Service Provider Mobility: Is the Time Right

for Operators to Get Serious About Policy

Management?

Posted by Brian Walsh Oct 23, 2009

Many operators have driven customer adoption of mobile data services with flat-rate
mobile data plans, but they are now struggling to maximize revenues for available
bandwidth across subscribers. Ironically, flat-rate plans are beginning to compromise
operator revenue opportunities by driving revenue-less traffic growth and enabling
services substitution, as users increasingly choose applications from other players in
the mobile application ecosystem. Operators who want to avoid becoming “bit pipe”
providers need to deploy intelligent IP networking and policy management solutions to
offer differentiated and personalized services for new revenues and improved customer
retention. 

The Need for Policy Management

As high-speed mobile data usage continues to expand, the needs of subscribers

will vary considerably in terms of capacity, performance, and reliability. Policy
Management enables operators to implement multiple subscription offerings and
enforce subscription limits to deliver more targeted services. By deploying service-
aware and subscriber-aware policy rules, operators can dynamically respond to changing
network and subscriber status, such as roaming, excess usage, congestion, etc.  Based
on subscribers’ profiles, policies can be implemented in real time to prioritize access,
QoS, performance, time of day, charging, roaming, or service-dependent requirements,
making it possible for subscribers to create and to be charged for a highly personalized
service package. And operators can differentiate their services by prioritizing subscriber
traffic flows, offering bandwidth boost, or delivering ad-subsidized content. The diagram
below shows several variables that can be used to develop policy-based rules for service
usage.

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Service Provider Mobility: Is the Time Right for Operators to Get Serious About Policy Management?

Furthermore, while subscribers desire seamless and consistent service across networks, devices,
data, and applications, they also expect the network to protect them if they unknowingly access a
service that results in unwanted surcharges. For example, policy management can play a role in
providing full awareness to a subscriber of potentially excessive roaming charges for high-volume
data when on a visited network.

A Policy Management Recipe for Success

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Service Provider Mobility: Is the Time Right for Operators to Get Serious About Policy Management?

An operator’s policy management solution should be able to be enforce policies

dynamically in response to real-time network or service usage conditions to determine
what services are to be delivered, what service restrictions may apply, what if any
usage limits should take effect, and any other actions needed to enforce contractual
conditions. The solution needs to factor bandwidth criteria into network admission
decisions, ensure that subscribers comply with the terms of contracts, enforce Fair
Usage Policies (FUP), and apply threshold triggers.

To give operators the flexibility to customize subscriber access and billing in ways that were not
possible before, the policy management architecture needs to enable access control at multiple
levels:

• Bearer level controls for initial access as well as for connection time.

• Service level controls for authorizing initial access to a service and so that separately
chargeable, tiered services can be offered to subscribers.

• Transaction level controls for authorizing each content request, offering granular control of
high-value content.

At each level there must be a capability to insert subscriber dialogs for access warnings, policy
acceptance confirmation, or service enrollment.

A standards-based Policy Management solution includes the management and

customization capabilities of the Policy Charging and Rules Function (PCRF) along with
the enforcement capabilities of the Policy Control Enforcement Function (PCEF), typically
embodied in the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) – or, in future LTE networks, the
Packet Data Node Gateway (PGW). The GGSN and PGW must deliver high performance,
scalability, and resiliency, coupled with advanced content-filtering and -charging
services.

Policy Management Use Case Examples

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Service Provider Mobility: Is the Time Right for Operators to Get Serious About Policy Management?

There are many use cases and services enabled by Policy Management solutions, such as:

• Roaming Controls – to control access, QoS, and charging rules in real time
depending on a subscriber’s roaming status.  Operators can reject the bearer
level access when a subscriber is roaming over certain high-surcharge networks
to avoid disputes over settlement charges for unknowing subscribers.  Frequent
roamers can be offered a premium plan that allows access to all services at any
time.

• Day Plans – a growing number of laptop and netbook users want temporary mobile
broadband access when visiting areas not served by their home provider. Mobile operators
gain revenues by offering user-provisioned access for a limited duration, similar to services
offered by WiFi hotspot providers.

• Fraud Protection: SIM Swapping – revenue leakage occurs when subscribers use their
mobile data plan to provide network access to their laptops, either by connecting to the
mobile device using Bluetooth or physical cables (tethering), or by directly using a SIM card
within the laptop. With Policy Management, operators can sell (or offer on as-needed basis)
plans that supports tethering or SIM swaps.

• Enforcement of Fair Usage Policy – The difference in consumption between heavy

bandwidth and light bandwidth users can frustrate subscribers – the average
user pays the same fee as the heaviest users, essentially subsidizing them,
and experiences slowdowns and congestion caused by heavy-users’ activities.
A Policy Management architecture allows operators to enforce ‘fair use’ by
enabling control of network resources according to service, subscriber, or a
combination of both.  Operators can apply service-specific rate-limiting rules
during times of peak network saturation, or offer a specialized package that
enables use of high-bandwidth services without rate limiting.

• Bandwidth on Demand – Casual users can often benefit from occasional increases in
bandwidth to support network-intensive activity. For example, it can require a great deal of
time to upload digital photos onto photo-sharing sites. This is inconvenient and frustrating
for the subscriber, and burdens the network with long-term sessions. Bandwidth on demand
can dramatically improve subscriber experience while providing incremental revenue for

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Service Provider Mobility: Is the Time Right for Operators to Get Serious About Policy Management?

operators. A Policy Management architecture enables operators to sell subscribers a

bandwidth throttle that they control.

Many operators are just starting to evolve beyond flat-rate or simple tiered mobile data plans to
offer compelling revenue-generating services to their consumer and business subscribers. Policy
Management can play an important role in creating additional value for subscribers with flexible
and more personalized services, all of which lead to higher operator revenues as well as improved
customer retention.

Do you know of any examples of operators using policy management to offer personalized or
differentiated services?

Do you agree that Policy Management is the next *obvious* step for operators to avoid the "bit pipe"
trap?

689 Views Tags: policy_management, mobile_internet, mobile_monetization, mobile_operators,

mobile_applications, policy_control, packet_core

Oct 27, 2009 1:16 PM David Almstrom

3 in Sweden offer dayplans and are also separating billing for phone access vs pure data-traffic. I
think most of operators have switched to be able to offer unlimited access from your phone for less
than €1. Tele2 and 3 are also offering pre-paid mobile broadband subscriptions

Oct 28, 2009 2:26 PM Mark Grayson David Almstrom in response to

Hi David

totally agree with policy control of fair usage/bundles. Moving forward, I think it will be
interesting to see what percentage of bandwidth is required by those applications requiring
tight QoS for improved quality of experience.

In a parallel thread, I ask the question "how to dimension an LTE network?". Baselining on
10 GB/month and 10% consumption in the busy hour, results in dimensioning of around 75
kbps/user sustained throughput. So, what percentage of that 75 kbps will be require tight
QoS?

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Service Provider Mobility: Is the Time Right for Operators to Get Serious About Policy Management?

5%? 10%? 90%?

Cheers,

Mark

Nov 7, 2009 5:16 PM Ritesh Bansal Kumar

Completely agree that policy provides capability to the operator to differentiate.

Though for most operators, the challenge has been - (a) Internal convincing to marketing
and sales team, from most feedback when the operator marketng and sales teams hear
"control", it has a negative sense (b) cost and somehwat complexity.

Most operators are deploying policies around fair usage, parental controls and fraud/abuse
protection. There are some operators taking policy to the next level of deploying time and
event based policies.

As an example - Garrett, a Cisco account manager, was discussing with his customer on
how to utilize uplink capacity (most traffic being download")

Nov 22, 2009 9:44 PM David Almstrom Ritesh Bansal Kumar in response to
and moreover, data is going to be bursted. Consistent throughput of 75kps is doing no-
one no good. You wanna have access to 10M+ when you and for some services, you
would need minimum latency but not that much bandwidth - and that will be a challenge of
deploying individual policy management.

That would require that operators have good insights in who are their power users and what
services they are using and needing. All users are not equal.

For example, with my phonebill exceeding €1,000 per months, the operator should probably provide
my number/IP with prio 1 as a general classification. Then they would have to categories a number
of services and select a suitable policy:

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Service Provider Mobility: Is the Time Right for Operators to Get Serious About Policy Management?

- videostreaming (policy 1 + prio 1 could give low-latency with 512k bandwidth; prio 2 maybe
128k guaranteed)

- videodownloading to phone (policy 2 + prio 1 give high latency and 128k bandwidth)

- video to PC (policy 3 + prio 1 give high latency and maximum burst 10M but no guarantee,
prio 2 maybe 2M)

- etc.

.d

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