[ACG]: Mobile Core Virtualization Reduces MNOs TCO by 67% Over 5 Years

A new report by ACG Research, sponsored by Affirmed Networks and VMWare finds that "For mobile network operators (MNOs), the decision to delay network virtualization efforts can be a costly one. Every year that MNOs delay the move to network functions virtualization (NFV) cost them millions of dollars in unnecessary capital and operating expenses.

In a five-year cost comparison between MNOs with traditional and virtualized network architectures, ACG found that: 

• MNOs that transitioned to an NFV-based platform began saving money in the first year and realize an investment payback in 3 years
  
• Adopting a virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC) solution reduced Capex by 68% and Opex by 67% on average
  
• MNOs were able to turn up a virtualized network much more quickly"

A scenario of a large-scale broadband service, compares virtualizing the following network elements; "Signaling Gateway (SGW), Packet Gateway (PGW), Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF), Subscriber Firewall, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and Web and Video Content Management including caching, image compression, content filtering, TCP optimization, video pacing, header enrichment and gzip compression on text objects" to a traditional best of breed solution:

"the five-year cumulative TCO of the Virtualized solution is 67 percent lower than that of the Traditional solution. Virtualized Capex is 68 percent lower, and Virtualized Opex is 67 percent lower than the Traditional solution"

See "Total Cost of Ownership Study Virtualizing the Mobile Core" - here.

ACG Research:"subscriber and application awareness provides competitive differentiation opportunities" (w/Use Cases)

Article by Michael Kennedy (pictured), Principal Analyst, ACG Research at Fierce Telecom explains the value of subscriber and application awareness to service providers: ".. This expanded networking functionality is being driven on the demand-side by service providers' need to differentiate their services from both competitors and among internal lines of business where service cannibalization is a serious problem; and on the supply-side where more flexible hardware architectures make it possible to combine transport, switching, routing, and DPI capabilities in the same system chassis"

Many of the services listed below are implemented by wireline and wireless providers, as can be seen by some use-cases, embedded in the quoted text below. One of the suggested functions, personal/behavioral advertising, gained some popularity for a very short time few years ago and then failed in North America and Europe due to (unnecessary) privacy concerns [here].

Note that ACG sees the awareness/DPI features as part of the routine infrastructure, and not as standalone devices, the most common deployment topology used today (See also "ACG Research: "Edge routers are augmented with DPI" - here).  
  

"The most straightforward use of network subscriber and application awareness is to create incremental revenue [Starhub] for basic service offerings ..  subscriber and application awareness capabilities can be used to insert subscriber specific advertizing [here, here] into broadband applications .. Parental controls [Turkcell, TalkTalk] are another application of subscriber awareness with very high ROI .. monitoring video Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) scores .. Subscriber and application awareness also increase the trust level associated with network-based security services [SK Telecom, AT&T, Telefonica]"
See "IP networking: Building value through network subscriber and application awareness" - here.

ACG Research: "Edge routers are augmented with DPI"

 

Michael Kennedy, Principal Analyst, ACG Research explains in an article to Fierce Telecom how mobile operators will be handling the ever-increasing video traffic on their network, responding to the demand for bandwidth and consistent quality (i.e low jitter or elimination of the "buffering" problem) expected by the subscribers.

"Systems vendors' response to these technical and market imperatives include increasing the bandwidth of the access network by moving fiber closer to subscribers and moving to including GE (gigabit Ethernet) or even 10 GE backhaul and extending QoS (quality of service) out to individual services and subscribers. .. One alternative to throwing bandwidth at the problem is to use cloud computing concepts to distribute video caches out onto the aggregation network so as to reduce its required bandwidth capacity. .. Advanced edge routing concepts also provide alternatives to provisioning more bandwidth. Edge routers can deliver both service level and subscriber level QoS so that no more bandwidth than necessary is transmitted on the aggregation network. Edge routers also are augmented with intelligent networking capabilities (DPI, deep packet inspection) to better deliver application specific QoS and enforce service differentiation policies".

See "Video driving carriers to rethink their network architecture choices" - here.

See related offering from Genband (here), Cisco (here), Sandvine (here), Stoke (here), DiviNetworks (here).