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In today’s market, mobile service providers are challenged with building out their next-generation networks in a relatively flat revenue landscape where their network is being commoditized. These service providers are experiencing extraordinary, double-digit growth in terms of network traffic as consumers increasingly use their smartphones and connected devices to watch videos, browse the Internet and interact with social media applications.
In contrast, mobile service providers are only realizing single-digit growth revenue, and significant ad revenue based on content transported over mobile networks is realized by over-the-top (OTT) service providers, who are collecting revenue from customers, while treating the service provider’s network as a commodity pipe.
The growing shift toward “open” technology platforms and interoperability threatens the competitive advantage of all players along the value chain. Added to this nest of concerns looms regulatory uncertainty about decisions governments might make that could negatively impact mobile service providers’ businesses, which further increases this competitive environment.
For instance, further restrictions on privacy, security and network neutrality threaten to constrain targeted advertising, stymie efforts to build customer loyalty and erode economic return on their networks.
So how can service providers get ahead of the game?
One way is with new tools to monetize their network investments by using distributed, end-to-end intelligence. The move to a flatter, distributed network in 4G LTE paves the way for embedded intelligence to be deployed more effectively in the access network by leveraging asymmetric multicore processors with programmability and deterministic performance.
By distributing intelligence to the edge of the network, tools like line-rate deep packet inspection, programmable video acceleration and advanced traffic management control allow service providers to provide context-aware and policy-based services. These services are based on standard capabilities such as ad insertion and graphics overlays, enhanced with information about individual user behavior and history.
In order to deliver value-added services seamlessly and transparently through the network, service providers need to transform their network architecture from centralized to a distributed model where media server and communication processor capabilities are living at the edge of the network rather than existing at the core.
Advanced communications and media silicon will enable mobile equipment manufacturers to do this by delivering solutions that are uniquely positioned to help mobile service providers increase revenue, improve market differentiation and enhance customer loyalty.
A sassy new architecture
The mobile experience is about accessing content anywhere, at any time, with any device. The massive adoption and innovation of smartphones coupled with Software as a Service (SaaS) has created a new generation of consumer and business usage models.
SaaS is rapidly becoming a standard architecture for consumer and enterprise applications, delivering compelling performance, security and economics. Per ABI Research, North American business mobile data is expected to grow 41% in 2011 from 198 petabytes to 280 petabytes.
Network demands are stretched by SaaS application calls and remote data file storage, oftentimes driving steady streams of multiple megabytes and potentially gigabytes for high-definition content. SaaS clearly has an impact on mobile networks as professionals collaborate with customers, mobile workers depend on productivity tools from the cloud and as entertainment that is seamlessly delivered over mobile networks relative to wired broadband.
Also driving data growth is IT consumerization, a phenomenon that describes the growing trend of products and technologies that start out in the hands of consumers before making their way into the enterprise environment.
Key enablers such as virtualization, cloud storage and business/security compliance have produced a more effective mobile knowledge worker. The iPad has growing success in the work environment with 67% of all iPads being used away from the office for sales support and customer presentations.
Furthermore, many major Fortune 500 CIOs are adopting flexible compute platforms and business models fostering IT consumerization. Thus, with the advent of new IT business policies, media-rich applications and pervasive smart devices, service providers are faced with both challenges and opportunities.
Target service offerings that know where you are and what you want
The combination of smart devices, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, and 4G networks and cloud-enabled services has given mobile service providers a way to develop opt-in, location-based services to determine where customers are shopping, dining, being entertained or traveling to. They can then tap into the large advertising revenue which up to now has been the domain of traditional media and Internet companies like Google.
Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) capability of the phone and the power of advanced phone browsers with intuitive user interfaces, service providers can deliver personalized information about where consumers are and what they could do right now. Deep packet inspection (DPI), which provides information about the user, coupled with existing data such as demographics, preferences and other data that have been provided by the customer would allow service providers to offer more targeted advertising.
Video on the go
Since a large percentage of users will be watching video over their mobile devices in the future, advertising can also be targeted as part of tiered mobile video delivery applications service, where the premium subscription model would receive fewer ads or be totally free of them. This would be a similar model to the one used by broadcast and cable providers where advertising is used to offset content programming costs. In this business model, service providers and content owners can share the advertising revenue.
Using DPI technology to authorize services, facilitate tracking and to control files, service providers have another opportunity to provide policy-based applications for the enterprise mobile workforce. The enterprise resources can be allocated by the policy server based on the time of day, authorization privileges, availability of network resources, and any other factors that may be specified when composing the policy. With respect to files and documents, the policy server can allow or deny access, control the extent to which a client can use the document, track client use patterns, log changes or modifications, provide automatic updates, eliminate unnecessary redundancy, minimize the need to re-issue documents, and delete obsolete data.
Ad insertion can consist of video or graphics inserted in the original video by video-processing hardware, potentially also in concert with tailoring the content for a particular end device by transcoding, transizing and transrating. The inserted video can highlight the product, service or brand. Together with the GPS location of the user, where the product or service can be purchased and a mobile payment option, this form of ad insertion would be potentia
lly more welcome than traditional forms of disruptive advertising.
Content Delivery Network services
Finally, mobile service providers can enable more efficient media content distribution by offering Content Delivery Network (CDN) services to the content providers. Efficient real-time video transcoding, together with video content caching and content awareness through DPI closer to the edge of the network, are necessary for delivery of higher Quality of Experience (QoE) to the user.
The service provider’s network must support applications in a multi-screen environment with seamless transition between user sessions in the home, mobile and enterprise. Session control and identity management, coupled with application awareness for policy control in the network, would guarantee security and authentication tied to the billing and operations systems for tiered services.
Programmable wireless network components enable self-healing, self- optimization and self-configuration in 4G and LTE mobile networks. In Self Organizing Networks (SON) problems with quality are detected, the root cause is identified and remedial action is taken automatically, speeding problem resolution.
Media processing
In today’s networks, media processing occurs in media servers and media gateways that reside in the central part of the network. The trend is to move the media-processing function closer to the user and to use local video-caching technology to enable more efficient video transmission and avoid network congestion.
Applications for media processing consists of transcoding, transrating and transizing video streams for delivery to multiple screens and inserting video or graphics overlays to the original video stream for ad insertion. Media processors that are optimized to support these advanced media-processing capabilities are required to enable mobile broadband video services. High-performance and low-power media processors can be used to integrate the media-processing function directly into the media gateway, which would eliminate the need for a separate media server. Solid-state storage can be used to provide content and video caching in the media server or gateway. This would enable CDN services that would provide extremely high throughput at lower power consumption when compared to traditional hard disk drives.
Cost-effective and low-power technologies can be deployed deeper into the access network to perform DPI, media processing and content caching closer to the users in access nodes such as wireless base stations. This reduces the congestion in the access network and improves the quality of the user experience by reducing latency for server content such as video.
Tareq Bustam is multicore product line director; Steve Vandri is media processor product line director; and Kai-Uwe Killiches is senior product manager, all from the LSI Networking Components Division.LSI has a portfolio of advanced silicon multicore solutions that cost-effectively distribute intelligence in the network allowing service providers to offer context and policy-based services that enable new revenue-generating applications.
