Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
Communications service providers are deploying LTE networks, increasing the available bandwidth to their customers and finding that their existing models for revenue growth are not applicable to the expected customer usage patterns. Traditional mobile subscriber plans are focused on voice communications and generally do not have a model differentiating the types of traffic or the rate of traffic particular customers generate. The CSPs are looking for more advanced network management techniques to provide a resilient and available infrastructure to support all of their customers’ expanding needs and differentiate their services from the competition. In addition, data usage is increasing at an ever growing rate requiring enhanced network infrastructure to support the growth. The existing subscriber plans do not take into account this change in subscriber behavior.
The new LTE networks provide download speeds up to and beyond 100 megabits per second. This unprecedented wireless network availability is allowing mobile subscribers to utilize applications such as video streaming and cloud technologies. These technologies are performance-sensitive requiring low latency and high bandwidth. Customers are accessing public and private networks wirelessly with the existing and new applications that they have relied upon in fixed network environments. The CSPs are looking for ways to support these mobile applications while implementing a network infrastructure that can support all of their customers’ growing needs. It becomes critical to be able to apply fair usage policies that are able to rate-limit or even block certain types of traffic while allowing other content to pass. Other policies can prioritize certain types of traffic or even be applied based on the subscriber profile.
In North America, CSPs have traditionally offered unlimited bandwidth usage plans. While popular with consumers, these plans often have restrictions to protect the CSP’s infrastructure. Data usage caps and rate limiting of subscribers during heavy usage or in highly congested areas often trigger fair usage polices designed to manage the data usage growth. Unfortunately, this also leads to a decrease in customer satisfaction, a lower quality of experience and increased subscriber churn. Instead of policing their customers, CSPs are interested in finding ways to manage the data growth with minimal customer impact and provide added value to their customers, which in turn, can generate additional revenue.
The CSPs are looking to expand their revenue generating offerings to create business opportunities related to this explosive data growth in the LTE environment. Currently, there are value added services to optimize and compress video traffic and Web content. As the CSPs use technologies to differentiate the type of traffic on the network and identify subscribers generating the content, they are looking for creative, but legal ways to monetize this content. It may be possible, for example, to create a service that performs anti-virus and anti-spam scanning of Web and e-mail content. The CSP can adopt a solution that subscribers can opt into for a premium. This solution requires the ability to identify traffic associated with specific subscribers that opt into the service as well as identify the Web and e-mail traffic associated with the service. Once identified, this content needs to be redirected or steered to the anti-virus/anti-spam VAS to be processed.
Through the use of policy control, CSPs can create and deliver premium on-demand services that are offered and delivered in real time. A customer who is reaching their quota or trying to access a video in a congested network might have an option of a “turbo button” delivered to them. This option allows the customer to pay a premium to have their content prioritized via QoS, optimized through secondary VAS solutions, and have their bandwidth profile increased to improve their experience. In real time, the policy infrastructure needs to be able to identify individual subscribers and the type of data they are sending, offer the premium service, steer that traffic to VAS infrastructure and apply policy changes to the user’s profile.
Subscribers are using more advanced data capable devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Customers are even connecting their home computing and entertainment systems using 4G LTE wireless data access to replace their traditional fixed data services such as DSL and cable. The variety of devices and types of content being used allow for the creation of additional VAS offerings catering to these types of devices and content. Customers are using the high speed wireless data services not only to stream video content to their devices, but also to interact, utilizing real time applications that are performance sensitive such as two-way video and online gaming. CSPs can deliver premium solutions to these customers that prioritize the data traffic based on subscriber policy profile and application content. The policy infrastructure can identify the application traffic generated by these premium subscribers and apply a superior QoS and rate limiting profile to only the desired content.
Security is becoming an important aspect that CSPs are focusing on when implementing LTE networks. Part of the security model includes providing new security offerings to the customers. An application that CSPs are investigating is the ability to be proactive with application and device security for their customers. Using content detection, CSPs can identify malicious traffic and see whether a subscriber is using a compromised device or application. Once detected, the CSP is able to take appropriate action. They may use traffic steering functions to redirect all of the subscriber’s traffic to a limited access site that offers information related to the type of compromise and suggested remedies. The CSP might also decide to have a service technician contact the customer and offer to clean the customer’s equipment for a nominal service fee.
As mobile CSPs implement and enable their LTE networks, it becomes critical that they incorporate solutions to manage the data growth. More importantly, it is essential that the CSPs use intelligent and flexible traffic steering solutions to find ways to generate new revenue streams based on differentiating the data content, utilizing VAS and applying premium services as mobile consumers take advantage of the unprecedented data availability.
