European Telcos do not Like Regulation and OTT!

Surprised by the title of this post? You shouldn't be. We have seen this many times, and in this year's MWC was no exception (besides, maybe, the language used by the Mr. Bernabe):

• Telecom Italia: Mike Dano reports to Fierce Wireless: "The CEO of Telecom Italia, Franco Bernabe (pictured), used his keynote appearance here at the Mobile World Congress trade show to rally against over-the-top players, arguing that OTT vendors are sucking resources away from wireless operators .. OTT players hinder competition by relying on non-standardized technologies ..  such players also don't understand mobile, and therefore cause unintended problems like overloading mobile networks with unnecessary signaling .. This imposes a big burden on mobile operators .. average revenues per user in Europe have decreased from 26 euros in 2006 to 20 euros in 2011--at a time when operators are investing heavily in their networks to deal with traffic generated in part by OTT services".
  
  See " Telecom Italia CEO highlights 'burdens' created by OTT players" - here.

• Deutsche Telekom - Jeff Barak report to Amdocs Blog that "Deutsche Telekom’s Obermann (pictured) pointed out that in this new cloud era, ”best effort” connectivity won’t be enough – for example, medical cloud services can’t be allowed to fail – and operators will play an important role in providing end-to-end quality of service. The regulator, Obermann insisted, has to accept that non-discriminating traffic management is essential for delivering real quality of service".
  
  See "Who’s going to get left behind? (Live from MWC 2012)" - here. 

• TeliaSonera - Michelle Donegan reports to Light Reading "TeliaSonera said it will charge an extra fee for using free over-the-top VoIP services on its network and throttle bandwidth for users who try to use these services without paying. In an interview with Light Reading TV, Tommy Ljunggren (pictured), TeliaSonera's VP of system development, explained the operator's new strategy and pricing policy for OTT VoIP services. TeliaSonera's message is clear: If you want to use those services on our network, you have to pay; if you don't, those services won't work".
   See "TeliaSonera Chokes Free VoIP Services" - here; This follows TeliaSonera's subsidiary in Spain, Yoigo, recent action - see " Procera's DPI Enables Yoigo VoIP's Monetization" - here.

Procera's DPI Enables Yoigo VoIP's Monetization

Procera Networks had so far a number of announcements regarding its Spanish customer, Yoigo (here, here). Unlike many other DPI deployments, Yoigo does not hide and does not afraid to explain how it uses DPI showing interesting use-cases.

This time Procera shows a deployment of "OTT - VoiP Monetization" use-case - a DPI based business model - something that usually exists only in vendors' presentations.

Yoigo "has announced VOIP Bono (here, Spanish), a Mobile VOIP add-on plan to their standard mobile data offerings. This service allows access from phone or other device for voice calls over Internet (VoIP) via Skype, Viber, or any other VOIP application. Customer can expect to get about 600 minutes of talk time with the 100MB allowance devoted exclusively to VoIP calls, and will cost 6 euros per month, with an average cost of 1 cent per minute for Mobile VOIP".

Yoigoo's "VOIP Bono is powered by the PacketLogic solutions that Yoigo has deployed in their network since 2007" - that is DPI is used to detect the use of  VoiP applications, and count minutes - this is not easy! 

Johan Andsjö (pictured), CEO of Yoigo said: "The growth of voice over IP has the potential to change the mobile operator landscape .. VOIP Bono delivers a price leading Voice over IP service that is cheaper than SkypeOut for mobile broadband customers. Procera’s Intelligent Policy Enforcement solutions enable Yoigo to stay current on the latest VOIP applications and accelerate Yoigo’s new service launches."

See "Procera Networks Powers Yoigo Mobile VOIP Services" - here.

[Lightreading] Yoigo [Spain] Increased Revenues with DPI

   
Yoigo [2.3M subscribers] mobile operator is using Procera for traditional DPI needs (QoS, traffic shaping etc - see "Mobile Broadband Operator Yoigo Chooses Procera Networks" - here).  

Now, according to the Lightreading story by Michelle Donegan  the investment seems to be generating revenues:

".. When customers approach their monthly limit for mobile data, they are first alerted and then directed to a Web page, where they can opt to buy a data top-up or do nothing, which results in the customer's service speed being reduced to 128 Kbit/s once (if) the limit is reached. .. The operator has experienced a 72 percent acceptance rate of the mobile data up-sell option since the launch in December, according to Yoigo CEO Johan Andsjo (picture) .. with the additional customer revenues, the cost of implementing this project was paid back within three weeks".

See "Spanish Mobile Challenger Wields DPI"  - here. 

See also "TeliaSonera's New Business Model: Value-based Pricing" (Majority owner of Yoigo) - here.