SwissCom Deploys Allot to Optimize its Cloud Services; Integrated by Nokia

Allot Communications announced together with Nokia Networks, that "Swisscom is deploying Allot Cloud Access Optimization. The solution is designed to assure application Quality of Service (QoS) and improve user productivity by overcoming the performance degradation challenges associated with cloud data centers and application delivery.

Swisscom worked with Nokia Networks to integrate the Allot Cloud Access Optimization platform into their new data center architecture to support higher performance service delivery to customers. 

Using Allot, Swisscom can help enterprises overcome degradation challenges such as real-time video transaction loads, unified communications, file transfers, and endpoint upgrades, as well as Denial of Service and other malicious attacks by offering high quality dynamic data center services based on documented service level agreements (SLAs).

Allot enables Swisscom to offer enhanced high quality, differentiated, and flexible data center services to their enterprise customers based on comprehensive reporting and self-provisioning capabilities"

See "Nokia Networks and Allot Communications to Deliver Swisscom a Cloud Access Optimization Solution" - here.

How Do 3, KPN, Swisscom, T-Mobile, A1, EE, TeliaSonera and Orange Pack LTE?

A new presentation by Openet reviews the how leading MNOs are "leverage the speed that LTE brings to create value for customers and generate more revenue".

Swisscom: "Demand for Speed Will Grow Further"

Highlights from Swisscom 2013 earning presentation (here):

• At home: The Future of Wireline Ultra Broadband Switzerland is already one of the leading broadband nations in Europe. Further growth in demand will accelerate adoption of ultra broadband
  
  

• On the move: The Future Of Ultra Wireless Broadband Swisscom aims to delight customers by exceeding customer quality and speed expectation, while positively impacting the overall ARPU.

Ascom LTE Testing Selected by Swisscom (CHF1.2M) & 2 US MNOs ($10M)

Ascom Network Testing announced that " .. As part of its nation-wide 4G/LTE rollout program, Swisscom has selected Ascom to provide an upgrade of its existing benchmarking and network quality of service monitoring with a total value of more than CHF 1.2 million. The contract is part of a network overhaul initiated by Swisscom to handle future growth in mobile data transmission"

" .. Ascom’s TEMS Portfolio is used in most of the European countries to do first validation of 4G/LTE network performance and was recently also selected by two leading US operators for 4G/LTE benchmarking and service performance monitoring projects worth more than USD 10 million".

See "Swisscom selects Ascom Network Testing for 4G/LTE-Network Benchmarking" - here.

Swisscom: How do we Fight OTT; UBB will Disappear over the Next 3 to 5 Years

The slides below are taken from Swisscom's Q2 2013 report.

• Swisscom's iO (launched at the end of June 2013 (here) - " lets you make calls, chat and share images with other iO users over the Internet for free, no matter where you are. At home, on the go and abroad – iO brings you closer to your friends and family in Switzerland and around the world. Simple, secure and international"

• The 2nd slide continues the Swisscom's trend of moving away from usage based charges (see "Swisscom Shows the Unlimited Business-Case" - here).
  
  "All usage based traffic revenues will disappear over the next 3 to 5 years"

BICS Enables Swisscom's Intercontinental 4G Roaming

BICS announced its "IPX platform enabled Swisscom [see "Swisscom Uses Ericsson for LTE Roaming" - here] and South Korean operators to perform the first intercontinental 4G roaming connection over IPX, between Europe and Asia .. Through the BICS IPX platform, the operators have now launched the new connection for customers, allowing those roaming in Switzerland and South Korea to access 4G/LTE services. In early July the roaming facility will be extended to customers in Canada and Hong Kong"

See also "BICS Uses ACME Packet for LTE Carrier Services" - here.

Mikaël Schachne [pictured], VP Mobile Data Business at BICS said: “With our LTE Signalling & IPX Transport, we enable operators such as Swisscom and the South Korean operators to offer global 4G roaming for their subscribers. We are convinced that they soon will be followed by many other operators worldwide".

See "BICS enables first intercontinental 4G/LTE Data Roaming relation" - here.

DSC Deployments [258]: Swisscom Uses Ericsson for LTE Roaming

Ericsson announced that its "Diameter Signaling Controller, is enabling Swisscom to become the first European operator to launch LTE roaming services on a global basis .. LTE roaming is based on diameter signaling, a protocol used between virtually all nodes in mobile-broadband networks. The rapid increase in mobile-broadband traffic also means the signaling required to set up and manage sessions for individual subscribers is growing very fast; a tenfold increase is expected between 2011 and 2016.

.. Ericsson's Diameter Signaling Controller is implemented on the Ericsson Blade System platform. This means the capacity of the product is truly scalable, and it caters for the forecasted continued growth in mobile-broadband traffic. It will also support and play a key role with the introduction of voice over LTE services".

Swisscom has 6.3M mobile customers.

See "Ericsson enables Swisscom to provide LTE Roaming" - here.

NSN Reality Check: 3 Types of Unlimited Data Plans

 
Leslie Shannon (pictured), Senior Strategic Marketing Manager, Nokia Siemens Networks, covers the current trends in unlimited data plans, as ".. after luring customers with unlimited data plans, operators soon discovered the downside for their networks: more congestion. This eventually led to a worldwide shift away from unlimited data plans, particularly with the introduction of LTE, which many operators used as an opportunity to pull back on these plans".

"But not everyone. There are still three categories of unlimited data plans out there: Looks unlimited but isn't ..( T-Mobile USA) .. Looks unlimited and is (Sprint, US; LG U+, Korea) .. Unlimited data with varying speeds (Swisscom, DNA Finland)".

Source: Swisscom - see "Swisscom Shows the Unlimited Business-Case"

"Happily, Quality of Service Differentiation can really help here. The key is to think in terms of ‘deprioritizing’ a select few rather than throttling everyone – or no one. Dropping network priority for subscribers over a certain threshold – but only in times of congestion – is common in all of the networks in Hong Kong, for example, and has the advantage of delivering full network speeds when there is no congestion. Alternatively, operators can deprioritize only the highest-usage customers after they reach a set limit, so in practice throttling only those subscribers who cause the most network grief" 

See also "[ABI]: Shared Data Plan Available to 5% of Global Subscribers; Unlimited to 15%" - here. 

See "The temptation of unlimited data" - here.

Wi-Fi Deployments [247]: Swisscom Selects Aptilo for Service Management

 

Aptilo Networks announced that ".. Swisscom has selected Aptilo Networks, the leading provider of carrier-class Wi-Fi service management and offloading solutions, to provide service management to support future development of their Wi-Fi offerings. The Aptilo Service Management Platform™ will be seamlessly integrated with Swisscom’s existing systems, giving Swisscom the flexibility to leverage new technologies and deploy new services easily. With Aptilo’s service provider Wi-Fi solution, Swisscom will have built-in flexibility to adapt to future requirements".

See "Swisscom Selects Aptilo for Next Step in Wi-Fi Service Offering" - here.

Swisscom: OTT Needs Good Access; Good Access Gets Revenues

AT&T  (see "AT&T CEO: OTT Video not a Problem; We Focus on Broadband" - here) is not alone. An interesting strategy presentation (here, below) by Swisscom, provides their view on how MNOs may also benefit from OTT services:

• Investing: To use global (OTT) services, customers become more dependent on best local access networks. With the strong rise of PC, tablet, smartphone and M2M penetration, an exploding range of OTT (“over the top”) service providers offer “free” alternatives to the traditional products (voice, SMS, data consumption) of telecom operators. OTT “apps” however thrive only if the network performance is state of the art. For telecom operators, here lies their chance to make “local” important again. Only by offering the best (serviced) network, they can charge decent fixed monthly fees for access to these networks. Chapter 2 continues by exploring the importance of best access to secure growth.
   
• Leveraging: By offering good local products and services, and monetize through clever pricing 
Chapter 3 shows how we are performing on the Products side with state of art data, voice, entertainment and other smart solutions. In both Switzerland and Italy. But also how we start changing Pricing paradigms to contain cannibalisation by IP and start price differentiation on speed, security and availability

Swisscom Shows the Unlimited Business-Case

While US operators eliminate unlimited plans (usually in favor of Shared Data Plans), Swisscom finds the unlimited ("infinity") strategy promising, expects "Revenues from products charged on basis of usage will ultimately disappear" and "positive ARPU development from 2013 through “wronggraders” and upselling to higher speed plans for existing customers". Competitive OTT services play a major role in this strategy.

See the following slides from Swisscom's recent Investor & Analyst presentation (Q3, 2012):

See "Unlimited” - here.

Tekelec: Vodafone Netherlands/Spain Prioritize Some Business Subscribers Data

Tekelec's CTO, Doug Suriano (pictured), was interviewed to European Communications about the recent pricing models and plans used by operators.

The examples Doug used (are they all using Tekelec?):

• Shared data plans - Orange, Verizon
• Speed tiers - Swisscom  
• Time based - Smart, Philippines 
• QoS tiers - "Vodafone Netherlands and Vodafone Spain currently prioritise data traffic for some business subscribers, and we expect that practice to expand in Europe over the next year as well" (see "Vodafone Uses DPI and Policy Management to Improve QoE" - here) 
• Toll Free - where application providers cover some or all of the cost of a subscriber’s data usage for a particular application (see " AT&T CEO: 1-800 Data will "Catch Fire in the Next 12 Months" - here).

"New mobile data tariffs will need to provide more flexibility – that could mean contract length, devices, types of tiers (eg, speed or time instead of data volumes) and partnerships with OTT providers [here]. Essentially, it’s about operators understanding subscribers and developing new personalized tariffs based on their knowledge of users’ preferences and activities. An example is knowing which subscribers watch long-form video on tablets and being able to make an attractive offer tailored for them".

See "Q&A: Tekelec CTO Doug Suriano" - here.

SwissCom CEO: "Mobile Data Quadruple during 2010"

   
Swisscom CEO Carsten Schloter told the Swiss newspaper Handelszeitung that ".. data usage volume on its mobile network quadruple during 2010 .. Swisscom is able to expand the capacity of its network keeping up with the increase demand for mobile data, while at the same time making less money from the service as the price per MB has dropped by almost 50 percent during 2010"

See coverage in Telecompapaer - "Swisscom sees mobile data usage quadruple during 2010" - here and the source - (in German) "PRESSE/Swisscom-CEO: Volumen im Mobilfunk hat sich 2010 vervierfacht" - here.

The charts below are taken from Swisscom Q3 results presentation (here).

See also "New York Times: Vodafone, Telefonica, Swisscom, Kabel Deutschland Position on Traffic Management" - here.

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New York Times: Vodafone, Telefonica, Swisscom, Kabel Deutschland Position on Traffic Management

 

NYT's  Kevin J. O'BRIEN covers the recent trends in traffic management vs. Net Neutrality debate - "Web’s Users Against Its Gatekeepers" - here.

Mr. O'Brien interviews of the European operators provide a direct testimony for their traffic management needs and/or actual deployments:

• Frederic Gastaldo, the head of strategy and innovation at Swisscom:  “..However, customers who do excessively use our data network are a big challenge for us" 

• Georg Merdian, director of the company’s infrastructure regulation Kabel Deutschland: “We anticipate we will soon have to use some kind of management techniques”

• Richard Feasey, public policy director, Vodafone  “We use a form of network management to say, ‘I’m sorry, you are not going to be able to get the same level of service unless you decide to top up'” 

• Robert Mourik, director of regulatory policy in Europe, Telefónica: “We have an explosion of traffic, but our revenues have not been growing at the same pace or staying flat ... What we are looking to do are commercial deals.”