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.

Gigaom Bandwidth Caps Watch (8 out of 15 ISPs on the Black List)

Stacey Higginbotham ("Over 60% of US Broadband Subscribers have Data Caps" - here)  [pictured] explains that "We’re not fans of ISPs capping broadband here at Gigaom, so we’re keeping a close eye on how those caps evolve and who they affect. Check out our updated list on who’s capping your broadband .. In most cases, the companies implementing caps maintain that 99 or 98 percent of their users don’t go over them and have median usages that range between 12 and 18 GB per month. So here are the top broadband providers in the U.S. and their caps. Last year we included a column for exceptions to the cap, but this year there aren’t any, so we took that column out". 

ISPs with no caps: TWC, Verizon, Cablevision, Frontier, Windstream, Fairpoint and Cincinnati Bell. 4 ISPs have overage costs - Comcast (see "Comcast Response to Recent Claims: Higher Base Cap w/Tiered Plans or Overage Fees" - here), AT&T, Suddenlink and MediaCom.

See the full table - "Want to know if your ISP is capping data? Check our updated chart" - 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.

Optimization Deployments [137]: Frontier [US] Saves 24% with BTI Systems

 
BTI Systems announced that "Frontier Communications is using its comprehensive application-aware service delivery product suite to accommodate rapid growth in high-demand services such as over-the-top (OTT) video, while substantially reducing network operation and management costs".

  

"Frontier Communications, the nation's largest provider of communications services focused on rural America, is deploying the complete suite of BTI products, including WideCast, for application-aware networking. Video represents half of Frontier's traffic and the BTI product suite enables Frontier to overcome network congestion, deliver up to 24% in bandwidth savings and generate a solid return on investment of less than a year".

".. For example, by intelligently and transparently caching popular video content closer to subscribers, Frontier is improving content delivery speeds by more than 10% and providing customers with a better viewing experience, while reducing Frontier's network bandwidth requirements".

BTI uses transparent caching technology from PeerApp (see "BTI and PeerApp Partner to Optimize Streaming at the Network Edge" - here).

  

See "BTI Redefines Metro Networks with the Industry's First Integrated Services Delivery Platform" - here.

2012 - Usage Based Billing Starts for US DSL Services

 

End of year is the time for either predictions (which I disregard as they usually made by vendors and say that the products they sell will be the hottest trend next year; extreme example - here) or summarizing the year. 

For the latter,  a story by  Sean Buckley to FierceTelecom provides the current status of Usage based Billing in North America DSL services.

Unless we will see last minute changes, AT&T, Frontier and CenturyLink will introduced UBB for "2% of their customers using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth .. will get a 150 GB allowance, while U-verse subscribers have a 250 GB cap on services .. Any subscriber that exceeds the new usage cap three times over the life of their account will be charged $10 for every 50GB over the 150 GB or 250GB limit. (AT&T case). Verizon and  Sonic.net are not going to charge overage fees.  

During the year I followed the case of Bell Canada (see "Canada: Final(?) Decision - No UBB for Bell Canada Wholesale Service" - here) in which, during the year long saga, led Netflix to offer optimized streaming video flow that will reduce volume by 66% (here).

To understand the effect of UBB we can learn from an experiment in New Zealand, in which TelstraClear removed data caps for one weekend. The result - "Customers used two and a half times more data overall than the previous weekend" (here and chart).

On the other hand we also saw a research claiming that "Data caps are a very Unfair Tool when Targeting Disruptive Users" - here.
 

See "Year in review 2011: Usage Based Billing (UBB) will punish all broadband users" - here.