PCRF Deployments [116]: 3 Scandinavia Selects Aptilo for 3G and LTE Service Flexibility

Aptilo announced that its ".. Policy Manager solution has been selected by 3 Scandinavia as the core component for their 3G and LTE (4G) mobile broadband service delivery .. The system is designed to be flexible to allow 3 Scandinavia to add unique, dynamic service configurations that can be constantly modified according to the needs of their customers, with minimal cost and effort".

"The Aptilo Policy Manager is built on the new Aptilo Service Management Platform™ ALE architecture in which functionality is divided into three distinct layers: a management layer for configuration and monitoring, a control layer for protocol-level interactions with external systems and an execution layer for application logic processing". 

3 Scandinavia uses Procera's DPI (here). At August 2011, 3 had 2M subscribers in Denmark and Sweden.

See "3 Scandinavia Selects Aptilo Networks for 3G and LTE Service Delivery" - here.

Recent Trends in Policy Control [Part 2] (with examples)

 

This part is dedicated to a recent article by Graham Finnie (picture), Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading, covering "new pricing ideas I've been compiling in connection with Heavy Reading's research on policy management".

See "Mobile Data Packaging: A Policy-Driven Revolution?"  - here.

Graham lists the following cases:

• Movistar Colombia has created five mobile data packages, including one that offers only email, one just for IM, one for social networks – all at low price points.
   
  
• Saudi Telecom Co. (STC) has built a "prayer time" offer, enabling subscribers to block access to the Internet, or to specific IP-based applications (video, chat, voice, gaming, etc.) during prayer times.
   
  
• Poland's Play increased bandwidth, removed volume limits and removed restrictions on P2P traffic between midnight and 9 a.m.
   
  
• Russia's MegaFon [See "MegaFon Deployed Cisco ASR-5000 for Service Personalization" - here] offers unlimited access to some URLs, event-based charging and varying speeds based on protocol and usage profile.
   
  
• In Kuwait, Zain Group (see "Zain Kuwait Prepares for Fair Use Policy" -  here) offers two contrasting prepaid data packages -- one for customers on limited budgets with a low connection speed, and one for those who are mainly looking for occasional high-speed access.
   
  
• In Sweden, 3 Group (See "3 Scandinavia Deploys Procera New 30G DPI Appliance" - here) offers a variety of on-the-fly promotions, including QoS uplift for loyalty and periodic free boosts in data speed.
   
  
• Multiple operators now offer unlimited access to Facebook and other social networking sites within volume-delimited services ; Multiple operators waive data volume metering in off-peak periods, e.g. at night ; Some operators offer "shared wallet" services, in which allocations are shared across different devices or family members, for example ; One operator lets customers choose five Internet sites or URLs and get unlimited access to them.

DPI Deployments (50): 3 Scandinavia Deploys Procera New 30G DPI Appliance

Procera Networks announced "the launch of the next generation PacketLogic™ PL8000 series. The PL8820 delivers a remarkable 30 Gbps capacity in a 2RU form factor .. 3 Scandinavia, part of the Hutchison Telecommunications group with more than 40 million subscribers [1.6M in Denmark and Sweden, March 2010], runs PacketLogic PL8820".

See "Procera Introduces Industry Leading 30-Gig PL8820 Appliance" - here.  

Jörgen Askeroth (picture), CTO at 3 Scandinavia said:  "PacketLogic is business critical to us by ensuring a positive customer experience, and integration with billing"

Similarly to Sandvine (here), Procera's announcement for MWC focuses on real-estate efficiency, rather than higher throughput (see Allot's announcement - here). The new appliance handles up to 2 million subscribers, 20 million flows per appliance, 200,000 new flows/second and supports 16 GE or 4 10GE traffic ports (see specifications below and datasheet - here).

Jon Lindén, VP of Global Marketing at Procera said: "Most mobile operators run 2.5G, 3G, Turbo-3G and LTE networks in parallel .. We support all these networks with the same product in different form factors, which enables mobile operators to seamlessly extend their policy solution onto other networks."