Policy VanillaPlus Magazine June July 2013

7/27/2019 Policy VanillaPlus Magazine June July 2013

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CONTENTS

18 LEAD INTERVIEW

David Sharpley, vice president and general manager of the DataExperience Business Unit at Amdocs, explains that, as CSPs putgreater emphasis on network virtualisation, policy has an even

stronger role to play

20 POLICY FOR CSPS ANALYST REPORT

Our specially-commissioned analyst report, authored by KarlWhitelock, director of global OSS strategy, and Troy Morley, OSSBSS strategy analyst, at Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan

33 TALKING HEADS: INTEGRATED POLICY, CHARGING AND ANALYTICS

UNLOCK CSP OPPORTUNITIES

John Aalbers, the chief executive of Volubill, says that everything is inplace for CSPs to maximise the benefits of bringing policy, chargingand analytics together

36 NETWORK-FOCUSED POLICY

Nick Booth says policy in the network is mostly about controlling costs

38 EXPERT OPINION

Michelle Nowak explains why policy is a gateway, not a gate

40 INTERVIEW

Jaco Fourie says policy plus charging adds up to a win-win situation

42 EXPERT OPINION

Martin Morgan describes how policy is being used to enable mobileproduct differentiation

44 POLICY-ENABLED MODELS

George Malim says policy can help CSPs learn to get along with OTTs

46 EXPERT OPINION

Dr Christian Gayda explores the return on investment potential ofpolicy deployments

48 POLICY FOR NEW SERVICES

Jonny Evans debates whether policy can be all things to all CSPs

50 EXPERT OPINION

Alice Bartram says effective policy management supports CSPsneeds for agility and flexibility

53 CASE STUDY: VOX TELECOM

Inside Vox Telecoms deployment of a policy-based offer to gamers

54 EXPERT OPINION

Edoardo Rizzi says policy must have real-time context awareness

VanillaPlus Insight June/July 2013

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18

36

54

LEAD INTERVIEW

David Sharpley

46RETURN ONINVESTMENT

NETWORK-FOCUSED POLICY

CONTEXT-AWARE

POLICY


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L E A D I N T E R V I E W

David Sharpley is vice president and general manager of the Data

Experience Business Unit at Amdocs. Here he explains that, as CSPs put

greater focus on their network virtualisation projects, policy has an even

stronger role to play in monetisation efforts. Critically, as the value chain

diversifies, bringing in third parties and over the top providers, the role of

policy becomes one of enabling and assuring service differentiation.

anillaPlus: Policy continues to be at the forefront of discussions

with CSPs, what is it that is making policy strategically relevant in

2013 and beyond?

David Sharpley: Policy control solutions have taken centre stage inmobile networks and are being viewed as not just a solution for

controlling network traffic but increasingly as a vehicle for driving datamonetisation. So what is making policy strategic in 2013 and beyond?

Service providers today are truly competing on data plans whichare critical to create customer loyalty, offer differentiated services

and reduce customer churn. The creativity and innovationprovided by policy use cases are at the core of these data

plans, however, this is just the beginning. There are reallyten technology game changers that we believe are

making policy control strategic for service providers in2013 and beyond.

One of the game changers is data plan innovationwhich is at the forefront of service providers plans.With 80% of CSPs planning to offer bolt-onservices and 60% planning to offer zero-ratingoptions to deliver any of these services, policy is akey requirement and its importance will grow asthe sophistication of data services continues togrow. The integration of policy control solutionswith online charging, using a common productcatalogue provides the maximum flexibility for dataplan innovation and enables the configuration ofuse cases which can be leveraged across policy,online charging and ultimately the BSS, enabling

rapid time-to-market for the CSP.

With daily data consumption over Wi-Fi being four timesthat of cellular, CSPs are evaluating their Wi-Fi strategies.

As such it is one of the top ten technology game changers

Pervasive, virtualisedpolicy creates endlessservice differentiation

opportunities for CSPs

David Sharpley,

vice president and

general manager of

the Data Experience

Business Unit at

Amdocs

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whether theyre building out their own capabilities orpartnering, CSPs know that being able to offload

mobile traffic and deliver service differentiation will bekey to a successful Wi-Fi deployment. Policy control iscritical in delivering intelligent offload as well as servicedifferentiation for operators in Wi-Fi.

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) is another hottopic for CSPs today looking at how they can achievebetter performance and scalability at a lower cost. Alogical place to start their virtualisation strategies iswith the network control plane. Virtualising policycontrol not only enables reduced capex and opex, butit enables service velocity and support for newbusiness models including enterprise, M2M and publicsafety. This makes NFV another one of the top tengame changers.

Open applications are another technology gamechanger that CSPs are adapting to address. Withalmost one million applications in Apples App Store aswell as Googles Play Store, its clear that customerswant access to applications and service providersneed a strategy to work with over the top (OTT)players. Policy can help service providers to monetiseOTT through advanced application detection, real-timeapplication metering, dynamic preferential QoS on aper-application basis, and notification options forcustomer upsell.

Check out the rest of the Top Ten Policy

Game Changers athttp://www.powerofpolicy.com/top10gamechangers.

VP: Were seeing CSPs start to talk about the

benefits they get from integrating policy with deep

packet inspection (DPI) and optimisation

platforms. These are not new technologies, so

whats new in terms of the value operators are

deriving from this integration?

DS: DPI and optimisation are indeed not newtechnologies but the increased importance we areseeing comes from the combined value thatintegrating DPI and optimisation platforms with policycontrol systems offers CSPs. And specifically, how

this integration can enable some of the top ten policygame changers we just discussed.

This is best illustrated through a policy use caseexample of toll-free content or free shipping thatdemonstrates the value of policy and DPI integration.Toll-free content is a term used to describe a use casewhereby CSPs are able to promote the usage of keyapplications with sponsored access that is funded bycontent partners. A recent example of this was ESPNsannouncement that it is looking at sponsoring contentfor mobile devices in the US market.

The benefits of this use case for the CSP are that itdrives a new revenue stream with preferred OTTapplication partners, enables tagging and metering ofper-app traffic, and provides for preferential QoS forfeatured services. From a subscriber perspective theexperience is very positive, as they have the ability totry new applications with no burden on their existing

plan. In addition, it improves customer loyalty for theCSP by providing free options to their subscribers.

So how does this work? Well, if you consider a realexample a subscriber has a pay-as-you-go plan withunlimited access based on the current balance on herplan. Her service provider can offer her, via SMS, apromotion whereby for one week she will haveunlimited access to a music streaming site. She optsin and for the duration of that week, she has access tothe site, and any music streaming content is notcounted against her pay-as-you-go plan.

This use case and many others like it is supportedby a combination of policy (PCRF) and DPI capabilities.PCRF provides real-time application metering anddrives the appropriate subscriber experience based on

the content such as the QoS level. PCRF alsoprovides the ability to zero-rate specific applicationaccess and generate the appropriate accountingrecords based on usage.

DPI provides the traffic detection and policyenforcement capabilities to offer the sponsored content.

And the unique value for the operator? Well, thecombination of policy and DPI in this use case enable theoperator to drive new data usage, generate new revenuestreams, improve customer loyalty and increase ARPU.

VP: This discussion of monetisation with respect to

policy is becoming commonplace. Is this nowbecoming the key driver for policy deployments?

DS: Monetisation is absolutely becoming the key driverfor policy deployments. As I mentioned earlier, policyhas moved beyond the early deployments of justperforming traffic control. Policys role in datamonetisation is really to drive some of the unique usecases that I profiled earlier. Integration with onlinecharging, DPI and optimisation capabilities furtherenhance the policy controllers ability to support datamonetisation for the operator. Consider the set of usecases profiled in Figure 1 these are only a selectionof the types of monetisation use cases that policy cansupport.

Figure 1

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VP: Many operators are using this time to

introduce Policy 2.0 into their networks a so-

called evolution from their early policy

deployments. Are monetisation strategies driving

this wave of replacement activities?

DS: We do see a few key drivers for CSPs to replaceor refresh their legacy policy solutions and datamonetisation is definitely one of the key drivers. CSPsneed increased flexibility that they dont get with theirfirst generation deployments. They also need tomanage the cost and overall time to market for anynew applications, services or use-cases they aredeploying.

The early deployments of policy were characterised byvery limited use case support focused on fair usage.At the time of these deployments, CSPs werent

concerned about the platforms flexibility to supportnew use cases rapidly and this was frequently missing.As the networks and standards have evolved, CSPshave now recognised the crucial link between policyand charging and the importance of this integrationin enabling the range of data monetisation use casesthat are planned.

And with time-to-market concerns for CSPs wantingto stay competitive and meet their customers needs,a new generation of policy control solutions wasneeded. The flexibility to support literally hundreds ofuse cases that marketing envisages is certainly a majordriver.

This really defines what Policy 2.0 is about puttingpolicy into that strategic position as a bridge betweennetwork, IT and marketing. The ability to deploy apolicy control solution that not only addresses the

traffic concerns and network management that theCSPs network team requires, but also supports thebroadest set of use cases that marketing wants iscritical.

VP: Where does virtualisation fit into this? With

Network Functions Virtualisation being a hot topic

for CSPs is this relevant for policy?

DS: NFV is certainly relevant for policy control and itmade our top ten technology game changers. We seeCSPs putting a lot of focus on their virtualisationstrategies and this is largely driven by the need tolower the cost of operations, scale their networks

elastically, and also to increase service velocity.

NFV covers the data plane and the control planecomponents of the network, but we see serviceproviders focused on virtualising the control plane as astarting point. This includes policy control, subscriberdatabases and IMS applications.

And there are a number of benefits that virtualisedpolicy control can deliver to the CSP beyond the costsavings. These are shown in Figure 2.

VP: What does the future hold for policy control?

What will deployments in 2014 and beyond look

like?

DS: The future of policy will certainly be in a moresignificant role in the network control plane integratedinto not just the network gateways, but DPI,optimisation and analytics platforms, as well as OSS,BSS and charging. The policy control platforms of thefuture will support the broadest set of use cases usecases that cover network control, basic QoS, servicedifferentiation, multi-access, partner monetisation andpremium experiences. These use cases will besupported in not just the mobile network, but acrossmultiple access technologies. As policy becomespervasive, we can see policy extending to the device,as an enforcement point, and policies and services

becoming much more personalised for subscribers.With a fully virtualised policy control solution, thepossibilities for service differentiation are endless andservice providers will move in this direction certainly in2014 and beyond.

L E A D I N T E R V I E W

We do see a few key

drivers for CSPs to

replace or refresh their

legacy policy solutions

and, data monetisation

is definitely one of the

key drivers

Figure 2


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martphones and tablets enable and promote always on and always

available connectivity to an array of advanced data-intensive services

and applications heavily dependent on a fast internet connections.

Such services apply not just to consumers, but also to small business and

enterprise customers, for generally different reasons

Management of the mobile broadband connectionneeded by these devices can create either a verypositive or a less than desirable customerexperience. For example, in conditions wheretraffic-shaping controls designed to primarilyoptimise network performance with minimal or nocustomer focus are used, high-value customerswith high-bandwidth pricing plans are often singledout. When this occurs, major customerdisappointment results from a severely curtailednetwork connection. On the other hand, acustomer-centric policy control strategy thatengages with the customer at the right time and forreasons that will entice them to try new serviceoffers, if properly administered, accomplishes theneeded levels of network attention, but withbusiness results that are much more aligned withcustomer expectations.

Additional considerations include the view of howcustomer services are actually used and the level of

experience customers receive each time theyengage with their smartphone or tablet. All of thesefactors contribute to the overall customerexperience. Some aim more directly at thecustomer with flexible pricing plans while othersrun in the background to help identify problems and

improve service or network quality, all are necessaryingredients for maintaining a positive customerexperience.

While the number of mobile consumers, globally,exceeds business customers by a significantnumber, on average, the amount of spend percorporate customer is much greater than withconsumers. They typically create more data, andtherefore spend more money. It is no surprise thatthey demand the most flexibility in how data isconsumed, how they pay, and in how they usemobile services to combine with their products andservices for improving the experience of theircustomers. Addressing these demands, and similarneeds from consumers, implies the use ofadvanced policy management and rating andcharging tools, collectively working in real-time toprovide customer-defined control, adequatecustomer notifications, and pricing flexibly.

Policy management is the major enabler ofcustomer usage transparency. But, for manyorganisations to implement a customer-centric,policy-enabled pricing strategy, it means significantchange in both business systems and internalprocesses to keep the network operationally sound,

Introduction

SKarl Whitelock,

director of Global OSS

BSS Strategy at

Stratecast | Frost &

Sullivan

Troy Morley,OSS BSS Strategy

analyst at Stratecast

| Frost & Sullivan


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while remaining focused on the customer experience. Withoutnotifications or alerts, all types of customers with metered ortiered-pricing plans can easily accumulate massive overagecharges, thereby creating bill shock. Bill shock not onlynegatively affects the customer experience, but often results infinancial write-offs for the communications service provider (CSP).

Bill shock is caused by a delay between an event that is actuallyhappening and visibility into that event. More often than not, billshock stems from less than optimal tools or lack of customer-friendly business practices to provide the right level of insightand accountability. Again, this is a key reason to providetransparency whenever pricing plans with usage thresholds areinvolved. To improve the customer experience by combating billshock, policy management gives the network operator and, undercertain conditions, individual customers, a way to customisehow a pricing package is consumed or a service is accessed.

The network traffic data explosion continuesThe classic relationship between CSP revenue, cost of networkupgrades, and data volume growth reveals a major gapbetween revenue collection from traditional voice, text, and datatraffic, compared with the volume of usage data generated andthe cost of adding network capacity. This gap is expanding,especially between revenue collection and cost of new networkadditions. Addressing this challenge has become a major issuefor all CSPs globally, as operating a network is not a philanthropicoption; contrary to what most customers would like to believe.

First generation policy implementations what Stratecast andmany in the industry refer to as Policy 1.0 focus heavily onoptimising the network, mostly without customer involvement.

Network optimisation is still important, as data volumesincrease from customer usage of mobile devices includinglaptops, tablets, smartphones, and purpose-built industrydevices for example, package delivery logistics tracking, inaddition to added data carrying capacity from advances innetwork technologies. A new approach to policy managementthat takes note of the overall customer experience is essential.Customers cannot or will not pay for network access muchbeyond their current payment thresholds, and thus the gapbetween collected revenue and network costs widens. This hasdriven the realization that mobile network operators mustimplement new ways to generate revenue. For most, thismeans offering differentiated pricing plans and policies to betterreflect on the value of:

Service quality Innovative services well beyond a simple mobile broadband

connection Applications that CSPs can bring to market with high

customer appeal

While these points should not be new to anyone, a review ofwhat customers are doing now, and the level of data usage thatis yet to come, should help to provide better understanding intowhy the need for data control and service offering differentiationis approaching critical mass. The expanding use of advanceddevices further suggests that CSPs need to provide more

appealing solutions that address end-to-end customer needs not just the sale of a broadband connection. It is imperative thatsuch a change in strategy take place to make up for thedeclining level of revenue generated from both voice and textmessaging services, in all global regions.

Policy 2.0 means focus on the customer

experience, not just the networkPolicy 1.0 has its place. It is designed to: Maintain security to block out malicious activities Implement prescriptive traffic shaping Identify content usage from the customer through deep

packet inspection (DPI) Enforce rules to keep the network strong and to protect itfrom abuses such as overuse of flat rate data plans

In this environment, network optimisation is the overall goal; butit has a dark side, mostly because Policy 1.0 approachesinvolve little, if any, customer interaction. Without customer buy-in, this approach has serious consequences. Most importantly,with growing data volumes from the enticement of new mobileuser devices, and industries placing communicationstechnology into the goods and services they provide, customerchoice and interaction, not just network-focused control,becomes an essential part of maintaining a positive customerexperience. This is where second-generation policy

management now known as customer-centric policymanagement or Policy 2.0 plays a vital role.

Data service offerings are generally delivered to customersaround three parameters: (1) type of device, (2) speed ofnetwork connection, and (3) volume of data uploaded ordownloaded. Combined with a package of voice minutes andtext messages, CSPs are highly focused on selling data serviceofferings for all smartphones and tablets, since these plansgenerate much higher average revenue per user (ARPU) thanplans for voice and text only. For example, Verizon Wireless andAT&T updated their pricing plan strategies more than 12 monthsago, with offers for advanced user devices that provide unlimitedvoice minutes and text messages within a tiered data plan

structure. Connectivity is offered at whatever upload or downloadspeed the network will bear, according to location and networktraffic load. These plans allow up to ten user devices tocollectively share the data allotment within a subscribed plan.


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Shared device data plans, along with many other types ofplans, are enabled though a policy management and real-timerating solution. As a customer consumes the monthly tiered-price plan, a text notification can be sent when a set level ofconsumption is reached for example, 50% of plan limit, as away to increase awareness in hope of curtailing inadvertentusage overages. In the case of Verizon Wireless and AT&T,customers sign up for a data plan based on a gigabyteallotment, priced in unit increments up to 10 gigabytes permonth. In addition, these plans carry a per device fee for eachdevice associated with the plan. To power these usage-baseddata plans, policy solutions that monitor customer usage toallocated levels, and then provide notifications multiple timesbefore a threshold is reached, are now a necessity. In addition,a real-time charging system is required to calculate the level ofconsumption per device, and in the aggregate, along with ameans to block further usage until the customer makes adecision.

While the Policy Charging and Control (PCC) functions for themobile industry continue to gain attention, as highlightedextensively the past several months in several industrypublications, turning the hype into reality is always a lesson in

practicality. Shown in Figure 1, the PCC consists of three majorfunctions, as defined by the 3GPP standards:

Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) The PCRF supports the definition of policy rules, andmakes policy decisions based on those rules. It directs theenforcement of actions by the Policy and ChargingEnforcement Function (PCEF), and interfaces with the ratingand charging engine. In addition, the Application Function(AF) defines the indistinguishable control plane function thatis companioned with the data plane function within all IPnetworks. The AF is at the core of any Policy 2.0 strategy,and associates with the PCRF exclusively, to bring to lightdirect customer interaction through policy-defined pricing

plan options.

Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) The PCEF provides policy enforcement in the network,

based on actions defined by the PCRF. The PCEF alsointeracts directly with the rating & charging engine withinvarious situations.

Online and Off-line Charging Functions (OCS and OFCS) These billing functions can be supported by a convergentrating & charging engine, or by separate online and off-linesystems. The purpose of the OCS and OFCS is to makesure all services are properly assigned a payment value,regardless of how the customer bill is ultimately paid.

Stratecast believes that the days of pure network focusedpolicy Policy 1.0 have passed. While increasing datavolumes require policy to keep networks optimised, the focusnow must be on the experience of the customer. Providing thecustomer with consistent and rapid access is required, but isno longer a differentiator. The quality of the customersexperience, and the increasing desire for personalisation ofservice offers now mandate an evolution in policy strategy second generation policy or Policy 2.0.

Customer experience use cases in service today

Policy has far reaching benefits to both customers and serviceproviders, with a build toward service personalisation. Thepractical realities of policy management are often described byuse cases essentially, an example of one way of solving aproblem or offering a service. Use case groups, as shown inFigure 2, help to demonstrate how Policy 2.0 pushes businessstrategy closer to the level of specific service offers, tailored tovery small customer groups, or even individuals. Whencustomers accept this level of personalisation, customerstickiness is almost guaranteed.

Achieving a level of customer service personalisation, forattracting new customers and keeping existing ones, must be astrategic business goal for CSPs today. Stratecast believes this

is critical since mobile saturation levels in many regions of theworld are now beyond 100%. The customer-centric use ofpolicy management becomes the ultimate opportunity windowin keeping customer attention.

Source

:Stratecast

Figure 1: Policy-Enabled Convergent Charging (Policy 2.0)


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Figure 2: Second generation policy

the wave of personalisation

The following use cases are in practice today by multiple CSPs they are not just illustrative examples of what could be donewith the right policy management tools. These use casesillustrate ways in which policy allows operators to offerinnovative services and pricing plans personalised serviceofferings to fit the needs of targeted customer groups. They are:

Usage-based service offerings Use cases that arestrictly usage based tend not to be designed with the customerin mind, but are geared to allow network usage to be controlledand monetised. While Stratecast views this set of service offersas holdovers from Policy 1.0, they are still the most commontype of use cases deployed, and form the foundation of morecustomer-centric use cases to follow. Examples of usage-

based offerings are:- Straight usage quotas; such as 1 Gb of data per month,

per device; no data sharing- Tethering using a mobile device to act as a Wi-Fi

hotspot to allow internet access for other devices; forexample to allow (or disallow) iPhone tethering, whichcan be an add-on function to a straight usage plan

- Quotas with QoS guarantees; for example, 1 Gb of dataper month, with a guarantee of at least two Mb persecond (Mbps) data throughput speed

- Application Restrictions; such as allowing any type ofnetwork traffic, from email to web surfing; but notallowing video traffic uploads or downloads unless thecustomer agrees to pay a premium, which can be time-based and combined with other options

- Roaming Based; for example, 500 Mb per day whenroaming outside the customers home network for aprepaid amount

Stratecast believes that usage-based service offerings are trulylimitations to the customer experience, not invitations to have agood or great experience. They help the CSP limit data trafficon the network and better monetise network usage; but thisapproach eventually becomes a losing proposition. Customersreally want to pay to use a service, not to be discouraged from

it. To have quotas based on a measurement, which many havedifficulty quantifying, leads to fear of using the service, andopens the door for customers to find alternatives, such as freeWi-Fi.

First step forward service offerings To remove the fearof usage-based quotas, the first step comes with informing thesubscriber of his or her usage. Examples of this may come inthe form of an app that tracks customer usage as an eventcompletes, or as real-time notifications when the customerreaches a usage threshold notifications that are mandated inmany geographical regions by bill shock regulation. Adding theability to know current data consumption, and the ability tochange their quota as usage levels reach pre-defined limits set

by customers on device gives them a sense of control overtheir experience. This, in turn, relieves fear and built-up distrustof their CSP.

Group and shared plan service offerings Plans sharedamong multiple users and devices are not new, with previousiterations allowing free or reduced cost calls between groupmembers for example, friends and family plans based onvoice usage minutes, or allowing a company to share minutesbetween employees covered by a corporate account. Whatmakes these use cases different today, other than sharing dataversus minutes, is that control can now be designated, with theparent or the corporate administrator defining policy on howsharing will take place. This may mean, for instance, that certain

members of a family plan account could be limited in theamount of data they can consume at any one time and in theaggregate; the applications they may use; or the time-of-daythey can send a text. The administrator of this type of plan,usually a parent, will have fewer restrictions, and the power tochange usage parameters as often as desired. Similarconditional uses could also be applied by a corporate ITadministrator for business accounts.

Loyalty and promotional service offerings Receivingawards for customer loyalty promotes customer longevity. Thisapproach works whether the customer is at the grocery store, afrequent airline traveler, or a mobile data customer. This may beused to encourage network data usage at certain low usagetimes for the network a happy hour where unlimited, freeusage is offered as a reward, or just to engender customerloyalty for a select number of premium customers, to reducethe probability of customer churn. Promotions can be used to

Source:Stratecast


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introduce new services, either specifically targeted or broadlybased.

Coupled with purpose-built analytics, advanced loyalty serviceoffers to select customers could include packages based ondevice type, time-of-day, network location, type of content

consumed and degree of loyalty status. In this case, a packageof, say, HD movie downloads could be provided for a set price,with no data usage measure against an already subscribeddata plan.

Business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) serviceofferings CSPs partner with other companies to provideconsumer services. These types of use cases and the types ofpartners are diverse; each with different needs and objectives,but the common objective is to offer a service that leads tocustomer satisfaction.

These partners are often application and content providers thatdeliver Over the Top (OTT) services. Certain OTT services may

be greatly enhanced by increased QoS or network-based,customer-specific detail made possible by a CSP. This situationbenefits both providers; and, ultimately, delivers the customeran improved QoE. An example would be a movie streamingcompany partnering with a CSP; the CSP provides connectivityat a specified quality and priority; the streaming companyprovides the content and pays the CSP for this enhanced QoS;the consumer receives the best QoE in movie viewing. A goodexperience often creates another near-term OTT salesopportunity, and the cycle repeats. Additional B2B2C examplesinclude:

- Device or service including the data connection costswith the hardware The most well-known deployedexample within this category is with certain Kindle

devices from Amazon that include subsidised mobileconnectivity provided by AT&T wireless. Others involveservices, such as a movie or other content, that arepurchased, but do not count against data quotas; withthe providing content supplier paying for the dataconsumed or QoS adjustments needed.

- Carrier-based mobile payments The customerpurchases an app or commercial retail item from a third-party store, and it is billed via the CSP account. TheCSP settles with third-party provider in a B2B manner,while collecting for the retail transaction from the end-user customer. This can be done regardless of paymentmethod prepaid or postpaid.

Another set of partnerships focuses on entirely differentindustries, and often involves machine-to-machine (M2M)communications. Recent developments in the automobileinsurance industry are a clear use case on how enterprise

business needs involving M2M are dramatically evolving.Insurance has typically been sold as a flat rate policy for a fixedperiod, based on the drivers insurability statistics, paymentpreferences, and type of vehicle involved; for example, howmany tickets, age group, location of where the automobile isgaraged, distances regularly traveled, and size of premium

deductible.

Metered driving management not the same as pay-as-you-goinsurance is now employed by several insurance companiesinvolves attaching a monitoring device to the vehicle by theowner for an immediate rate discount. The device measureshow fast the car is driven, how it accelerates, decelerates andbacks up, if it makes abrupt course changes, how far it isdriven and at what time of day. Telemetry sent from theautomobile to the insurance carrier is then used, often in nearreal-time, to show how policy premium rates are affected, withsuggestions to customers via a smartphone app or throughweb access on how to improve driving behavior to improverates. Three major North American insurance carriers currently

use metered driving management, with at least one companycollecting data at regular time intervals via a wirelessconnection. The goal of this service is to improve driverbehavior, which ultimately reduces insurability risk for theinsurance company.

Other examples of cross-industry partnerships are almostlimitless, but include:

- Healthcare In-home monitoring of implanted devices orchronic conditions relative to a variety of measurementparameters such as: heart rate, pulse, glucose levels,oxygen concentration in the blood, rate and depth ofbreathing, brain waves, activity levels, and many more.

- Consumer and home Remote monitoring and control

of lighting, heating and cooling, security systems, andconnection and control of appliances.

- Transport Monitoring of location and telemetry datafor fleet vehicles

Personalisation-based service offerings The PCCarchitecture allows CSPs to obtain detailed information abouthow current services are consumed, at the aggregate customerbase level down to the individual. Most personalised serviceoffers today are due to this level of intelligence, but arereflections of a trend identified in the usage patterns in thecurrent set of a CSPs customer base.

For example, the CSP may recognise that 25% of subscribersare moderate to heavy users of Facebook on their mobiledevices, and design a service to appeal to that group apackage that zero rates all Facebook traffic, for instance. Whiledesigning a service that appeals to potentially millions of people


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does not sound too personal, technological advances tied withcost reductions in the use of those advances continue to allowthe targeting of smaller and smaller customer groupsheadingtoward true customer-level personalisation. This fact, combinedwith the ability to mix and match policy use cases, allowofferings to appear more personal.

Imagine a combination of use cases that target users ofmultiple applications who share other distinguishingcharacteristics, and the target audience of the service reducesto 10%, 5% or 1% of users who, when presented with such aservice, may truly believe that the CSP knows them and isoffering a service designed just for them. This degree of focus isenhanced further by tying in social media usage. While still notat the level of full implementation and adoption, such servicesare now in the realm of potential deployment in North America,Europe, and in some locations of Asia Pacific.

Personalised use cases, by their nature, are dependent on thewants and needs of a specific customer base. There is no one-

size-fits-all. Specific examples include:

- Targeted applications These include the social mediaexample above

- Device-specific Services aimed at specific capabilitiesof a particular end-user device, such as a SamsungGalaxy S IV or Apple iOS7 device

- Parental control Control for parents to not onlyspecify how much data is consumed by a member oftheir family share plan, but what data is allowed restricting access to applications and/or content, andwhen it is allowed to be consumed not during schoolhours or after bedtime.

- Employee control Similar to parental control use

cases, with a slightly different focus- Priority service Offer priority service high QoS

focused on specific customer usage such as gaming,watching a live sporting event, or video calls.

- Bring your own device (BYOD) A BYOD policypermits employees to use personal mobile devices in theworkplace; but the practice raises security and billingquestions that CSPs can help employers solve withBYOD policy management

Policy has far reaching benefits to both customers and serviceproviders, with a build toward service personalisation. The useof Policy 2.0, described by each of the different use casecategories just discussed, pushes business strategy closer tothe level of very small groups or even individual customers.When this occurs, customer stickiness is almost guaranteed.This is a goal that many CSPs must reach for now, becauseobtaining a new customer in many regions of the world means

stealing one from a competitor. Stratecast believes that thecustomer-centric use of policy management becomes theultimate opportunity window for CSPs to continue to play a keyrole in the land grab for customer attention.

What is the policy management evolution pathway?Policy came about to solve a problem keep mobile networksoptimised in the face of dramatic increases in data traffic. It hasevolved to enable capabilities that were never envisioned in thefirst designs of the 3GPP PCC architecture. The PCCarchitecture itself and related architectures of networks outsideof mobile continues to evolve as new interfaces are designed tosimplify communication between entities, or as newfunctionality comes to light that allows new service offers to beestablished. So, where is policy management going next?

One of the next steps in the evolution of policy management isthe expansion of policy beyond the traditional boundaries of theCSP network in particular, the growing trend of offering policyenforcement on subscriber devices. Stratecast identified anumber of suppliers CENTRI Technologies, GoS Networksand Openet that currently offer this capability; and has talkedwith others that plan on offering similar solutions in the nearfuture.

The idea of policy enforcement on subscriber devices cameabout initially to solve a problem: namely, the issues caused bychatty apps. When an application is opened on a smartphoneor tablet, it communicates with the internet via the CSPnetwork. When another application is opened, the firstapplication can continue to run in the background, and may stilluse network bandwidth, even though the user may not know it

is open. In fact, there may be many applications consumingbandwidth, and potentially degrading the overall customerexperience. For example, social media and instant messageapps, and even some popular ad-supported games areparticularly chatty.

By providing policy enforcement on the subscriber device, theCSP realizes a number of important benefits, in addition tocontrolling wasted bandwidth generated by such apps. On-device policy enforcement identifies, shapes, and prioritisesnetwork traffic at its source. It also offers deeper visibility intouser traffic. This visibility provides feedback to allow CSPs tomore intelligently control user traffic and implement moreeffective policy, allowing direct measurement and control of

QoS and QoE. The solution also helps to identify new revenueopportunities via specifically targeted services.

While the benefits to the CSP community seem clear, thecustomer benefits are not as obvious. For end users, policy


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enforcement on their device ensures that available bandwidth isutilised efficiently and to the maximum capacity increasingboth their QoS and their QoE. In addition, suppliers of this typeof policy enforcement technology report battery life increases ofas much as 50% on subscriber devices, by more effectivelymanaging these overly communicative apps.

By providing policy enforcement capabilities essentially PCEF-on-device in this manner, both CSP and subscriber benefit;but it does raise privacy concerns that must be addressed upfront. For this new direction in policy to succeed and becomeprevalent in the marketplace, Stratecast believes thatconsumers must be informed of the benefits this technologycan bring them; and shown how such a solution will activelyguard their privacy in the process. Otherwise, visions of BigBrother will doom this technological breakthrough before it getsoff the ground.

Personalisation and customer experience are keyThe multitude of new industry use cases involving policy, whichhas come about in the Policy 2.0 era, has a common theme:personalisation. As technology advances, it becomes moreimportant to track transactions, or the use of particular services,at a finer level. Initially, the goals of this finer level of trackingmay have been revenue assurance or optimisation of networks;but it provides an important side benefit intelligence aboutwhat the customer is doing on the network and intelligenceabout the QoS and QoE the customer is experiencing.

The first step in using this intelligence occurs at the group level.Through Policy 2.0 solutions, a CSP will realise that a portion ofits subscribers like to engage in some activityand that portion

could be 20%, 10% or even 1% of the customer base within agiven region of its total service area. The CSP could design aservice or pricing plan that targets that subset of subscribers.This personalisation of service and price plan offerings is nowhappening with smaller and smaller customer subsets, as thecost of providing more narrowly focused service and price planofferings continues to decrease.

The personalisation of communication services takes muchfrom the playbook on personalisation of computing services.The smartphone revolution happened not because a phonecould run programs designed to be everything for everybody,but because of apps targeted applications that provide aparticular function to a relatively small set of people who wanted

that function. Sure, there are apps that appeal to a broader setof people, and may be used by millions, but there are also appsthat appeal to only a few, but engender great loyalty amongstthose few.

Stratecast believes that the personalisation of service offeringsand price plans will continue, enabled by advances incomputing power, the ability to track and operate oninformation at finer and finer levels, and the continued reductionin cost of these advances. The logical end point of morepersonalization is individualization a service or price plan

offering for a subset of one enabled by the evolution of policymanagement.

Customer experience also involves

an assurance requirementAnother aspect of customer experience involves the measure ofhow well each data connection, voice call or text message isdelivered by the network. From a customers perspective, thenetwork connection for voice or broadband, delivered via fixed-line or mobile technologies, draws attention only when networkaccess isnt available, network-based services dont work, orinteractive content behaves differently than expected.

Customers just assume their services work the first time, everytime and at any location, regardless of use. When services donot work as expected, due to any number of factors, butespecially from repeated poor network quality or slow mobiledata responsiveness, customers seek alternatives where theyperceive service quality to be better.

Much of this article has been centred on the use of policymanagement to provide customers a better experience when itcomes to service usage control and pricing plans. However,monitoring that experience for service quality purposes is justas important. While a deeper discussion of this concept, knownas customer service assurance (CSA), is warranted, it is out ofscope of this article, except to mention that policy plays a role

in this environment as well. Companies such as AccantoSystems, Anritsu, JDSU, Polystar, Tektronix, Trendium, andothers are as vital to assuring the customer experience, asmajor policy suppliers focused on network control and billingprocesses are to enabling customer-centric services.

The last wordPolicy management has long been an effective tool for serviceproviders to control traffic traversing their networks. Commonlyknown as Policy 1.0, network optimisation and managementhas been successfully carried out in the past, with a focus onpreserving network integrity at any price. Unfortunately, thisstrategy has caused problems with heavy network users thatwere doing, then, what customers still do today: using networkdevices mobile or fixed line to conduct their everydaybusiness. This could involve file downloads via e-mail in a workenvironment, exchanges with colleagues when viewing a user-


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generated video, engaging with apps for both businessproductivity and entertainment, or downloading a studio-produced video.

Today, we are in the age of personalisation. As this reportpoints out, personalised pricing plans and service options are

what customers are quickly growing accustomed to throughtheir experience with other industries. This is most evident withthe online ordering processes, whether from a mobile device orfixed connection. With personalisation, customers now expectmore, and are willing to pay more where they perceive highvalue. Policy management plays a major role in makingpersonalised service offers work. It is why the focus aroundcustomers and customer usage behavior is attracting so muchattention in the industry today.

Some CSPs are realising the power that a Policy 2.0 businessstrategy can bring. Many categories of real-life use cases havebeen discussed in this report. The most promising, for a greatlyimproved customer experience, comes from service offers

where customers are given control to set limits, and providedwith insight concerning usage consumption and data planlimits. This is why policy management is so inextricably linkedwith billing.

As technologies within the network, with customer devices, andwith system processing capacity evolve, movement to terms ofusage that customers can understand are a natural evolution.The day is quickly coming when, instead of a data gigabyteplan, customers will buy into service offers that provide a setnumber of video downloads, as long as they are done from acertain part of the network, at a particular time of day, and witha certain type of device. These would be offers to only certaincustomers that have proven loyalty in the same way other

industries have measured loyalty such as financial services,retailing, and the airline sector.

Policy 2.0 is real, and customers are serious about the types ofservices enabled through a Policy 2.0 business strategy. Thechallenge is in how significantly CSPs will harness thenecessary tools, and modify their business processes toaccommodate this intensified focus on the customerexperience, especially with regard to pricing plan transparencyand customer-enabled controllability.

About StratecastStratecast collaborates with our clients to reach smart businessdecisions in the rapidly evolving and hyper-competitiveInformation and Communications Technology markets.Leveraging a mix of action-oriented subscription research andcustomized consulting engagements, Stratecast deliversknowledge and perspective that is only attainable through yearsof real-world experience in an industry where customers are

collaborators; todays partners are tomorrows competitors; andagility and innovation are essential elements for success.www.frost.com


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Company summaryFounded in 1982, Amdocs is a public software and servicescompany, traded on the NYSE under the symbol DOX. It isbased in Chesterfield, Missouri, with major research anddevelopment centres located in multiple locations globally. Withfiscal 2012 revenues of $3.2 billion primarily from telecom

and approximately 20,000 employees worldwide, it is one of thelargest software and services suppliers in the telecoms marketsector.

The company offers customer management, revenuemanagement, service fulfillment and network control products,which it collectively calls Customer Experience Systems (CES).

Policy credentialsFor policy management, Amdocs offers a number of solutionsrelated to real-time rating and charging and policy control. Thecompany does not offer policy enforcement solutions, butinteroperates with enforcement products offered by other

suppliers.

The Amdocs Convergent Charging (Turbo Charging) module,part of Amdocss CES 9.0 product portfolio, is the companysrating and charging offering. Amdocs explained to Stratecastthat it makes use of a single real-time charging and balancemanagement support system to handle all types of events,customers, services and lines of business across multiplenetwork environments.

The Amdocs Policy Controller is the companys 3GPPcompliant PCRF offering. Amdocs explained to Stratecast thatthe solution provides real-time network, application, andsubscriber policy control that allows service providers to

manage mobile data growth and deliver personalised services.The policy controller product determines how and under whichcircumstances customers have access to applications andnetwork resources.

Amdocs offers a number of pre-integrated solutions that includereal-time rating and charging and policy control. One is theAmdocs LTE Control System, a solution that providessubscriber and device data management, and policy controlfunctions for the LTE Evolved Packet Core. Another is theAmdocs Data Experience Solution, which includes integratedcharging and policy management. Each of these solutionssupport pre-configured Amdocs business building blocks,which are groupings of essential use cases necessary to build a

CSPs data monetisation strategy.

Company summaryEstablished in 1984, Comverse trades on NASDAQ under thesymbol CNSI, and provides BSS, policy management (PCRF)and enforcement and digital and value added services to thetelecoms industry. The company is based in Wakefield,Massachusetts, and has local offices in over 40 countries.

Comverse solutions are used by approximately 450 CSPs, inmore than 125 countries.

Policy credentialsThe Comverse DMM Policy Manager is part of the DataManagement and Monetisation (DMM) suite which also includesthe DMM Policy Enforcer (DPI and Application Gateway), aswell as the DMM Analytics. The Comverse 3GPP compliantpolicy manager enables CSPs to accelerate time to market fornew monetisation policies using the DMM Policy Studio amarketing-oriented policy creation environment. The DMMPolicy Studio enables CSP marketing teams to define any dataplan or promotion in near zero time to market utilising easy to

use marketing interface and a broad range of ready to usepolicy plan templates such as roaming plans, shared deviceand family plans and premium content.

Comverse DMM Policy Manager (PCRF) can be sold as astandalone product or tightly integrated with Comverse ONEBilling and its Active Customer Management solution and/orwith Comverse DMM Policy Enforcer.

The optional tight integration with the Comverse ONE BSSsolution enables CSPs to define hybrid network- andsubscriber-aware policies using the synchronisation processbetween Comverse Policy and BSS entities. The integrationwith Comverse DMM Policy Enforcer allows end-to-end

definition and enforcement of monetisation policies using theComverse DMM Policy Enforcer capabilities: DPI based Trafficand Quota Manager, Layer 7/Application Gateway (for videooptimisation, filtering, access control and session enrichment,for example) and charging enablement.

The company explained that its unique PCRF-PCEF-BSSsolution allows CSPs to implement almost any monetisationuse case out-of-the-box.

The Comverse DMM Policy Manager was recently tested by theEuropean Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) forperformance and scalability. Tested over a variety of 3GPPinterfaces and scenarios (including LTE), the test found

Comverse to have highest independently proven TPS figures inthe industry: 210,000 per single system with 31.5 millionsimultaneous users.


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Company summaryBased in Englewood, Colorado, CSG International is a businesssupport solutions and services provider serving the global CSPmarketplace and other vertical industries including financialservices, insurance, transportation and telematics. It is publiclytraded on NASDAQ under the symbol CSGS. The company

generated revenue of over $750 million in 2012. CSG employsapproximately 3,500 people worldwide.

Policy credentialsFor policy management, CSG offers a real-time rating andcharging and policy control solution. The company does notoffer policy enforcement solutions, but interoperates withenforcement products offered by other suppliers.

The CSG Integrated Charging and Policy (ICP) solution is a pre-integrated 3GPP-compliant online charging system, subscriberprofile repository and PCRF. The solution is based upon theCSG Singleview Commerce Engine, the companys real-time

policy-enabled rating and charging offering, which CSGexplained currently processes billions of real-time transactionseach day for operators around the globe. The CSG IntegratedCharging and Policy solutions PCRF capabilities are providedby a partner.

The CSG Integrated Charging and Policy solution delivers out-of-the-box capabilities for subscriber and network awarecharging and policy. It provides a range of features that goesbeyond time and volume based charging schemes. Integratedpolicy management enables CSPs to set access rules, andthen to charge according to customer and providerpreferences, thus maximising the revenue gained from dataservices, while giving customers a sense of control. This

approach significantly reduces the potential for bill shock.

CSG Integrated Charging and Policy enables rapid deploymentthrough its pre-built support for a range of use cases, including:prepaid data allowances; turbo boost; business and familybundles; parental controls; user defined spend limits andnotifications; quality of service (QoS) shaping; location basedQoS; hybrid accounts; fair usage management; multi-deviceplans; and tethering plans. Going forward, CSG IntegratedCharging and Policy will allow CSPs to support the ongoingbuild-out of more value-added, pre-configured policy scenarios.These include the processes for support of LTE roaming acrossmultiple networks mobile, fixed line and Wi-Fi with bundledpricing and customer controls.

Company summaryEricsson is a provider of communications infrastructure,services and multimedia solutions, based in Stockholm,Sweden. It is traded publicly on the Stockholm Stock Exchangeand on the NASDAQ under the symbol of ERIC. The companyemploys over 110,000 people worldwide. Ericsson reported

2012 revenue of approximately 227 billion SEK (U.S. $33.8billion.)

Policy credentialsThe Ericsson solution suite for policy includes: multiple policy-enabled rating and charging offerings; a standalone PCRFnode; a dedicated PCEF; multiple network equipment offeringsthat can perform policy enforcement and service detection; andmultiple solutions that combine its various offers.

The companys real-time rating and charging solutions includeEricsson Charging and Billing in One (CBO), Ericsson ChargingSystem (CS) and Ericsson Mobile Broadband Charging (MBC).

CBO combines the CS functionality with Ericsson Billing, whichprovides convergent billing and customer care for all servicesand any type of CSP. The CS enables real-time rating andcharging and balance management for all services, and alltypes of users addressed by any type of CSP. MBC is an onlinecharging system that provides prepaid charging for data,content, messaging, voice, multimedia and VoIP.

The Ericsson Service-Aware Policy Controller (SAPC) combinesthe 3GPP PCRF and Access Network Discovery and SelectionFunction compliant functions with Fixed Broadband PolicyControl functionality. These solutions then allow CSPs tooptimise the utilisation of network resources, while increasingrevenue generated by personalised services in multi-access

networks. The company also offers the Ericsson IntegratedPolicy and Charging solution, which brings together the OCS(CS or MBC) with the PCRF (SAPC.)

Ericsson offers a wide range of policy enforcement and servicedetection solutions including; Service Aware Support Node(SASN); Evolved Packet Gateway (EPG); SmartEdge; EricssonWiFi Gateway; and MultiService Proxy. Ericsson also offers theService Aware Charging and Control solution which bringstogether the SAPC (PCRF), the EPG (PCEF), the SASN andOCS.


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Company summaryOpenet is a private telecoms software vendor based in Dublin,Ireland. It was founded in 1999, and employs approximately850 people today. Openet offers mediation, rating andcharging, balance management and policy managementcapabilities to over 80 customers in 28 countries.

Policy credentialsOpenets policy-related solutions include an online chargingsystem, a PCRF offering and a recently introduced policyenforcement solution. Openet states that policy is its keyproduct focus, which is represented by the companys largeR&D investment relative to revenue.

Openet Evolved Charging provides policy-enabled real-timerating and charging, and is designed to be deployed as astandalone OCS or as an adjunct to existing billing systems.The company explained that the rules based solution enablesfaster time to market and provides significant operational

savings. Rules are configured via a GUI and can be maintainedand built by product marketing, as well as technical personnel,allowing CSPs to react quickly to customer and marketadvances.

Openet Policy Manager allows CSPs to offer personalised andenhanced services such as tiered service plans, fair useenforcement, revenue-sharing partnerships, parental andcorporate controls, roaming controls, and other innovativeservice offerings across all types of networks. In a 3GPParchitecture, it fulfills the role of the PCRF.

Openet Evolved Charging and Openet Policy Manager integrateto provide the companys policy and charging solution.

Openet also offers a policy enforcement solution the OpenetInteraction Gateway that provides enforcement capabilities viaan agent on the end-user device, allowing CSPs to addresssignaling congestion caused by chatty apps. By enforcingpolicy on the devices causing the problem, CSPs can reducecongestion, gather real-time insights in subscriber behaviour,and offer an additional avenue for subscriber engagement. Theend-user benefits by facing less congestion while using thedata network, and by significantly increased device battery life.Chatty apps waste bandwidth, but also waste battery power.The solution also provides subscribers with real-time insight intotheir service usage and associated costs.

Company summaryRedknee is a public communications software company basedin Toronto, Canada, and traded on the Toronto Stock Exchangeunder the symbol RKN. With its recently completed acquisitionof select BSS assets from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN),Redknee reports more than 200 customers across 90 countries

for its billing, charging, policy, customer care and paymentssolutions.

Policy credentialsFor policy management, Redknee offers a number of solutionsrelated to real-time rating and charging and policy control these assets primarily originate from the NSN acquisition. Thecompany does not offer policy enforcement solutions, butinteroperates with enforcement products offered by othersuppliers, including those offered by NSN.

Redknees charge@once unified solution acts as a policy-enabled online and off-line charging system, providing

convergent charging, rating, and balance managementfunctions for all network interfaces (online and off-line); allservices (mobile, fixed, broadband); and all subscriber types(prepaid, postpaid, hybrid). The company reports thatcharge@once unified allows improved customer experiencethrough personalised offers, differentiated cost control, real-timenotifications, customer self-care, and instant activation ofselected tariff options. The solution delivers with a variety ofpre-packaged and pre-tested templates and tools to speedcreation of new services and allow CSPs to generate revenuequickly.

The companys PCS-5000 Policy Control Server provides anopen, flexible, and distributed policy control suite that functions

as the PCRF in the 3GPP architecture and is pre-integratedwith charge@once unified. According to Redknee, the PCS-5000 enables CSPs to control network resource usage, toassure the QoE for key users, to offer personalised services,and to provide differentiated, service-specific charging.Designed with scale in mind, the PCS-5000 supports up to 100million concurrent users.


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Company summaryFounded in 1998, privately held Trendium provides real-timeintelligence for customer experience assurance and assetmonetisation of fixed and mobile networks. The companysheadquarters are in Boulder, Colorado, and it has additionaloffices in the US and the UK.

Trendiums portfolio of solutions are built upon ServicePATH, areal-time collection, mediation, correlation, analysis, policy andalarm management platform. According to the company, theplatform has been deployed for many years, and proven toscale, in the largest network in North America.

Policy credentialsBilling and policy, as described in this report, enable innovativeand personalised services using the 3GPP PCC architecture,with the intent of providing and monetising an enhancedcustomer experience. Trendium and its ServicePATH solutionapproaches services from a different perspective assuring the

service operates as designed, thus assuring both the customerexperience and the monetisation of that experience.

The assurance functionality that Trendium brings to bearenables intelligent billing, which is the use of analytical insightconcerning how a customer experiences a network or serviceconnection. This insight allows CSPs to know how to bestposition the right pricing plan options when customers wantthem the most. It also enriches the billing process by enabling,through policy, the way services are actually used. For example,billing for service usage only when quality of service is above aset threshold for customers subscribing to a certain pricing tier.Trendium explained to Stratecast that the ServicePATH platformfeatures a real-time transaction and flow analytics engine, end-

to-end correlation, in-memory analysis, advanced servicepolicies, and business models that capture the complexrelationships between customers, applications, services, andthe underlying networks. The solution is capable of collectingdata from network elements and element managementsystems, in addition to other data sources, such as probes orbusiness and operations management systems.

By assuring service operation and customer experience,ServicePATH is designed to reduce potential churn by allowingCSPs to proactively address any discovered service issues, andto increase the efficiency of offered services. This allows apotential reduction in the cost of offering such services.According to Trendium, ServicePATH gives CSPs the ability to

identify and maximise new sources of revenue, by allowing thedefinition of service policies and service level agreements thatlet CSPs tailor services to the specific needs of high valuecustomers.

Company summaryVolubill is a private telecoms software solution provider,headquartered in London, with offices around the world.Founded in 2001, the company has more than 70 globalcustomers. The company provides policy management, policyenforcement, and charging solutions to CSPs. According to

Volubill, these solutions enable operators to manage the rapidgrowth in data services across communications networks byimplementing subscriber and service centric usage policies andquotas; and offer real-time granular charging for any data.

Policy credentialsVolubills policy offerings include policy-enabled real-time ratingand charging, policy management and policy enforcementsolutions.

The Volubill Business System (VBS) suite offers full 3GPP PCCcompliance including PCRF, OCS, OFCS and Subscriber ProfileRepository. The suite includes VBS Convergent Charging as

well as the VBS Policy Manager. According to Volubill, VBSallows CSPs to create, test and launch service plans in as littleas 15 minutes, and features a wide range of use cases andautomated subscriber engagement. The company explainedthat VBS scales to over 100 million active subscribers, at thelowest cost, and deploys within three months.

Volubill Network System (VNS) provides DPI-based policyenforcement capabilities, acting as a 3GPP compliant PCEF.VNS is a high-availability network appliance located in the CSPnetwork, adjacent to gateways, that linearly scales to supportnetwork capacities from 1 Gbps to over 100 Gbps. VNSperforms according to subscriber level policy and chargingprovisioned by PCRF and OCS systems, including the

companys VBS suite. The solution identifies and meters usage,enforces usage limits, and optimises policy driven quality ofservice. VNS allows CSPs to control usage, based on deviceand/or content, and provides intelligence to understandsubscriber usage of applications, network resources, andprotocols. CSPs use this intelligence to make available morerelevant and higher margin service offerings. Volubill explainedthat VNS is unique, in that it offers zero-revenue leakage, highaccuracy on granularisation, and industry-leading cost perGbps performance.

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New revenue opportunities for CSPs have been talked about for years but the integration

of policy, charging and analytics finally brings together all the disparate functions and

enables communications service providers (CSPs) to market new products and services.

The success of these will determine the success or failure of CSPs. Here, John Aalbers,

the chief executive of policy and charging specialist Volubill, tells VanillaPlus the pace of

development will be breathtaking

anillaPlus: How have the roles of

analytics and policy matured to do more

than simply protect the network and nowprovide CSPs with the means to develop

new revenue streams and business

models?

John Aalbers:They have developed quite a long wayin the last couple of years but there is still quite a longway to go in terms of tying policy and analyticstogether. The idea of taking policy and charging to setup the base packages you want to offer subscribersand then using real-time analytics to decide whatadditional special offers to make based on real timecontext, to whom and when is only just beingintroduced by the earliest movers in pilot projects.

If we can use analytics to identify that at a specificmoment in time a user is about to watch a movie, wecan offer an increase in bandwidth for the length ofthat move. Obviously, that offer is only relevant whilethe movie is being watched and the user wont wantan intrusive experience.

You can set that sort of service up with policy andcharging, use the analytics and then feed that databack into policy and charging. You get this real-timemarketing loop happening.

It is still early days in terms of the integrations betweenpolicy and charging and analytics but all thecomponents now exist so it will happen. The barrier

has been that these have all been disparate systemsbut what has changed is that policy and charging arequickly becoming one in the form of PCC (PolicyControl and Charging) and in the last year or so thevendors have been getting together to pre-integratethe key systems.

You still have to integrate into the rest of theenvironment if youre an operator but the number of

touchpoints has diminished. The problem is gettingsimpler which is not to say its a simple problem.

VP: Charging - as distinct from billing - is now

back on the agenda as operators seek to apply

charges to a comprehensive menu of policy-

originated services such as turbo-buttons. Why

has it taken so long to come to fruition?

JA: Its a bit like tablet computing. In every decadesince the 1950s a form of tablet computer has beenlaunched but theyve only captured a mass marketsuccessfully since 2010. Only this decade have theingredients been right. All the technologies, the touch

screens, applications and the network speeds are atthe right stage to create a successful product.Its similar in the charging world. The industry hastalked about it a lot and had a number of forays intothe market. Now everything is there and thecomponent technologies make sense.

Everyone has done their adjunct data projects in thefirst phase of mobile data. We know LTE is deployingand VoLTE will come later so we want to offerpackages around voice and data so there are lots ofinitiatives around converged charging. Were seeingopportunities to replace old IN (intelligent networking)voice charging capabilities with converged datacharging platforms that are ready to fit that change but

also support circuit-switched voice for the interim period.

VP: To achieve the new CSP model of charging for

one-time services and using policy to support

premium propositions, CSPs need to be agile and

launch and kill propositions quickly. That goes

Integrated policy,charging and analytics

unlock CSP opportunities

to survive and thrive

T A L K I N G H E A D S

3 3

V

L

John Aalbers:

All the necessary

things are in place

now


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TA L K I N G H E A D S

3 4

When you talk about service

personalisation you must have

a package that is tailored and

offered to a sizeable group of

similar users in other words

basic segmentation


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against their historical experience of long-term

implementations. How can CSPs accelerate agility

and what timeframes do they really need to

operate in?

JA:Youre right when you say they havent been goodat this in the past but to have any chance of successin the future this is essential. Not just to enable themto compete with other operators but for all sorts ofnew opportunities. Today, it means going back to theirvendor to have scripting done to create a new service,where theyve got to get to is the ability to launchthese services in a very flexible way through a GUIonly approach.

For one of our customers in Madagascar, the benefitsare obvious. In the first two months of this year theyconfigured 32 new policy and charging use cases in

15 minutes each, tested them in a couple of hoursand then rolled the services out. Were now talkingabout conception to launch in less than a day. To methats a complete world away from anything that hasbeen done before.

It does have to be completely GUI-driven, though. Thetransient nature of a lot of new services means theywont necessarily be valuable for a long period of time.For example an offer or use case around a concert ora sports event might only have a life of a few days oreven less.

VP: Theres an idea that third parties are losing

revenue because they can't secure high quality

network services in support of their offerings. A

company like Netflix might find a user doesn't take

out a premium subscription to an HD video bundle

because they know their data consumption will be

capped before they can consume all the content

on offer. The concept of Netflix effectively paying

the CSP to support such a bundle is an example

of a two-sided business model in which the

consumer and the supplier share the costs of the

network. How do you see these two-sided models

developing, do you think they represent the future

success of the telecoms market?

JA:These partnerships are going to be tremendously

important and its not just the third parties driving at it,its the operators as well. Youre getting a contentprovider that is brilliant at doing content and networkoperator that is brilliant at providing access. If you putthe two together in tandem, you get a much betterexperience, a better quality of delivery and there aredirect and indirect revenue opportunities within that.Take the example of KPNs partnership with Spotify.Spotify gets zero-rated traffic towards its usersquotas, KPN gets associated with Spotifys hip, cool,youth brand. If youre Disney, you definitely want tomake sure your customers get a great experience;you want to put together a great service. Two or threeyears ago, everyone was talking about that, nowtheyre doing it.

VP: So where does policy fit in?

JA: It depends on how sophisticated you want to get.If you have policy and charging working closelytogether you can identify who the user is and usedeep packet inspection to ensure certain types of

packets will be delivered at the right quality of service.It becomes even more sophisticated with real-timeanalytics on top of the base package.

When you talk about service personalisation you musthave a package that is tailored and offered to a sizeablegroup of similar users in other words basic segmentation,then a real-time analytical angle to identify whatsgoing on as well as the context including location tomake special offers, and finally give the user self-control where it makes sense the ability for them toset their own parameters about what they would like.

If you can address these three areas, youve got avery targeted personalised service being offered toend users on your network.

VP: In the drive for growth, CSPs options consist

of selling more to an existing, saturated base ofusers in developed markets or looking to address

emerging markets? Which emerging markets do

you see as most fertile. Is it a case of specific

geographies or are there underserved emerging

sectors to be taken into account such as M2M,

the emigrant market or even groups such as

sports fans?

JA: I still see the mature markets as fertile in terms ofpersonalisation and doing a better job. Theres still a lotof scope for operators to lift their game, put third partyOTT partnerships in play and squeeze out more revenue.

Emerging markets are still very interesting becausethey have the ability to grow. Africa and Latin Americawill be particularly interesting for the next few years.A lot of people think data is about entertainment andtheres not an appetite to pay for that in emergingmarkets but there is just as much interest in data forcommercial, business and political purposes. Theres alot to be offered in developing markets and the successor failure of telecoms operators will depend on whetherthey can grab that in the next three or four years.

The game is now about marketing and marketsegmentation, using analytics to identify what thecustomer is actually doing so you can target them.Sport fans are a great market segment as are high

video users and gamers. The market should segmentmuch more granularly.

M2M is more on the side. Its quite different in terms ofthe market requirements. In M2M its about efficiencyand using technology to enable when the network isnot so busy to deliver that efficiency. There arepremium services too, M2M healthcare applicationshave the potential to be high value.

Its much easier to price according to value with aservice like healthcare than if you dont know whatsbeing sent. Clearly heart monitoring has a higher valuethan a basic data transfer service.

Things are going to speed up now. Whats happenedover the last five years has been fast but the next fiveyears will take our breath away. All the necessary thingsare in place now previous attempts were hamperedby one or two links in the chain being missing.

www.volubill.com

3 5


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Tony Jackson:

CSPs are only just

getting going with

all the different

kinds of

partnerships

theyll need

As the possibilities of mobile technology expand, the aspirations of customers and suppliers

can go off in different directions. This could have an effect on how policy is set to supply the

network the customer wants, writes Nick Booth

heres something of a mismatch between the

priorities of subscribers and communicationsservice providers (CSPs) if two recentsurveys are accurate. According to anInfonetics study Policy ManagementDeployment Strategies Nov 2012, the top

priority for network operators is to deliver new servicebundles, with 95% of operators naming this as theirgoal. The next most important objective wasincreasing revenue per user. Ensuring quality ofservice was a relatively poor third, recognised as apriority by 70% of the survey.

In contrast, the latest Ericsson Mobility report (Q12013) found that network performance is the maindriver in subscriber loyalty to mobile operators. It

suggested that addressing network performance hastwice the impact on customer retention that customersupport can have and four times the impact ofintroducing loyalty rewards.

Though policy management has the potential to beenormously complex, for the most part the objectivesshould be simple, says analyst Dean Bubley atDisruptive Analysis. Ignore the headline-grabbing butunrealistic use cases of policy management, arguesBubley. Focus on the policies that can actually beimplemented by CSPs in the real world.

Controlling costs

Its critical to remember that in general, new businessmodels are not created in the network, he says.Policy in the network is mostly about controlling costs,while policy in the IT domain is about generatingrevenues the two are less converged than manythink, and it will stay that way, says Bubley.

Tekelecs vice president of product marketing Houck

Reed argues that in a brave new world operatorsmust transform themselves into digital lifestyleproviders. Customers can expand their personalcontrol over policy and choose preferences that trulysuit their lifestyles, says Reed.

Once service providers sold simple plans of voice, textmessages and data bundles to millions of subscribers.Now subscribers are different, service plans aredifferent, and the devices are different, he says.

Operators can evolve to selling high-value transactionsif they have sophisticated enough policy to enrichapplications and services, he argues. Mobile banking,streaming media and retailer partnerships could all

provide new business, according to Tekelec.

Airlines, for example, could pay for a subscribersbandwidth when booking flights or downloadingboarding passes at airports, which would save onairport staff costs and all the subscriber to save ondata charges.

These theoretical applications call for a massiveimprovement in the way signalling and IP flows arecontrolled so that they orchestrate every exchangebetween the service and the network elements. Thatis a massive expansion of duties from the current roleof the operator, which is the relatively simple task of

ruling over bandwidth, applications, time and speed.

The first step in creating a more sophisticated policy isto change the way CSPs work with OTT (over the top)content providers. They should be addressed aspartners, not rivals, and policy should formalise this

Network policy provides

platform for partnershipsand personalisation

T

L

N E T W O R K - F O C U S E D P O L I C Y


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Akil Chomoko:

There are too

many spectrum

and network

issues for video

services at the

moment

Houck Reed:

Customers can

expand their

personal control

over policy

arrangement, says Shannon Bell, director of revenueenablement for the data experience business unit at

Amdocs.

The value that service providers can provide to OTTplayers is a superior quality of network experience that

can be personalised, says Bell. Policy is critical ifquality of experience (QoE) can be based on variablessuch as the customer profile, plans, device types andapplications.

The main QoE improvement that can be achieved willbe to save customers from bill shock. This is wherepolicy can be used relatively simply for toll-free accessto content services and prioritised QoS.

Netflix exemplifies how policy can change therelationship between CSPs and OTTs. In allowingNetFlix to take capacity from an operator and imposeits own charges on a subscriber, Netflix has beenturned into a sort of bandwidth reseller. Policy tools

have enabled these highly sophisticated transactionsto be made. But all that the subscribers care about isthat their service quality got better, the bills didnt goup and the transaction was uncomplicated.

There is a big difference between having the systemscapability and packaging it up in a way that customerscan understand, Tony Jackson, senior productmanager, at CSG International.

A lot of work needs to be done to make it look simple,says Jackson, and the challenge for policy managersis to understand the data streams so they can chargecorrectly.

If you can crack that you can lay the foundations forvideo, VoIP and more complicated data services thatwill be possible when 4G comes to fruition.

There are too many spectrum and network issues forvideo services at the moment but when 4G has thecapacity we could see some much more sophisticateduse cases, says Akil Chomoko, head of productmarketing atVolubill.

Policy is a long term aspiration, but one to get workingon now, says Chomoko.

Jackson at CSG agrees: In reality CSPs are only justgetting going with all the different kinds of partnershipstheyll need to maintain their revenue streams.


24/413 8

The author,

Michelle Nowak

is vice president of

product

management at

CSG International

Policy solutions have risen to the forefront in recent years, and have stimulated a wave of

investment but the predominant policy solutions deployed by communications service

providers (CSPs) to date provide a mere glimpse into the future. Thats a future in which

enhanced policy management can stimulate service provider innovation and enhance customer

experiences, writes Michelle Nowak

he first wave of policy solutions was all aboutthe network, and more telling, aboutimposing user restrictions and limits. Theemphasis of original network policy usecases was to manage a users networkconnection. Perhaps one of the most well-

known policy use cases was managing bill shock.Compelled by regulation and masquerading under theguise of protecting consumers, bill shock policysolutions performed a single function: monitoring thecustomers usage and erecting barriers if he wished toproceed beyond a certain gate. The result: thecustomer experienced being managed, rather thanmanaging his own services.

Were now in the midst of a rush of telecomsmodernisation: upgrading the underlying network toprovide greater capacity and speed, and evolving theinfrastructure overlay that manages the network, theservice provider operations and the customerexperience. So now is the time for policy solutions tobecome strategic assets and enable, rather thanprevent, customer access to myriad digital servicesand content these next generation networks provide.

Cant get enough content!CSG recently published the results of a survey(http://www.info.csgi.com/csg-us-pay-tv-survey) thatexplored consumer attitudes towards spending habits

on digital content, and the results illustrate the fearedpredominance of spending on content that hasalready arrived. Our survey found that 31% of UScustomers spend $50-$100 a month on digitalcontent and consumers aged 18-24 are more likelythan any other group to spend between $30-$50 on

digital content. This is in a market where the averagemonthly cable television bill is $86(http://publicknowledge.org/blog/why-your-cable-bill-so-high) and the average monthly mobile bill is closeto $50 (http://business.time.com/2012/10/18/47-a-month-why-youre-probably-paying-double-the-average-cell-phone-bill). Revenue has already shiftedfrom traditional voice and in the case of pay TVproviders television services to premium digitalcontent, and this trend is not likely to reverse.Revenue streams of the future will be increasinglyderived from content, and younger users areincreasingly seeking new ways to manage, bundle andpersonalise their content, the sources of that content,and the devices on whic

Policy VanillaPlus Magazine June July 2013

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Transcript of Policy VanillaPlus Magazine June July 2013