[Infonetics]: Gradual Transition to NFV-Based DPI; Allot and Sandvine Lead the Market

A new report by Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research, forecasts that the "..market for deep packet inspection (DPI) solutions deployed as a virtual network function (VNF) will grow at a 66 percent compound annual growth rate from 2014 to 2019

.. we are seeing trial activity and limited commercial deployments. Operators are likely to deploy virtualized DPI incrementally, leveraging it to support separate lines of business such as M2M and MVNO, and gradually expanding those engagements over time as they become more confident about the technology”

Related posts on the DPI vendors NFV activity: Sandvine, Procera, Allot  Qosmos,

Other highlights:

• The FCC has released its net neutrality rules in the US, but the issue is far from resolved and court challenges are underway; regulations in Western Europe are under reevaluation as well and the topic is rearing its head in emerging markets
   
• The focus of the deep packet inspection market is shifting toward use cases such as video optimization, granular charging, network security and content connectivity
   
• In machine-to-machine (M2M) applications, DPI technology is being used to enable better identification of traffic generated by connected devices and mitigate its impact on the network
   
• Sandvine and Allot are neck-and-neck in the race for the DPI market share lead, followed by Cisco and Procera

See "Virtualized Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to Grow at 66 Percent CAGR Through 2019" - here.

[Juniper Research]: How will MNOs Revenues Recover?

A new report by Dr. Holden Windsor [pictured], Head of Consultancy & Forecasting, Juniper Research, finds that "..voice and messaging traffic lost to OTT (Over The Top) players such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Skype will cost network operators $14 billion in revenues globally this year, up by 26% on 2013 ..in a number of markets, including Italy, Spain and the UK, operator mobile voice revenues had fallen to less than 60% of their value five years’ ago. It argued that a combination of IM, VoIP and social media substitution was primarily responsible, resulting not only in lost revenues but in additional costs due to the scale of signalling traffic".

"However, the report also identifies an array of new revenue streams with the potential to deliver cumulative revenues to operators in excess of $66 billion over the next five years. The resulting revenues could more than offset the decline from core service revenues on an annual basis by 2018 .. in areas such as M2M (Machine to Machine) and mobile money, operators can achieve a substantial revenue uplift by focussing on full service provision rather than simple connectivity

• Without optimisation, mobile data delivery costs will increase by more than three times over the next three years
   
• Implementation of NFV  solutions offer operators the potential both of cost savings on proprietary hardware and on reducing product time-to-market
   
• Operators can boost core revenues by introducing higher-value shared data plans or by bundling content into a monthly subscription.

See "Operators to Suffer $14bn in Lost Revenues this Year, as OTTs Take Market Share, Juniper Research Finds" - here.

T-Mobile to Shape Misusage Over LTE

  

Years after P2P identification and shaping was almost the only business for DPI products in the fixed market (starting with music files going to video), it is back again - to LTE networks.

Cam Bunton reports to TmoNews that In an "..internal memo to staff, it’s been revealed that T-Mobile is going to clamp down on users taking advantage of their unlimited 4G/LTE plans for peer-to-peer file sharing and other misuse of their data allowance" (see the leaked document below) 

Misuse, a-la T-Mobile, includes P2P file-sharing, but also other popular uses, such as M2M (here) "using the Service in connection with server devices or host computer applications, including continuous Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications that are broadcast to multiple servers or recipients, “bots” or similar routines that could disrupt net user groups or email use by others or other applications that denigrate network capacity or functionality"

Will the FCC send now a new set of questions to US MNOs, based violating the open Internet principles by discriminating content?  (see "FCC Expands Traffic Management Policies Questioning to all MNOs" - here) 

See "T-Mobile to throttle customers who use unlimited LTE data for torrents/p2p" - here.

[Heavy Reading]: The Market for DPI and Policy Control is Saturated; Yet to Double by 2018

A new report on DPI and Policy Control by Graham Finnie [pictured], Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading, finds "a significant slowdown in growth, from a whopping 30 percent in 2012 to around 17 percent in 2013. A key factor: The initial market for policy servers and deep packet inspection (DPI) gear is pretty much saturated, at least in the wireless sector .. our forecast predicts. We expect the market to nearly double from $1.45 billion in 2013 to $2.8 billion in 2018, a CAGR of 13 percent -- still pretty respectable by the standard of the overall telecom market"
 

Opportunities:
  

".. there are many new use cases driving a second or third round of spending by telcos ... enable telcos to offer a wider range of service packages and options, such as packages built around specific applications, shared usage plans, temporary passes, and so on. Support for VoLTE, telco WiFi, end-user security, prioritization under congestion, M2M, and sponsored data are also emerging on wish lists .. The good news is we've clearly moved on from theory to practical implementation with some of these ideas, with both vendors and operators reporting a wider range of new packages actually being deployed, especially in emerging economies. Here, it's not unusual to see 20 or more plans, with Facebook-only, Google Zero, and daily data passes among the options"

Challenges:

The not-so-good news is that these plans require a different kind of business justification, based on new revenues rather than lower costs -- which is often harder to justify .. Vendors report long lead and deployment times, slowing revenue recognition .. In the longer term, meanwhile, the risks are primarily associated with the transition to virtualized networks, including networks based on SDN"

See "Policy Revenues Climbing, but Hazards Loom" - here.

DigitalRoute and Procera Manage Traffic for Telenor's M2M Demo

DigitalRoute and Procera Networks announced they are "powering an exciting new machine-to-machine showcase for Telenor Connexion, a leading enabler of connected services .. DigitalRoute and Procera’s solution demonstrates the necessary traffic monitoring capabilities including counting and control. It segments traffic, deploys counters to monitor usage and then activates controls when allowances are exceeded. These are important functions for Telenor Connexion to enable more flexible business models".

"Three technology components are central to the showcase (see Telenor's PR - "Enabling connected services with flexibility as key driver" - here)

• the in-car connected device and its resident apps. These include a data volume display of real time, updated usage information.
   
• DigitalRoute’s MediationZone Policy Control and Usage Management solution, which manages integration between the in-car device data volume display and MediationZone as well as the integration between the MediationZone and the Procera nodes.
    
• Procera’s PacketLogic solution does reliable classification of data traffic, and generates detailed billing records. PacketLogic's ability to analyze usage patterns enables service providers to enhance the service and develop new offerings" 

Robert Brunbäck (pictured), CMO, Telenor Connexion said: "We are in the market to help our customers become more competitive. Enabling new and more dynamic business models for connected services, for example in the car, is of vital importance in today’s fast-changing marketplace. Together with DigitalRoute and Procera we showcase a concrete example of how new service offerings can be realized ”

See "DigitalRoute’s and Procera Networks’ traffic segmentation and split billing solutions to be showcased at the Mobile World Congress" - here.

Telefonica Launches Smart M2M; W/RT Monitoring

 
Telefónica Digital unveils ".. Smart M2M, a best-in-class web-based platform for the connectivity, management and control of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications .. Smart M2M Solution incorporates new advanced features such as real time monitoring of traffic type, volume and current consumption, technical supervision of lines (maps of connected devices, advanced diagnostics) and localization. It also offers innovative fraud detection functionalities, including the ability to restrict communications between a list of given devices or the possibility to establish traffic caps".

"Smart M2M Solution is already commercially available for Telefónica customers in Brazil and Spain and will soon be expanded to other countries, starting with Chile, Argentina and Czech Republic".

See "Telefónica launches its new Smart M2M Solution" - here.

Volubill Partners with Semiconductor Vendor to Deliver Policy-based M2M solutions

Volubill announced that "a world leader in 3G and next generation wireless technologies has selected Volubill to support its advanced machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions and services .. Volubill’s VBS Policy Manager and VNS Core Controller allow the global semiconductor company to provide its M2M automotive, transportation and logistics customers with unprecedented connectivity, communications and managerial control that yield significant efficiency improvements and cost-savings. For example, transportation customers are now offered the ability to provide continuous connectivity to drivers, control the amount of bandwidth they can use and the sites they are able to access. In the future this might extend to offering drivers the ability to purchase their own data plan to use for personal and non-business related functions".

See "Volubill Brings Real-Time Dynamic Policy and Session Control to Major US Wireless Market Leader’s M2M Solutions and Services" - here.

Modeling Policy Server Scale and ROI

     

A month ago I covered the deployment of policy management by Bharti-Airtel (the largest MNO in India with over 170M subscribers). Bharti's IT director said (here) then that "..The challenge that we have is that our scale is huge".

While most networks are significantly smaller, policy management scaling is an issue vendors and operators need to handle. In addition to the growth in data consumption we also see new use-cases and M2M applications (here, here) that will add load to policy servers.

Scaling was addressed by policy server vendors as a competitive advantage for some time now (BroadHop, Bridgewater). Diameter routing/load balancing technology and products (here) were added in recent months to help policy management to scale.

However, something was missing - what are the expected performance requirements?

A new white paper by Graham Finnie (pictured), Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading. (commissioned by BroadHop) builds a model to help set performance goals: "In the past two years, policy management caught fire as network operators sought better ways to manage the way bandwidth is allocated and congestion is handled. Now, many are looking to move on from these early deployments, and seeking to put policy at the heart of their traffic management and service development strategies. But as policy deployments scale up, it raises major new issues for operators. Can policy servers cope as new use cases are added? What will it cost? And can the new business case really stack up?"

Conclusions:

• A 3GPP network of 10 million mobile subscribers will scale, based on our assumptions, from handling about 2,200 TPS in the Base Case to almost 23,000 TPS in the Mature Case, which is assumed to be after three years.
   
• We modeled the TPS impact of beginning the transition to an all-LTE network. This also assumes a network with 10 million subscribers, in which the customers are gradually transitioning to LTE, and that during this transition, wireline customers are also transferred to the same policy environment. In this case, policy scales from nearly 25,000 TPS at the end of Year 1 to more than 75,000 TPS at the end of Year 3.
   
• the cost of policy is only a small proportion (around 2 percent) of the overall cost of a new LTE build over a five-year build period in the next-generation policy case – and given the high strategic value of policy, this suggests to us that the return on investment (ROI) is likely to be positive in the short to medium term

See press release "BroadHop and Heavy Reading Study Finds Policy Servers Must Scale Up Massively as Mobile Operators Move into the LTE Era" - here ; White paper - here.

[Tekelec]: M2M Use Cases - Traffic, Service, Security and Performance Management

A new white paper from Tekelec highlights the "four popular use cases that illustrate the new network and service requirements for M2M including:

• M2M traffic management to prioritize M2M services and applications and to manage the flow of traffic to and from machines to reduce network congestion and optimize services.

• M2M service management to scale services for billions of machines and deliver innovative usage- and quality-of-service (QoS)-based services.

• M2M security management to handle machine identities, authorize and authenticate machines on the network, and alert customers to unusual machine activity.

• M2M performance management to analyze M2M traffic and usage patterns and use this intelligence to meet service requirements, evolve M2M services, and diagnose problems

See "The Machine-to-Machine Opportunity for Mobile Service Providers: Popular Use Cases" - here.

Infonetics: 2010 Policy Management Market up 48%, Openet Leads

    

A new research by  Shira Levine (picture), directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy at Infonetics Research, concludes that "Policy management revenue grew 48% in 2010 to $418.7 million worldwide, with the majority of spending occurring in the wireless market ..policy management market to nearly quadruple from 2010 to 2015, to $1.6B".

Previous Infonetics report said - "Policy Servers Market to reach $471M in 2010" - here ; Analysis Mason numbers: "Policy Management Market Reached $382M; Forecast 23% CAGR for the next 5 years" - here.
  

See "Policy management market up 48% year-over-year, quadrupling by 2015" - here.

"Top suppliers in the overall policy management market and in the fast-growing wireless segment held extremely close market share in 2010, with Openet pulling into the lead, followed by Bridgewater and Tekelec .. Skyrocketing machine-to-machine connections will drive growth in the policy management markets, as operators deploy solutions that identify and track M2M traffic and apply policy rules based on transaction type, time of day, network congestion, etc." (See "Tekelec Prepares Policy Management for M2M Communication" - here).

Tekelec Prepares Policy Management for M2M Communication

  

Tekelec is introducing "a new machine-to-machine (M2M) service enablement solution for mobile service providers to deliver advanced M2M services. Tekelec's solution uniquely combines multiple network functions to give service providers new abilities to scale M2M deployments, prioritize and manage devices and applications and analyze M2M service performance".

See "Tekelec Unveils Intelligent Machine-to-Machine Service Enablement Solution" - here.

According to a recent Infonetics research report (here) - "The number of connections for embedded mobile M2M applications hit 87 million in 2009 and is forecast by Infonetics Research to jump to 428 million by 2014, driven by wider availability of services, new M2M applications, and 'Connected Society' regulatory and policy initiatives".

Tekelec' solution integrates several components, including Policy management and  Diameter Signaling Router (here).

Policy management will "allow service providers to apply different qualities of service to different machines and implement flexible service plans based on transactions, connections, time of day, location, applications, or data usage".





Source: Tekelec White paper - "Machine to Machine Services"