Comptel New Toolset Combining Policies, Rating & Balance Management

Comptel announced the "..availability of Monetizer™, an industry-first business policy and charging toolset enabling digital and communications service providers to innovate and design rich service offers instantly. With Monetizer, operators can create, configure, launch and modify dynamic, contextual packages – and profit from consumers’ data usage – in minutes instead of months. 
  
.. Monetizer™ goes beyond traditional Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) by introducing natively combined policies, rating and balance management software modules. It also leverages a common easy-to-use and consumer-like Charging Policy Offer Designer (CPOD) that supports the hyper-fast onboarding of new or third-party services. 

The solution brings down offer creation time by decoupling the customer-facing offer design work from the network-facing technology setup and configurations. Now, marketers and project managers can spend their time developing and growing the business, without worrying about technical details or if creating complex bundles is even possible”.

See "Comptel Introduces Solution to Help Digital and Communications Service Providers Monetise More in Less Time" - here.

BSS Deployments [351]: T-Mobile [Austria] Selected Openet's Virtualized Solution

Openet announced that "T-Mobile Austria has selected its extensive solution set to support a fully converged and virtualized charging solution. Openet’s Evolved Charging Solution (ECS) will provide T-Mobile Austria with next generation rating and charging capability to manage their existing services, as well as ensure new services are well supported and effectively monetized .. Openet provides a virtualized end-to-end solution capable of creating dynamic and personalised offers for T-Mobile Austria’s prepay, postpay, consumer and enterprise subscribers.

Niall Norton [pictured], CEO, Openet said: “We’re delighted to have successfully fought off some intense competition to secure T-Mobile Austria’s business. This deal not only validates the quality of our technology, it also demonstrates the technical strength of our team and its ability to carefully articulate the future value of virtualization to MNOs globally”

At the end of 2014, T-Mobile Austria had 4M subscribers, a 1.7% decreased compared to the previous year.

See "Openet’s Evolved Charging will replace the existing legacy Intelligent Network to enable the flexibility to deliver on T-Mobile’s current and future real-time charging requirements" - here.

Openet Launches Virtual, Partners Enabled, BSS Infrastructure

Openet announced that it has "..virtualized its real-time charging system. This builds on the existing virtualization of Openet’s policy and mediation systems, its secure API gateway technology and its Fusionworks platform .. By fully virtualizing its BSS infrastructure, Openet will enable mobile operators to more rapidly monetise new capabilities including VoLTE QoS management, shared data plans and sponsored data in a matter of weeks (rather than months or in some cases years with traditional legacy systems). 

By removing the need to create a full hardware-based environment, Openet has simplified the deployment process, enabling operators to focus on creating new revenue streams without having to deal with issues around integration, deployment and infrastructure management".

Related post: "Openet to Use VoltDB In-Memory DB for NFV" - here.

Openet's Virtualized BSS architecture

For several years, service providers have been interested in enabling a multi-sided business model where the operator acts as an enabler between upstream partners (software developers, content providers, OTT, M2M, Healthcare etc.) and downstream consumers and enterprise customers.

Virtualization makes this possible. The ease with which virtualization allows different combinations of BSS components to be deployed in a multi-tenant fashion on a common platform allows an operator to create “tailored” solutions for specific market segments. By exposing this capability to external entities such as MVNO or Enterprise customers, the operator can enable new business models and revenue opportunities

Opening Virtualized BSS to Partners / New Service Enablers

See "Openet virtualizes its entire BSS infrastructure" - here.

[Infonetics]: Convergent Charging Grew by Expansions; To Reach $5.3B by 2018

 
A new report by Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research finds that "Much of the recent growth in the convergent charging market has been in expansion of existing deals, with operators buying license capacity and related services to support additional subscribers and new lines of business" .. The global convergent charging market totaled $2.3 billion in 2013, and is forecast by Infonetics to grow to $5.3 billion in 2018". 

Related post - "[Infonetics Survey]: Convergent Charging Goes Into 2nd-Gen.; Led by Ericsson, Amdocs and Huawei" - here.

"Convergent charging allows operators to offer service tiers, location-based pricing, over-the-top (OTT) content packages, shared data plans, and sponsored data"

See "Network expansions driving convergent charging market, dominated by Asia Pacific" - 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.

Ulticom Deploys its DSC Technology with Technotree Charging Solution

Ulticom announced the ".. deployment of the Ulticom Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC) to optimize Diameter-based charging traffic for the Tecnotree Agility™ Convergent Charging System. 

The Ulticom DSC acts as a load balancer and provides intelligent distribution for Diameter-based transactions across multiple pools of servers performing Online Charging Services (OCS) .. Tecnotree product deployments use Ulticom’s Service-Oriented Routing™ technology. Service-Oriented Routing goes beyond the typical primary-backup reliability strategy commonly used with full mesh Diameter signaling. With Service-Oriented Routing, the DSC manages traffic for network assets (sets of servers that can support a service acting together as a single Logical Service) transparently. The DSC invisibly optimizes the user experience by managing load across server pools and dynamically compensating for congestion or server failure when necessary".

Technotree
Agility™ Convergent Charging

Tecnotree is a "global provider of telecom IT solutions for the management of products, customers and revenue. Tecnotree helps communications service providers to transform their business towards a marketplace of digital services. Tecnotree empowers service providers to monetise service bundles, provide personalised user experiences and augment value throughout the customer lifecycle".

See "Tecnotree Deploys Ulticom DSC to Optimize Charging Traffic" - here.

Amdocs Wants to Bring Together PCC, DPI, Optimization and Analytics Vendors

Amdocs announced "Amdocs PCC Ecosystem partner program - This expansion of Amdocs' Enreach partner program will address service providers' lack of integration in the network control domain by bringing together policy, charging, inline monetization, deep packet inspection (DPI), optimization and analytics vendor specialists. The program's goal is to create the industry's broadest ecosystem of partners working together to develop new offerings and service provider use cases. 

Amdocs PCC Ecosystem will be part of the Amdocs Experience Center, which will create real-life demonstrations of the new solutions so service providers can see firsthand the value of PCC integration. The facility will give service providers a logical starting point for innovating and incubating new ideas".

Sample PCC Ecosystem Use Cases (see "Amdocs Policy and Charging Control Ecosystem and Data

Monetization Lab" - here):

• Multiple application quotas: Offer flexible service tiers with application-based usage quotas
    
• OTT video optimization: Offer optimized video service as a premium add-on to data plans – optimized for device and subscriber
   
• Promotional vouchers: Offer one-time temporary services – Facebook for an hour, happy hour, quality of service boost
   
• Shared data plan for SMB: Offer tailored data plans with a common data pool, and personalized entitlements
   
• Home zone (location-based awareness): Offer free or discounted mobile data services in customer, home or other specific locations
   
• 1-800 or toll-free data: Enter into revenue sharing partnerships with OTT vendors; share the cost of data delivery

See "Amdocs Announces New Network-Based Solutions and Partner Program" - here

Allot: $3M Order for Charging, Bandwidth on Demand and Analytics

Allot Service Gateway

Allot Communications announced it has ".. received a three million dollar order from a Tier One operator in APAC for the Allot Service Gateway .. The APAC operator will utilize the policy enforcement capabilities to implement charging plans that will provide notification and redirection when the subscriber is reaching close to his data volume quota [see chart below], innovative ‘Turbo Boost’ service designed to improve Quality of Experience of certain applications in real time per subscriber demand. 

The operator will also utilize analytics collected from the Service Gateway to learn about subscriber behavior and then tailor appropriate service plans for each customer segment. The solution will be deployed in both the operator’s fixed line and wireless network".

Allot Volume-based charging use-case

See "Allot Receives Three Million Dollar Initial Phase Order from Tier One APAC Operator" - here.

EliteCore Integrates Charging, Billing, PCRF, DSC, AAA and Mediation

Elitecore Technologies announces ".. pre-integrated BSS platform comprising online charging, convergent billing, PCRF, DSC, 3GPP AAA and enhanced mediation for LTE networks. It supports gradual migration from existing networks to provide personalized LTE offerings such as shared wallet/family plans, a la carte plans and VoLTE support. The platform also comes with Business Analytics (BI) tool to help the CSPs launch customer-centric loyalty and promotional plans including location-based and device-based plans .. The platform is compliant to TM Forum and 3GPP. Its vendor-agnostic platform help CSPs save cost by reusing the existing network equipment across both DIAMETER and RADIUS .. Elitecore has successfully deployed its integrated BSS platform for LTE network in ME and APAC regions.

Elitecore BSS platform is integrated with packet core, including PCRF to offer tiered fair access policy plans, Policy-based free units, parental controls and enterprise plans along with customer-centric loyalty and promotions such as location-based, device-based add-on promos and targeted promotions based on subscriber ARPU. Its enhanced Web Self-care and POS portals enable customers have services/bundle plans of their choice with easy interface management of Franchisee/ Resellers and Partners".

See "Elitecore Announces LTE-ready, Integrated BSS Platform" - here.

Vodafone Egypt Deploys Ericsson Mobile Broadband Charging [for 10M Subs]

   

After seeing data traffic growing by 94% during the last 4 quarters, Vodafone Egypt is expanding the service flexibility provided to its subscribers.

Ericsson announced that it ".. has been chosen by Vodafone Egypt to deploy Ericsson Mobile Broadband Charging (MBC), which will provide up to 10 million users [Vodafone Egypt is 40M subscribers] with a vast array of data options and more flexible on-demand subscriptions .. This solution, which is being integrated into the operator's existing Ericsson Charging System, gives users the flexibility to utilize the best plan for their needs at any time. Already fully implemented for all Vodafone Egypt's prepaid data users, the system will soon be rolled out for postpaid subscribers - with the total subscriber base expected to top 10 million data users in 2014".

See "Ericsson deploys flexible data charging for Vodafone Egypt" - here.

[Survey]: LTE Drives Majority of Operators to Replace Billing and Real-Time Charging Systems

   
A new survey (by Openet, based on 80 operators) finds that "70 percent of operators surveyed said that IN based charging systems will be replaced within the next four years with real-time online charging systems (OCS) .. 87 percent of respondents indicating that most operators will replace existing billing solutions with real-time charging .. 79% saying that real-time charging enables service innovation"

  

Source: Openet

"As operators continuingly seek to create new revenue streams and attract customers, the rise of realtime charging and its integration with policy control has seen many innovative services and charging models introduced. Figure 8 highlights key use cases that operators are currently offering or planning to offer. It reveals that the most popular use cases are multi-device plans and data passes (e.g. 50MB for 1 day) which more than 90% of the operators are either offering or would like to offer. However, data passes appear to be the most widely offered type of services, already launched by 62% of the operators, whilst only 30% of them are currently offering multi-device plans. The next most popular use cases are Shared data (e.g. Family plans) and Speed tiers which 87% of the operators surveyed have launched or would like to launch".

"Cloud technology is growing and when it comes to charging and billing, it seems to have a bright future, with over 83% of operators thinking that it will become widely used in the next three years .. 37%, predicting that they will use a combination of both cloud and on premise systems".

See "Openet Research Confirms LTE Requires Advances in Operators’ Charging and Billing Systems" - here report (here, registration required)

[Infonetics Survey]: Convergent Charging Goes Into 2nd-Gen.; Led by Ericsson, Amdocs and Huawei

A recent survey by Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research finds that “Convergent charging isn’t just about payment anymore. Operators view it as a key tool in shortening the time-to-market for new services and in creating and delivering more innovative products and bundles .. Other leading factors driving convergent charging investments include better monetization of data services, support of marketing initiatives, and countering competition from over-the-top (OTT) players".

"38% of respondents say their convergent charging deployments are or will be replacing existing software-based charging systems. Infonetics believes this could signal the start of a replacement cycle of 1st-generation convergent charging systems .. When asked to name the top 3 convergent charging vendors, operators overwhelmingly cited Ericsson; coming in at #2 was Amdocs, followed by Huawei".

See "Faster time-to-market driving operator investments in convergent charging" - here.

[Survey]: Mobile SDN on the Fast Track - 50% to Implement in 2 Years

A new survey [130 completed responses received from mobile, converged and fixed operators] by Informa Telecoms & Media (sponsored by Juniper Networks)  finds that ".. momentum is building rapidly for mobile software-defined-network (SDN) technology among operators worldwide .. operators consider mobile SDN to be a critical technology for the future of networks: Ninety-three percent of operator respondents expect SDN to be implemented in mobile within five years, and half expect it to be implemented in the next one to two years.

The survey also found that LTE and LTE-Advanced deployments are expected to be the biggest drivers of mobile SDN adoption, and adoption is expected to be led by developed markets in North America (primarily the US) and Asia Pacific (South Korea and Japan). Sixty-five percent of the mobile operator respondents expect infrastructure vendors to have the greatest ability to influence take-up of mobile SDN".

See "Half of mobile operators globally expect mobile SDN implementation by 2015, and 93% expect it within five years" - here.

PCC Deployments [256]: T-Mobile [Netherlands] Selected Openet for Charging

  

Openet announced that "..T-Mobile Netherlands, one of the largest mobile operators in the country, selected Openet Evolved Charging as its future charging platform for mobile services. Evolved Charging will enable rich customer engagement, real-time control and price plan innovations, while supporting continuous network and service evolution".

At the end of Q1, 2013 T-Mobile Netherlands had 4.6M subscribers - 3M post paid and 1.6M prepaid, 4.8%decrease compared to Q1, 2012. 

See "Openet closes deal with T-Mobile Netherlands" - here.

Openet Integrates Legacy IN into 3GPP Charging

Openet announced the availability of its "Intelligent Network (IN) replacement solution. The new offering will allow operators to profit from the rise of high speed data by evolving legacy platforms to provide flexibility and real-time capabilities required by operators".

Openet’s solution is based on Evolved Charging, a 3GPP compliant online charging system, which integrates with a service control point in the core network to enable dynamic charging for all voice and data services to all subscribers. Evolved Charging provides operators the ability to configure dynamic “offers” to their subscribers for voice or data or a mixture of services. Usage is rated and balances held in realtime for all subscribers, allowing them to choose payment methods for any service.

 

See "Openet Announces Intelligent Network (IN) Replacement Solution to Deliver Dynamic Services in a Data Centric World" - here.

PCC Deployments [241]: C Spire Wireless [US] Deploys Shared Data Plans and BoD with Openwave Mobility

Openwave Mobility announced that "C Spire Wireless has implemented Openwave Mobility’s Promotion and Pricing Innovation (PPI) Mobile Data Charging solution to power the company’s CHOICE and SHARED Data plan offerings, providing unmatched flexibility, control and value for customers: 

• C Spire’s CHOICE plans enable prepaid and postpaid customers to purchase passes for premium data services such as video streaming and tethering at the time of consumption via an intuitive in-line subscription experience. CHOICE passes allow customers to pay for only the services they need, when they need them, and comes with the ability to monitor usage in real time to avoid bill shock.

• C Spire is also leveraging PPI to power its SHARED Data service plans which allow customers to purchase monthly data plans with varying quotas that can be shared among multiple subscribers and devices. C Spire’s SHARED Data plans provide a much wider range of options for customers to choose from to meet their individual needs as compared with other similar offerings on the market. Subscribers of both CHOICE and SHARED Data plans benefit from the overage protections provided by PPI’s intuitive real time end-user engagement interface. Upon reaching data quota thresholds, subscribers are notified in-line and can elect to purchase a Top-Up pass with a simple click of a button.

See "C Spire Wireless Partners with Openwave Mobility to Launch CHOICE and SHARED Data Plans" - here.

ALU's Smart Plan Helps MNOs Create New Offers

Alcatel-Lucent announces ‘Smart Plan’ a solution that ".. removes the complexity and greatly shortens the time needed to create new offers by giving service providers much more control over the process and reducing reliance on third party expertise and billing systems. Smart Plan uses plugins to integrate easily into a service provider’s existing network and IT infrastructure. It then acts as an orchestration layer to manage the necessary interactions between various elements such as policy control and billing, enabling it to respond to subscribers’ requests to initiate or change services in real-time"

".. Smart Plan allows service providers to recommend products and offers based on information such as usage patterns, real-time location data and loyalty, for example offering a regular traveller a roaming tariff as they wait for a flight. For shared data plans, offers can be defined for each person in the plan. Smart Plan also allows service providers to partner with other companies to generate new business opportunities. For example, a retailer could purchase data allowances from an operator and offer them as part of its own customer loyalty program".

Andrew McDonald, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Platforms division, said: “Analysis of 4G LTE network usage shows a four-fold increase in people watching videos on their mobile devices compared to 3G. As more service providers move to LTE to deliver mobile broadband services, they need to adapt their data plans to subscriber behavior. The flexibility of Alcatel-Lucent’s Smart Plan solution allows service providers to quickly react to changing market conditions and competitors’ offers to ensure they retain the loyalty of their customers and grow their business”.

See "Alcatel-Lucent lets service providers change the way their customers discover, purchase and manage mobile broadband data" - here.

Volubill Helps Roaming Monetization

The next opportunity in mobile monetization - roaming. Following the upcoming EU regulations (see below) MNOs should work harder in keeping roamers in their network. Following Openet (here), Volubill announced its support for Roaming policy management. 

Volubill announced that its "Volubill Business System (VBS) delivers a series of functions critical for monetizing local break out (LBO) of data services that can help operators offer more compelling roaming packages to consumers, benefit from forthcoming European roaming regulations, and tap in to previously-inaccessible subscriber groups. By uniquely combining policy control and charging capabilities in a single solution, VBS allows operators to extend competitive service offerings to visiting subscribers using their existing devices via LBO with sophisticated functions like self-care portals, real-time payment processing, instant provisioning and MVNO hosting"

The Volubill Business System enables operators to profit from local break out for roamers by offering compelling data roaming packages using the following key capabilities:

• Offer visitors a range of personalized data and other sophisticated value-added services and content, packaged accordingly to usage limits or validity dates.
• Dynamic charging for roaming packages where subscribers are only charged when the package is used, and with options for dynamic auto renewal. 
• Real-time payment processing via a subscriber’s credit card, PayPal account, existing home operator account, or other methods for both pre-pay and post-pay data models. 
• Active customer usage notifications to alert subscribers before they reach their plan limits. 
• Free self-care portals for subscribers to top-up, renew or adjust their plans. 
• Host policy control and charging functions with full remote and interoperable access for MVNOs and Resellers"

See "Volubill’s Policy Control and Charging Solutions Allow Operators to Monetize Local Break Out for Roamers" - here.

Allot-Tekelec and Procera-Comptel Interoperability

MWC announcements start on the lighter issues - today it is about interoperability. My PCRF-DPI table (here) already shows the two announced today - but it seems the relations have been upgraded/expanded:

• Allot Communications and Tekelec have "completed Interoperability Testing (IOT) for the 3GPP Sd interface (see "Resource: 3GPP Traffic Detection Function (TDF)/Service Awareness Overview" - here) that offers service providers more powerful application policy control and enforcement with a more efficient network architecture.
  
  The IOT was performed to support a global Tier-1 mobile operator that plans to implement application-specific policies .. the companies are the first to announce IOT over the new Sd Diameter Interface, which communicates between the Tekelec Policy Server (PCRF) and Allot's Service Gateway Sigma E Traffic Detection Function (TDF) in order to enable detection and enforcement control over applications"
  
  See "Allot and Tekelec Complete Interoperability Testing to Expand Policy Control to Over-The-Top Applications" - here.
   
• Comptel announced that it has "completed interoperability testing with Procera Networks .. The companies' joint, real-time policy control and charging solution, which consists of Comptel Policy Control and Procera's PacketLogic Subscriber Manager and PacketLogic Real-Time Enforcement (PRE), enables communications service providers (CSP) to offer, manage and monetise advanced data services, while optimising network usage, improving the overall customer experience .. The interoperability test demonstrated how policy and charging rules managed by Comptel Policy Control could be enforced in Procera's PRE product based on the real-time inspection of network traffic".
  
  
  See "Comptel and Procera Collaborate on Real-Time Policy Control and Charging to Optimise the Customer Experience" - here.

Source: Comptel

Openet Helps Tier1 to Increase ARPU w/3rd Party Engagement

   

Openet announced its ".. selection by a tier one European mobile operator to enable its Dynamic Services initiative. Dynamic Services provides a solution for creating, presenting and charging for mobile services, an approach that is gaining traction with leading operators worldwide. By supplementing a base service plan with value added services chosen by the subscriber, operators implementing a Dynamic Services strategy have seen increased ARPU, profit margin growth and improved customer satisfaction"

"Key to a Dynamic Services strategy is enabling third party engagement with the Policy and Charging Control infrastructure. Openet’s Interaction Gateway delivers this engagement to subscribers, who can view and purchase services, and to content providers, with controlled access to Policy and Charging functions" -

See also "Openet Extends Policy Enforcement to the Device" - here.

See "Tier One Operator Selects Openet for Dynamic Services Strategy" - here.