)".

Source: Swisscom - see "Swisscom Shows the Unlimited Business-Case"

"Happily, Quality of Service Differentiation can really help here. The key is to think in terms of ‘deprioritizing’ a select few rather than throttling everyone – or no one. Dropping network priority for subscribers over a certain threshold – but only in times of congestion – is common in all of the networks in Hong Kong, for example, and has the advantage of delivering full network speeds when there is no congestion. Alternatively, operators can deprioritize only the highest-usage customers after they reach a set limit, so in practice throttling only those subscribers who cause the most network grief" 

See also "[ABI]: Shared Data Plan Available to 5% of Global Subscribers; Unlimited to 15%" - here. 

See "The temptation of unlimited data" - here.

Sandvine Wins $4M Fixed Network Project, w/PCRF Control

   

3GPP goes to fixed networks. Or at least in converged networks.

Sandvine announced that a it has ".. received over $4 million in initial orders from a nationwide South East Asian operator. The operator has fixed and mobile properties, with the initial orders relating to the fixed line network. After a thorough evaluation, the new customer has chosen Sandvine’s solutions to integrate with the operator’s existing PCRF (Policy Charging and Rules Function) and 3GPP policy framework to support the enforcement of new subscriber service tiers, and to manage network traffic for an optimal subscriber experience. Both of these initiatives and future business decisions will be informed by the real-time network information and forecasting capabilities of Sandvine’s Network Analytics business intelligence solution.

All solutions will leverage Sandvine’s PTS 24000 hardware platform. The PTS is powered by the Sandvine Policy Engine and a high-performance packet processing operating system executing on purpose-built, carrier-grade hardware".

See "Sandvine Receives Over $4 Million In Initial Orders From National South East Asian Operator" - here. 

[Geddes Consulting]: Why you can't sell QoS?

 
Interesting article for all vendors pitching QoS/QoE-based tiered services,by Martin Geddes (pictured).

The article promotes Predictable Network Solutions, a "research consultants that have created a quantitative mathematical understanding of end-to-end network Quality of Service (QoS)We use that understanding to educate and advise developers, builders and managers in the construction of networks and distributed systems so that predictable application performance can be delivered to end-users". The introduction follows, read the rest - here.

"Network operators have long wanted to be able to sell quality-of-service (QoS) network capabilities to either end users or third party application providers. However, each attempt to do so on Internet Protocol networks has failed to gain market adoption. There are good reasons for this, but they are subtle, and don’t match the common prejudices against creating multiple classes of service.

This newsletter explores the six core problems with the standard approach to QoS:

• Too weak a proxy for user outcomes.
• Obsessed with real-time flows.
• Misallocates resources.
• Opens a new denial of service attack route.
• “Quality inversion” removes the economic incentive to pay.
• Too limited in the scope of the trades available.

There is an alternative way of managing network resources that cures all these issues. A short summary of how to achieve this is at the end"

Swisscom: OTT Needs Good Access; Good Access Gets Revenues

AT&T  (see "AT&T CEO: OTT Video not a Problem; We Focus on Broadband" - here) is not alone. An interesting strategy presentation (here, below) by Swisscom, provides their view on how MNOs may also benefit from OTT services:

• Investing: To use global (OTT) services, customers become more dependent on best local access networks. With the strong rise of PC, tablet, smartphone and M2M penetration, an exploding range of OTT (“over the top”) service providers offer “free” alternatives to the traditional products (voice, SMS, data consumption) of telecom operators. OTT “apps” however thrive only if the network performance is state of the art. For telecom operators, here lies their chance to make “local” important again. Only by offering the best (serviced) network, they can charge decent fixed monthly fees for access to these networks. Chapter 2 continues by exploring the importance of best access to secure growth.
   
• Leveraging: By offering good local products and services, and monetize through clever pricing 
Chapter 3 shows how we are performing on the Products side with state of art data, voice, entertainment and other smart solutions. In both Switzerland and Italy. But also how we start changing Pricing paradigms to contain cannibalisation by IP and start price differentiation on speed, security and availability

[YG]: MNOs Should Offer Differentiated Services to Justify LTE Premium

  

New research by Declan Lonergan (pictured), VP, Yankee Group finds that "Recent 4G/LTE launches provide new insights into where competition is heading in the European mobility market. Mobile network operators (MNOs) are using LTE as their most valuable weapon in the fight for high-ARPU customers. But they must work hard to justify and sustain premium LTE prices. For example, MNOs should offer a suite of add-ons for their most valuable LTE customers, including differentiated customer service and complementary content"

See "Operators Must Add Value To Sustain Premium LTE Prices" - here.

PCC/DPI Deployments [216]: Maxis [Malaysia] Uses Cisco, Huawei and BroadHop

In a recent webinar, BroadHop presented several Policy and Charging Control deployments. The one presented here, at Maxis Malaysia, shows an integrated PCRF-PCEF solution with Cisco SCE (and Huawei's GGSN). Few days after the webinar, Cisco announced it is going to acquire BroadHop.

At the end of Q3, 2012, Maxis had 12.8M revenue generating subscribers (see chart below). Mobile and broadband data contributed 25.9% of total mobile revenues.

[Survey] "16% not Using any Policy Management Solution"

It seems that the policy management market still has a lot to cover, or is still looking for appealing use-cases. According to a recent survey, only 23% of respondents said they are using policy management for the "new-age" use-cases, and the majority is mainly using it for traffic management. 

The survey, conducted by Heavy Reading (commissioned by BroadHop - now Cisco), covered the "current policy use, policy challenges and the benefits SDN (Software Defined Networking) is expected to bring to policy management" among "170 telecom industry experts and executives".

Results:

•  Policy use cases:
• 62% still using policy primarily for bandwidth management or data caps, tiered services, and throttling
• 23% said they were using policy for new service delivery, including data plan creation, user self-care and promotions.
• 16% not using any policy management solution
   
• Policy Deployment Satisfaction 

• Policy control deployments challenge: 
• 37% interoperability with other IT and network equipment
• 24% making a business case based on service differentiation
• 20% scaling up to high transaction loads. 
• 8.6% Adding new policy use cases was flagged by  of respondents and 
• 10% regulatory issues such as net neutrality and privacy
   
• Benefit of running policy management in a software-defined network (SDN) environment: 
• 33% of respondents felt it was too early to tell 
• 28% said that SDN would make it easier to launch new policy-supported services. 
• The rest were split evenly between the opinions that SDN would make it easier to handle peak loads, that it would reduce the cost of policy deployments, and that it would enable policy to be bought and sold as a service in the cloud
   

See "BroadHop Survey: Policy Challenges for 2013 include Scalability, Interoperability and Making a Case for Service Differentiation" - here.

[Ericsson] OSS/BSS in 2013: OTT Partnership, Tiered Services, Analytics and Bill Shock

 
Beau Atwater, Director of marketing strategy for Ericsson (previously from Telcordia, pictured), outlines the main reasons for CSPs to spend money on OSS/BSS systems upgrades in 2013 ("part evolution, part revolution"). As we have seen these vendor wishes many times before, I can only join Beau's statement "The more things change, the more they stay the same" - in selling side pitches and predictions.

• In 2013, consumers will continue to flock to over-the-top (OTT) voice, video and data services. What’s changing is that instead of sleepless nights pondering a future as a dumb pipe, CSPs will start turning OTT from a problem into an opportunity .. In 2013, many CSPs will partner with OTT players. For example, a mobile operator could provide a certain amount of bandwidth and prioritization to a video OTT provider that agrees to share revenue because the QoS would help differentiate its service. The video OTT provider’s brand also could help the mobile operator attract customers. Both companies also could market to each other’s customer base. CSPs will have to optimize their OSS/BSS infrastructure to execute this
   
• "OSS/BSS overhauls also will enable the trend toward tiered pricing, which will take off in 2013
   
• CSPs will spend more and more time analyzing customer behavior so they can capitalize on it
   
• Finally, 2013 also will be the year that CSPs began to turn another problem into an opportunity: bill shock. CSPs suffer financially when surprised customers become former customers or share their anguish with their social networks. CSPs also bear the cost of fielding all those billing inquiries. See "24 Operator Groups (4B Subscribers) to Adopt Bill Shock Prevention Measures This Year" - here, "Bill Shock Prevention is Coming to the US Mobile Service" - here and "EU Helps Preventing Mobile Bill Shock" - here. 

See "The OSS/BSS-enabled revolution begins in 2013" - here.

[Heavy Reading]: MNOs Need Personalization; Limited by IT

A new research by Ari Banerjee (pictured), senior analyst, Heavy Reading (commissioned by Amdocs) finds that "service providers are looking to offer personalized data plans and real-time visibility and control over data spending in order to improve the customer experience and better monetize 4G investments. The research also reveals that service providers currently lack the integrated charging and policy management capabilities required to enable this".

Key research findings reveal that:

• As 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) becomes the standard network technology, service providers’ marketing departments want to launch more advanced services and price plans
   
• IT organizations need new capabilities in order to fulfill Marketing’s wish lists (70 percent of respondents said their companies cannot enable innovative data price plans because of IT limitations)
   
• There is overwhelming consensus among service providers that charging and policy management integration is key to enabling more advanced services and price plans (75 percent of respondents said their companies are looking to manage rules for policy and charging from one location, i.e. implement a centralized product catalog)

Banerjee, said: "Those who recognized the importance of charging and policy integration last year, have since launched tiered and family plans and are now looking to enable even more advanced services with real-time user visibility and control capabilities. Those who weren’t convinced last year about the need for policy and charging integration are much more convinced today, and therefore they are now looking to enable tiered and family plans"

See "Amdocs and Heavy Reading Research: Personalized Data Plans and Real-Time Data Spending Control Top Service Providers' Wish Lists for New 4G Services" - here.

Procera Sees DPI Deployed by USA Tier1s in 2013

 
Sanjiv Wadhwani (pictured), networking analyst, Stifel Nicolaus likes Procera Networks, and "seems to be convinced the company is ahead of competitor Allot Communications in its product offering", according to Tiernan Ray, reporting to Tech Trader Daily.

"Procera does not believe that it is behind as far as building relationships with Verizon and AT&T. Verizon seems to be ahead of AT&T as far as interest in deploying DPI technology. In 2013, opportunities in the U.S. lie with cable operators and fixed line operators like Frontier and Windstream. The company believes that fixed line operators in the U.S. will start offering tiered services in 2013 using Procera (or other DPI) technology".

"The large tier-1 deal in Western Europe that the company won in early November was very competitive, with 12 vendors competing. Allot tried to use pricing to win the deal, however, Procera won on technical merits of its products .. While Allot has chosen to layer on services, such as video optimization and caching technology via acquisitions, Procera is likely to adopt a different approach (although the company was not willing to give any more details at this time)"

See "ARUN, CSCO, PKT Talk About WiFi, SDN, DPI, Says Stifel" - here.

Sandvine: [Telefonica?] $4.5M Orders for Bill Shock and Tiered Services Enabling

  

Sandvine announced that it has ".. received Network Policy Control orders from two Western European mobile operators, totaling over $4.5 million. The orders expand existing Sandvine deployments that enable “bill shock” notification and differentiated subscriber services .. The customers are part of a multinational operator group with properties in Europe and Latin America. Sandvine expects to recognize the majority of related revenues in the first half of 2013".

The description fits Sandvine's major end-customer - Telefonica (see "Update: Sandvine/ALU Agreement Signed; $2.5M Orders Received" - here). During the Q3, 2012 (here), Alcatel-Lucent generated 36.8% of Sandvine revenues. The Caribbean and Latin America region generated 27% (compared to 18% for North America, 18% for EMEA and 37% for Asia).

See "Sandvine Receives Over $4.5 Million In Follow-On Orders" - here.

[Exact]: PCRF Market - 30%+ CAGR; Tekelec, Huawei and Openet Lead

A new report by Greg Collins (pictured), Founder and Principal Analyst, Exact Ventures concludes that the "..Policy Charging and Rules Function (PCRF) server market grew nearly 40 percent in the third quarter of 2012 compared to the same quarter of 2011 ..  the introduction and growth of voice-over-LTE, which is latency sensitive, will reinforce the continued advance of the PCRF market"

"The PCRF market is forecast to grow on average more than 30 percent annually in each of the next five years"

Similar forecast was provided recently by ABI Research (33% CAGR, 2012-17 - here); Infonetics sees CAGR of 26% (2011-16, here)

"The PCRF can also help operators efficiently deploy multifaceted revenue generating and customer segmenting services, such as data share plans, complex family plans, usage tiers, and “zero-rating” applications that allow use of the network for free,” he added. In the third quarter of this year, Ericsson took the top spot for PCRF market revenues, followed by Tekelec, Huawei, and Openet".

See "Policy Server (PCRF) Revenues Grow Nearly 40 Percent in 3Q12, According to Exact Ventures" - here.