Virgin Media: Higher Speeds, New Traffic Management Rules

   
A message in Virgin Media's Help and Support Forum reads - "As we begin migrating you to your new faster broadband speeds, we're making some changes to our subscriber traffic management (STM) policies to help maintain the quality of broadband service you've come to expect. So we’re reducing the downstream speed reduction on 30Mb and above from 75% to 50% and introducing STM on 50Mb and 100Mb. We'll be publishing the full information on this on Monday at http://www.virginmedia.com/traffic/". 

"In addition as part of the speed doubling programme, where you'll receive faster speeds and with the significant additional investment we're making to our network, we'll be trialling a variety of different approaches to traffic management over the coming months to make the system more intelligent and flexible, while ensuring the optimal quality of service. We'll publish more information on this as soon as it's available".

A year ago, an Oppenheimer report mentioned that Virgin Media uses Allot's DPI equipment (here).

See "Traffic Management Changes - April 2nd" - here.

[Heavy Ready]: 2011 Policy Management & DPI Market Reached $1B; TEMs Gain Higher Share

  

Graham Finnie (pictured), Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading reports that "According to our new Policy & DPI Market Tracker , just published, the market for policy management (e.g., policy servers based on the PCRF standard) and DPI gear (now used mainly for policy-related tasks) topped $1 billion for the first time in 2011, growing 35 percent over the course of the year .. We expect it to continue to grow at a similar pace in 2012, and although growth will gradually slow, the market will be worth a whopping $2.7 billion by 2016 – and it will still be growing".

"In earlier years, the main beneficiaries were specialist vendors, mostly startups, but the size of the opportunity hasn't been lost on the bigger actors, and most have upped their game in this area, either through big internal investment programs (e.g., Alcatel-Lucent) or acquisition (e.g., Amdocs). That is paying off: At least on the policy server side of the market, the major vendors, led by Ericsson and Huawei, are gaining ground at the expense of the specialists, and now constitute more than half that segment by value"

See also:

• 27% Growth for the DPI Market in 2011 - here
• [Infonetics]: "Global policy management market to top $1.9B by 2016" - here
• Market Size Summary Page - here

See "Policy & DPI: $1B Spree, But No Picnic for Vendors" - here.