FCC Won Net Neutrality Appeal by Verizon and MetroPCS

Dan Seifert (pictured) reports to The Verge that "Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS have filed a joint appeal [here] against a court decision concerning the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules that took effect in December of last year. The court had ruled in favor of the FCC, despite the complaints levied against it in Verizon and MetroPCS' lawsuit. The carriers contend that the FCC is over stepping its bounds with the regulation, which is designed to prevent network operators from controlling traffic to apps, services, and other functions on an individual basis".

See "Verizon, MetroPCS push back on FCC's net neutrality rules" - here.

[ABI]:VoLTE will Help MNOs Fight OTT Voice and Messaging

A new report by Marina Lu, research associate and Jake Saunders (pictured), vice-president for forecasting, ABI Research concludes that "​Mobile operators are increasingly coming under pressure to improve mobile telecom service profit margins as well as bring in new services to counter the competition from Over the Top (OTT) services such as Skype, Viber, Whatsapp, and FaceTime [see "AT&T will Block Facetime/3G to non Shared Data Plan Customers" - here]".

"In 2Q 2012, minutes of use showed the greatest declines compared to 2011 in Asia-Pacific (-7.36%), Africa (-6.3%), Western Europe (-2.32%), and North America (-2.12%) .. “Messages Sent” is keeping stable in Q2 2012 compared to last quarter .. mobile data traffic continues its rapid increase with 13.4 Exabytes to be consumed through 2012".

"Mobile operators have had limited options with 3G but 4G LTE should give the mobile operators some new tools .. LTE does not just transform the delivery of broadband data, it also can enrich voice services. SK Telecom, Korea’s largest operator, launched out the world’s first VoLTE services on 8 August, 2012. More recently, LG U+ in South Korea and MetroPCS Communications in the US [see "MetroPCS will Use Amdocs for VoLTE QoS" - here] have also introduced Voice over LTE".

“For voice communications, VoLTE enables rich media content to be overlaid over voice, while the packetized delivery of the voice data allows for greater cost of service savings”.

See "Carriers Relying on Voice over LTE Services to Improve Margins as Traditional Minutes of Use Decline" - here.

PCRF Deployments[172]: MetroPCS will Use Amdocs for VoLTE QoS

Amdocs announced that ".. solutions from its Customer Experience Systems (CES) portfolio were integral in MetroPCS' launch of the world's first commercially available Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service .. Amdocs supported MetroPCS's VoLTE launch with its CES billing, mediation, and provisioning solutions (operated under a full managed services model) and its network control solutions, including the Home Subscriber Server and Policy Controller". 

"These solutions enable dynamic policies and ensure quality of service to help service providers manage the impact of mobile data growth on their networks and generate revenue from personalized services".

At the end of Q2, 2012, MetroPCS had 9.3M subscribers with average monthly ARPU of $40.6. See the slides below for the role VoLTE plays in its plans. 

See "Amdocs Supports MetroPCS Launch of World’s First Commercially Available VoLTE Service" - here.

MetroPCS Controls Speed for Low-Cost LTE Service

       
A year ago, MetroPCS was planning to offer LTE users application-based service plans (here, using Amdocs policy management gear).
 
This ambitious, Net Neutrality challenging, plan has been replaced by a simpler concept, and the MNOoffers now several service plans, some with volume quotas and speed reduction penalties.
 
Phil Goldstein report to FierceWireless that "MetroPCS increased the price of its unlimited LTE smartphone data plan to $70 [here] and will throttle the data speeds of its three other LTE pricing plans, a company spokesman confirmed. The flat-rate carrier previously charged $60 for unlimited voice, texting, data, email and either its MetroSTUDIO on-demand video service or its Rhapsody Unlimited Music--it increased that price to $70 per month with its MetroSTUDIO service. The company's $60 plan now caps usage at 5 GB of LTE data and users' data speeds are slowed after they consume that 5 GB. The $60 plan includes Rhapsody".
   
MetroPCS spokesman Drew Crowell said to FierceWireless : "Customers will remain on the 4G LTE network but receive a reduced speed similar to what they might experience on MetroPCS' 3G networks .. speeds will bump back up at the start of customers' next monthly billing cycle .. Even though 4G LTE speeds may be reduced, because of the 'always on' nature of our 4G LTE network, the experience for the majority of what a customer does on a daily basis, like Facebook, web surfing, etc., should continue to be solid"
 
See "MetroPCS adds data throttling to LTE, increases unlimited data to $70" - here

DSR Market - Follow-on Order and New Tier1 for Tekelec

   

Tekelec announced this week 2 wins with its Diameter Signaling Router product, both in the US.

It now has 4 operators in the US, 3 of which are Tier1 including Verizon Wireless (see "How does/will Verizon Wireless Use Tekelec's Diameter Router?" - here) and MetroPCS (here).

1. "A U.S. tier one LTE operator selected mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec to expand its new Diameter network. The service provider will implement two new Tekelec Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) systems, in addition to the one announced in June 2011."
   
   See "U.S. Tier one service provider selects Tekelec to expand new diameter network" - here.
    
2. "A tier one U.S. operator has selected Tekelec, the mobile broadband solutions company, to provide core Diameter routing, intelligent policy traffic routing and security for its LTE network".
   
   See "Tier one U.S. operator selects Tekelec for new LTE diameter network" - here.

US Senate Rejected an Attempt to Kill Net Neutrality

     

Cecilia Kang reports to the Washington Post that "The Senate upheld Internet access rules known as net neutrality on Thursday, rejecting a move to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s regulations .. The Republican-backed bill to scrap the FCC’s net neutrality rules failed to pass muster in a 46-to-52 vote that fell strictly along party lines"

".. the loss by Senate Republicans gives the FCC some reprieve, but the neutrality rules are being challenged in court. Verizon Communications [see "Verizon Explains its "Network Optimization" Policy" - here] and Metro PCS [see "MetroPCS LTE Service Plans: "Pay to use Applications" - here] have sued the agency, saying the rules go beyond the FCC’s jurisdiction as a communications services regulator. On the other side, Free Press, which supports net neutrality, has also sued the FCC, saying the rules don’t adequately protect wireless consumers"

See "Senate votes against net neutrality killer" - here.

The FCC "Open Internet" (or Net Neutrality) sets rules for transparency, no blocking and no unreasonable discrimination (subject to the " principle of reasonable network management") of internet services and will become effective next Sunday, Nov 20 (more - here).

See also "US Net Neutrality: Different Things to Different People -> Lawsuits to Come" (here).

MetroPCS Offloads 20% to Wi-Fi

   

Sue Marek reports to Fierce Wireless that according to iPass CTO Barbara Nelson (pictured) - "..some operators are unwilling to offload traffic to Wi-Fi unless they own the network, while others, such as MetroPCS, are offloading a significant amount of traffic to Wi-Fi now .. Although they are not broadcasting it, we estimate 20 percent of MetroPCS' traffic is offloaded to Wi-Fi"

MetroPCS would not confirm the iPass statistic. However spokesman Drew Crowell said the firm is "encouraged by what we are seeing with traffic offloaded to Wi-Fi". In May, an AT&T executive said that "AT&T didn’t see Wi-Fi helping the nation’s No. 2 carrier offset congestion" (here).

It is not clear if the Wi-Fi offloading percentage refers to Wi-Fi services in public areas only, or includes the use of home/office Wi-Fi as well. If the latter is included, then the 20% figure does not look very high.

See "MetroPCS may be offloading at least 20% of its traffic to Wi-Fi" - here.

Net Neutrality - Recent Developments in the US

   

The legal debate over the recent FCC Net Neutrality rules (here) continues.

Michelle Maisto reports to eWeek.com that "Lawsuits filed by Verizon Wireless [see "Verizon Appeals vs. FCC Net Neutrality" - here] and MetroPCS [see "MetroPCS LTE Service Plans: "Pay to use Applications" - here] against the FCC's new net-neutrality rules have been thrown out—for the time being—by a federal court .. The court ruled that once those regulations are in place—likely in late May or early June—the carriers can then dispute them".

See "Verizon, MetroPCS Lawsuits Against FCC Net-Neutrality Rules Dismissed" - here.

Last month, Cecilia Kang reported to The Washington Post, that "A House panel on Wednesday voted to invalidate Internet access rules created by the Federal Communications Commission. But they will remain in place unless Congress and the president take further action"

See "House panel votes to invalidate net neutrality rules" - here.

The resolution was approved by the House yesterday, reports Cade Metz (picture) to The Register: "the House approved a resolution that "disapproves" (PDF) the net neut rules laid down by the FCC in December, with the vote splitting almost entirely along party lines. 241 congressmen voted in favor of the resolution – all but a handful of them Republican – and 178 voted against. Republicans have argued that the FCC does not have the authority to lay down such rules. If the bill reaches President Obama, however, he is likely to veto it".

See "US House votes to bar FCC net neut rules" - here.

MetroPCS LTE Service Plans: "Pay to use Applications"

 

3 months ago Bridgewater Systems announced a win for MetroPCS (See "PCRF Wins: Bridgewater Selected by MetroPCS" - here). The service plans announced then were very general, so I was wondering why MetroPCS needed a policy server.

It seems that the new Net Neutrality rules (see "Net Neutrality Approval Reopens US Market for DPI and Policy Management" - here) encouraged the carrier to go ahead with an innovative service plans.

MetroPCS announced yesterday 3 service plans for its new LTE services (see "MetroPCS' New 4G LTE Plans Offer Unprecedented Value and Choice with Prices Starting at Just $40" - here), where the cheapest one ($40/Month) allows "unlimited talk, text, 4G Web browsing with unlimited YouTube access". In other words - no VoIP, No P2P and discriminating (blocking) of non-YouTube video traffic.

If you want more - you should pay $50 (gets you "mobile instant messaging, corporate e-mail and 1 GB of additional data access") or even $60 ("unlimited data access").

Of course, to implement all this one needs a policy server and a DPI system - to identify YouTube, for example, and block other applications for the $40 customers.

See also my recent coverage of a presentation made by Allot and Openet suggesting a similar concept ("Allot - Openet: Monetizing and Controlling OTT Applications Use Cases" - here and chart below). Note that the PCRF is the MetroPCS case comes from Bridgewater.