Algar Telecom Uses Openet PCC to Create New Services

Openet announced that "Algar Telecom has adopted Openet’s Policy Manager solution to streamline product development and reduce time to market. Openet’s Policy Manager solution will play a crucial role in delivering next-generation network capabilities, offering centralized access to subscriber data and other specialised BSS functions. By operating in real-time Openet’s Policy Manager will play a fundamental role streamlining the creation of new products and services. 

Using Openet’s Policy Manager, Algar Telecom enables real-time management of data quotas and uses these to target context aware offers to customers. This includes roaming offers, which provide data add-ons when customers reach their roaming data limits. These offers are activated in real-time and a deliver new revenue streams to Algar"


See "Algar Telecom Adopts Openet's Policy Manager Solution to Streamline Product Development" - here.

PCC Deployments [364]: QBoCel [Mexico] Uses FTS for Application-based Plans

FTS announced that "QBoCel, a Mexican MVNO that operates on Telefonica's Movistar Mexico network, has selected FTS' MVNO billing and policy control solution to offer innovative services to its customers. The multi-year, multi-million dollar project marks a significant expansion for FTS in the Latin America region.

Using Leap Billing's policy control and charging capabilities, QBoCel plans to offer application-based plans such as video, Facebook and VoIP packages, to enhance the customer experience and meet user demands for personalized pricing tiers and flexible data plans. 

In addition, QboCel intends to offer zero-rated data with free access to specific content as well as sponsored data plans, where data is paid by the over the top (OTT) content partner and not by the user.

See "Mexican MVNO QBoCel Selects FTS’ MVNO Billing & Policy Control Solution" - here.

[Infonetics]: Huawei and Cisco ($89M) are the PCC Market Leaders

 
Maywun Wong announced in Cisco's Service Provider blog that "Last week, we were thrilled to receive the news that Infonetics scored Cisco Policy Suite as a Leader in the Policy Management Scorecard. 

Cisco was one of only two leaders recognized by Infonetics in this space and was recognized for building “… up its position in the market rapidly after its acquisition of BroadHop [Dec '12; here], demonstrating strong momentum around policy virtualization”.

See also - 

• Policy Management Market Rises 27 Percent in 2014; VoLTE, Data Monetization Play Big Role" - here 
• [Infonetics]: "significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape" - here.  

See "Cisco Scores as Leader in the Infonetics Policy Management Scorecard" - here.

PCC Deployments [353]: Djibouti Telecom Manages Bandwidth with Alepo

Alepo announced that its "longstanding client Djibouti Telecom has decided to upgrade to the latest version of Alepo’s Service Enabler in order to deliver more advanced and flexible data offers to its rapidly growing subscriber base while achieving a significant reduction in OPEX. 

   

.. With Alepo SE, Djibouti Telecom gains real-time capabilities, such as the ability to enforce bandwidth policies and to offer features like “Bandwidth on Demand” to customers. What more, the upgrade will also help Djibouti Telecom make seamless offerings of discounts, promotions and communications via SMS, email in order to engage customers. The new functions in Alepo SE will help in greatly enhancing Djibouti’s capability to gain and retain subscribers"/

See "Djibouti Telecom Modernizes Fixed Broadband Network with Alepo BSS/OSS Upgrade" - here.

PCC Deployments [348]: Zipnet [Ghana] & West African CSPs Selected Alepo

Alepo announced a "new partnership with Zipnet – a leading internet service provider in Ghana – to evolve ICT services across the country with advanced policy and charging control solutions for IP-based services and 4G mobile broadband. 

Zipnet recently selected Alepo to provide its policy and charging control solutions as well as its BSS/OSS framework, Service Enabler 9, in order to support Zipnet’s multi-access network operations, spanning WiMAX, Wi-Fi, and a planned LTE network. 

In addition to the recent contract with Zipnet Ghana, Alepo has many deployments in West Africa, including Niger, Mali, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast and Nigeria".

See "Zipnet to Boost the ICT Sector in Ghana with Alepo Policy and Charging Control" - here.

PCC Deployments [347]: Afghan Wireless Deploys RedKnee

Redknee Solutions announced that it is "supporting Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), the leading telecom operator in Afghanistan to differentiate its services and provide an advanced customer experience for its subscribers. 

Utilizing the Redknee Unified charging and policy solution, AWCC is leveraging convergent services, to monetize their next generation data strategy and support future growth.

With Redknee’s real-time solution, AWCC is able to provide a greater range of value-add and personalized services faster to the market. AWCC can deliver targeted incentives and rewards to subscribers to increase ARPU and customer loyalty. Redknee’s integrated charging and policy solution has enabled AWCC to optimize its network investments, reduce the load on its network and set differentiated quality of service for individual subscribers. In addition, Redknee’s integrated solution enables AWCC to generate revenue through new business models and partnerships with OTT providers".

See "Afghan Wireless Expands Growth Strategy with Redknee’s Charging and Policy Solution" - here.

[Infonetics]: "significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape"

 
A new survey by Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research, on the Policy management marker finds that:

"The next generation of policy management solutions has evolved to address the challenges associated with increased broadband consumption and a wider range of end-user devices. This shift has translated into significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape as suppliers look to refine and reposition their offerings .. There are new buyers for policy management within the operators and new requirements that policy solutions must address, and this has created challenges for many suppliers playing in the market -- a trend that we expect to continue in the coming years" 

Survey results: 

•  respondents put Huawei at the top of the list; Ericsson came in second, and Openet and Oracle tied for third
   
• Topping respondents' criteria for choosing a policy management solution are reliability and performance scalability
   
• While only 13 percent of respondents are currently running policy management software as a virtual network function (VNF), 57 percent plan to do so by the end of 2016. A surprisingly high 32 percent of operators surveyed plan to deploy policy via a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform by the end of 2016

See "Vendor shakeup expected in policy management market as operators seek more flexible solutions" - here. 

PCC Deployments [325]: Oi [Brazil] Trialed Renkee Virtualized Solution During 2014 FIFA World Cup

Redknee Solutions announced that Oi has "..successfully trialed Redknee’s suite of virtualized billing, charging and policy management solutions to drive roaming subscriptions and to ensure high quality wireless connectivity for those attending one of the largest sporting events in the world, the 2014 FIFA World Cup. With Redknee’s highly flexible and scalable solution, Oi was able to better monetize its Wi-Fi investment and enhance the customer experience. 

Redknee’s Wi-Fi Monetization and Offload solution enabled Oi to reduce time to market to launch new services, improve the user experience, and extend revenue streams into new business lines, such as Wi-Fi connectivity at major sporting events. 

[Related post: "Oi [Brazil] Uses Aptilo to Create a Public Wi-Fi over Home/SMB Routers" - here]

Redknee’s partnership with Oi emphasizes the confidence leading communications service providers (CSPs) have in Redknee’s ability to support their monetization strategies. With an aggressive timescale, Redknee’s solution was implemented in less than five weeks". 

See "Redknee Enables Oi to Successfully Leverage Virtualization" - here.

Telenet [Belgium] Replaces DPI; Upgrades PCRF

  

FTS announced that ".. Telenet, a long-standing FTS customer, has carried out a major upgrade to its Leap™ Policy Control software solution. Telenet, a member of the Liberty Global Group, uses Leap Policy Control for bandwidth quota and policy management. FTS’ solution serves as an integrated policy control and charging (PCC) solution within Telenet’s network and BSS environment. It provides Telenet with volume-metering [related post: "Telenet (Belgium): Unlimited, but Fair Use, Means 2.7TB per Month!" - here] and associated rating functionality for its customers and delivers the source data for the informative Telenet Telemeter portal. This deployment ensures that Telenet’s subscribers will continue to benefit from personalized packages and quotas while providing Telenet with immediate upsell opportunities". 

"This upgrade also sees FTS’ Leap Policy Control deployed within a virtual environment and includes integration with Telenet’s new DPI infrastructure. Virtualization enables Telenet to benefit from significant savings on hardware investment, ensuring a more cost effective, scalable and flexible infrastructure". 

FTS declined to comment on the identity of the new DPI supplier, who replaced the Cisco CSE [see "Cisco Expands SCE Line with a 60Gbps and Virtual Models" - here] solution used by Telenet [here], nor if the new DPI solution is virtualized as well,  

See "FTS Strengthens Relationship with Leading Belgian Telecom Provider" - here.

PCC Deployments [321]: INWI [Morocco] Uses Openet for Monetization

Openet announced that "INWI, a leading Moroccan operator, has deployed Openet’s Policy Manager to successfully provide convergent policy control and advanced allowance management .. INWI has integrated Openet’s Policy Manager with its advanced Balance Manager and Offer Catalog solution to monetize and shorten time-to-market for innovative new use cases. 

These will include: 

• the offer of ‘one day’ mobile data service passes 
• real-time data upsell notifications to its 13 million subscribers

These new innovative services will ensure new levels of offer transparency and Balance Management to maximize customer quality of experience, control local and roaming traffic and reduce bill shock".

INWI has ~28% of the local market.

See "Openet Enables INWI to accelerate data innovation and optimize the customer experience through real-time visibility and account control" - here

$17M PCC Deal for RedKnee w/EMEA Group

Redknee Solutions announced that a ".. leading group operator in EMEA has signed multiple software and services orders totaling more than $17 million with Redknee ..Utilizing Redknee Unified, Redknee’s real-time monetization and subscriber management software solution, the CSP can launch innovative data services and personalized offers and generate new revenue streams". 

Lucas Skoczkowski [pictured], CEO, Redknee said: "We are very pleased to support this group operator in enhancing their competitiveness across multiple countries. This demonstrates the confidence this group operator has in Redknee’s expertise to support the aggressive growth strategies of communications service providers across the world”.

See "Leading EMEA Group Operator Signs $17 Million of Orders with Redknee" - here.

3 Wins for Elitecore PCC in Cable

 
Elitecore Technologies announced ".. three Cable MSOs (Multi-System Operators) wins for Pay TV and Broadband services; setting up a strong footprint in Asia Pacific Cable market. 

Elitecore will offer a complete pre-integrated as well as modular stack of Convergent Billing and Subscriber Management, Centralized Product Catalog, PCRF, Online Charging, AAA, Captive Portal, Partner Settlement, Provisioning, Self-care Portals and IP Log Management system that will help these Cable MSOs to ramp up their digitization efforts and quickly capitalize on new revenue opportunities with digital TV and Broadband bundled services for around 5 Mn subscribers".

Related post - "EliteCore Integrates Charging, Billing, PCRF, DSC, AAA and Mediation" - here.

See "Elitecore bags 3 new orders from Multi service Cable Operators, Deploys Integrated Real time Billing, Charging & Policy Control Solution" - here.

PCC Deployments [315]: Play[Poland] Selected Comverse

Comverse announced that "Play (P4) has selected the Comverse ONE Converged Billing & Active Customer Management solution to support expansion of services and functionalities for its advanced 4G/LTE network serving a rapidly growing subscriber base.

.. Upgrading to the new Comverse ONE product line addresses specific key Play requirements, such as: LTE Enablement ..  Virtualization and:

• Advanced Personalization Real-time marketing capabilities including flexible event based notifications for greater personalization, increased upsell opportunities, enhanced policy enforcement
   
• Rapid Time to Market: Native Diameter, advanced ordering workflow engine, reduced level of customized code for efficient support of new charging models and rapid response to future market needs at lower cost".

Play, is a consumer-focused mobile network operator in Poland with over 10.9M subscribers. During Q1 2014, Play continued fast roll-out of 4G LTE network, which reaches 30% of population. 

See "Play Poland (P4) Selects Comverse ONE Converged BSS to Power Real-Time Service Capabilities, New LTE Functionalities" - here.

PCC Deployments [310]: Sprint Selected ItsOn to Enable New Services

ItsOn announced that ".. Sprint will use the ItsOn Smart Services™ Platform to enhance Sprint’s mobile network capabilities and enable new types of mobile services. The multi-year agreement provides Sprint with the ability to design and implement granular service policy control for various data, text and voice services using ItsOn’s SaaS cloud solution.

Sprint will be integrating the ItsOn cloud capabilities into its existing network architecture and the ItsOn Smart Services™ device software will be embedded in all new Sprint Android devices sold through all distribution channels going forward".

At the end of Q1, 2014 Sprint had close to 54M mobile subscribers. Related post "Sprint's Reasonable Network Management Practices - Fairness, Limit top 5%, Video Optimization" - here.

The Smart Services Platform from ItsOn Inc from ItsOn Inc on Vimeo.

See "Sprint to Use ItsOn Smart Services™ Platform" - here.

NetCracker Launches SDN/NFV Based Service Orchestrator

NetCracker Technology "..introduced its new Service and Network Orchestrator solution for SDN/NFV, an integrated part of its market-leading NetCracker 9 suite. This new solution enables communications service providers (CSPs) to address the complexities associated with managing and monetizing multi-vendor virtualized as well as hybrid networks and services.

NetCracker’s new Service and Network Orchestrator for SDN/NFV provides: A centralized orchestration catalog .. Real-time configuration management .. Service lifecycle management and real-time policy and analytics capabilities. 

See "NetCracker Introduces Service and Network Orchestrator for SDN/NFV at TM Forum Live! 2014" - here.

PCC Deployments [308]: Taiwan Mobile to Use Ericsson for Usage Control

Ericsson SAPC

Ericsson announced that it has "won a deal providing an integrated Policy and Charging solution to Taiwan Mobile, one of the leading providers of communications services. The agreement will see Taiwan Mobile implement Ericsson's Charging System and Service-Aware Policy Controller (SAPC) for its post-paid LTE subscribers .. With the ability to set controls on a per user or per group basis, the solution will help deal with fair usage by optimizing network utilization.

Consumers will benefit from increased choice when it comes to data services and smartphone packages and enhanced user experience for services requiring high or varying bandwidth".

At the end of 2013 Taiwan mobile had 7.2M mobile subscribers, with the highest ARPU in Taiwan's market.

See "Ericsson to provide integrated Policy and Charging solution to Taiwan Mobile" - here.

[Analysys Mason]: SDP Market (Incl. PCC) Generated $5.2B in 2013

According to a new report by Glen Ragoonanan [pictured], Principal Analyst, and Gorkem Yigit, Research Analyst, Analysys Mason "The service delivery platforms (SDP) market generated USD5.2 billion in revenue worldwide during 2013, up 12% from USD4.6 billion in 2012. In 2013, communications service providers (CSPs) spent on service delivery platforms (SDP) solutions to monetise LTE and FTTx infrastructure investments. Voice (IMS/VoLTE) and video (multi-screen) services also continued to drive CSPs’ SDP spending as they compete with over-the-top (OTT) providers. 

Analysis Mason's SDP refers to "four application sub-segments: telecoms application servers (TAS), content management and delivery (CMD): fixed (FCMD) and mobile (MCMD), policy management (PM) and subscriber data management (SDM)"


The top-five suppliers in this market were the same as in 2012, thanks to numerous acquisitions. Ericsson maintained its leadership, followed by Huawei Technologies, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, and then Oracle.

According to the above charts, vendors' revenues for 2013 (subject to rounding errors) have been:

See "Service Delivery Platforms: Worldwide Market Shares 2013" - here.

Infonetics Identifies the Leading Policy Management Vendors

A new "Policy Management Scorboard" (based on "direct feedback from service providers, market share data, and publicly available financial data") by Shira Levine [pictured], directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research ranks the 8 largest global vendors of policy management solutions: Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, Ericsson, Huawei, Openet, Oracle, Juniper, and Redknee.

"Huawei’s and Ericsson’s strong financials and market share [see "[Infonetics]: Huawei Leads the $1B Policy Management Market" - here] growth, along with solid scores in the service provider feedback categories, propelled them to the top of the list .. However, we believe that Oracle and Amdocs have the potential to provide a real challenge to the leaders if and when they’re able to work through some of their post-acquisition issues, and Alcatel-Lucent will likely move up the list once its financials are sorted out.”.

In Infonetics' 2013 and 2012 reports, Openet led the market (here and here).

See "Huawei and Ericsson top Infonetics policy management scorecard; Oracle and Amdocs in hot pursuit" - here.

PCC Deployments [301]: Aircel [India] Uses EliteCore for Service Differentiation

Elitecore Technologies announced that it has "..deployed NetVertex PCRF with Aircel India which has mobile presence across 23 circles .. Aircel went through a detailed evaluation process with leading Policy Control vendors, which also involved in running tests to exhibit compliance on the features and requirement. Elitecore’s Netvertex PCRF scored very high in this evaluation.

On February 2014, Aircel had over 69M GSM subscribers (here), or 9.7% if the Indian market (711M subscribers)

Robert Sewell [pictured], Head, Network Architecture, Aircel said, 'At Aircel our prime focus is on delivering a great customer experience with service differentiation [see "Aircel [India] Offers Facebook Aware Service" - here]. For this we selected Elitecore’s Netvertex PCRF and have been very pleased with the quick implementation of the platform in our network. The support extended by Elitecore’s team during deployment and operations in our network and the platform’s performance has been outstanding'”.

See "Elitecore deploys NetVertex PCRF at AIRCEL" - here

[Infonetics]: Huawei Leads the $1B Policy Management Market

Telecom Lead published the main findings from Infonetics Research report on the policy management market (even before Infonetics' own press release), expanding the information provided towards the end of 2013 ("[Infonetics]: Over $1B Policy Management Market for 2013 (29% Growth); Bumped by LTE" - here):

"Huawei leads the policy management software market in 2013, ahead of Ericsson ..Infonetics Research noted that the global policy management software market reached just over $1 billion in 2013 and is on target to become a $2.5 billion market by 2018, with mobile deployments driving much of the momentum. VoLTE continues to be a major driver behind policy management growth as operators seek to ensure quality of service (QoS) for voice traffic.

There is increased interest in policy management among fixed line operators looking to implement more innovative pricing and service models, and the recent U.S. court decision on net neutrality is likely to further this trend".

See "Huawei leads policy management software market in 2013, ahead of Ericsson, says Infonetics" - here.