ITU and A Global Approach Towards QoS 2012

ITU and a global approach towards QoS
Joachim Pomy
Telecommunications & Intl Standards
Consultant@joachimpomy.de
Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters International

Vienna, 27- 28 November 2012 Telecommunication
Union
ITRs: Setting the stage for
a connected world
[Content]
Introduction
Global Challenges
The ITUs past and current Work on QoS
Non-ITU International Agreements
Proposals from the Membership for dealing with
the matter
Summary
Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters
Vienna, 27- 28 November 2012 2 2
Introduction
Quality of Service (QoS)

The totality of characteristics of a telecommunications
service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied
needs of the user of the service
Characteristics can be measured by objective means
level meter
delay counter
etc.
Often confused with Network Performance (NP)
IETF uses QoS to describe the performance of functional services in
network layer models
QoS often more precisely named as "end-to-end QoS"
Vienna, 27- 28 November 2012 3
Introduction
User Perception influenced by much more:

trends advertising tariffs,
costs
customer expectation of QoS
customer satisfaction
QoS QoS
(technical) (non-technical)
Network Terminal Customer

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication
Performance QualityPoint
Performance
of Sale
Matters Care
Introduction
User Perception of quality not limited to the objective

characteristics at the man-machine interface
For end users counts the quality that they personally
experience during their use of a telecommunication
service
Quality of Experience (QoE) takes into account
additional subjective parameters
stemming from user expectations
from the context, in which the user is embedded during the
use of the service, such as
personal mood
environment
potential discrepancy between the service offered and
individual users reading additional features into the service
a connected world
[Content]
Introduction
Global Challenges
the matter
Summary
Global Challenges
Move from traditional networks

based on dedicated service-channels
Towards on a single packet based transport infrastructure
With integrated (transport) services
Pre-defined transmission planning of QoS has become a major
challenge:
Fixed allocation of resources is no longer possible
Packet-based network quality parameter requirements are pretty
undefined
Responsibility for end-to-end QoS has been lost
Services must be considered as applications executed in the terminal
devices
IP networks cannot provide for self standing end-to-end QoS
Only transport classes, which enable QoS differentiation
QoS Challenges depend strongly on role of stakeholders

Challenges for Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs)
The ITU-T
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Have collective knowledge and expertise with respect to QoS
related to the change of paradigms in networks and terminals
regarding to planning and possible regulation of end-to-end QoS
Are contribution-driven
If stakeholders
rely on industry standards instead of globally recognized standards
wish to keep control of their intellectual property
wish to not invest resources in globally recognized standards
SDOs must try to convince industry leaders
For example in dedicated events such as conferences

Challenges for Network Equipment Manufacturers
Rely on the QoS related performance requests

(of network and system functions) from
network operators and service providers
Ideally, network equipment manufacturers
would participate in the QoS work of SDOs
To standardize the QoS and performance
requirements between several parties involved in
the network business
Often no visible incentive on the short term
Return of investment cannot easily be seen
Challenges for Terminal Device Manufacturers
Confronted with a mass market

Move away from minimum attachment requirements
No harm to the network, not necessarily high QoS
Towards terminal standards which target the
possibility of provision of high-level end-to-end QoS to
the customer
Acceptance in the market based on other factors
Price
Other functions of terminals
Applications available for that terminal
Brand
End-to-end QoS - not in the first place
"kids prefer the pink phone!"
Challenges for Network Operators and Service Providers
Huge investments in both infrastructure and access technology, likely to

partially
Investing in new capacity, and
Rationing existing capacity
Traffic management tools
Increase efficiency of managing existing network capacity.
Appropriateness of different approaches to traffic management is at the
heart of the Net Neutrality debate
Important to bear in mind that traffic management has always beneficial aspects
Commonly used to protect safety-critical traffic
Question is not whether traffic management is acceptable in principle, but
whether particular approaches to traffic management cause concern
Network operators and service providers may or may not use traffic
management as a welcome method towards suppressing competition
Opening access and core packet networks as pure bit pipes will probably not
provide the envisaged revenues
Therefore network operators and service providers are aiming at providing
services on top of the bit stream itself

Challenges for Regulators and Administrations
Responsibility to consumer protection affected by rapid introduction of vendor-

specific new services
Also required to set a right balance between service competition and infrastructure
competition
In the early days of the move towards end-to-end services being no longer provided on a
fixed, well-known platform, it still seemed to be fairly easy to require that the new
technology provide QoS "not less than in the ISDN era"
Today it is easy to lose the overview of proprietary services "on-net" and the respectively
offered QoS
Services are not standardized
For interconnection scenarios (one of the major responsibilities of the ITU, and one of the
main purposes of the ITRs) one would need specific service agreements for each network-
to-network-interface (NNI).
In contrast, Regulators and Administrations have seen in the recent past that the un-
managed Internet has led to the creation of new services offered "over the top"
Important factor contributing to the economical benefits
Regulators and Administrations to have a close look
Conditions under which access to services in comparison to the access to the Internet is
being provided
There may be a certain percentage of the bandwidth or of the capacity reserved for the on-
net services which then are not available for the access to the Internet

Challenges for Consumers
Personal affairs of using telecommunication services

Discrepancy between advertised and actual delivery speeds
of the network
Consumers may not be able to detect the actual
applications of discriminating traffic management
techniques and find it difficult to distinguish between
the effects of traffic management techniques on QoS
from the effects of other quality degrading factors
A consumer observing that traffic is routinely throttled may
not know whether this is done by intention, or is caused by
other factors
Traffic management techniques and policies are difficult to
understand for consumers
Consumers may find it difficult to act upon such information

... in Technical Terms
Dramatic increase in mobile communication, both in terms of the number of

registered devices and of the volume of requested resources makes it is
quite likely that migration scenarios and hybrid connections with existing
wire-bound and traditional networks and terminals will be neglected and
appropriate QoS standards will not be established or enforced
Main technical parameters to consider will be:
speed (data throughput) of the access network
congestion in the backbone
end-to-end delay (latency)
delay-variation (jitter)
packet loss (loss of information)
Jitter is the variation in delay between different packets
Compensation (by de-jitter buffers) converts jitter into additional delay
Packet loss may be concealed
Essential information may be lost
Bad terminal implementations may destroy reasonable performance
delivered from the network(s)
Users will not be able to judge the difference in end-to-end QoS
Current Policy Challenges
Need to consider new approaches to anchor national strategies or regulatory

frameworks around the multi-facetted concept of QoS required
To set and keep the right balance between service and infrastructure
competitions
To address the challenges associated with QoS on the telecommunication
network
To continue providing adequate QoS, network operators and service
providers claim to need a certain traffic management over increasingly
congested networks
This might include data restrictions, traffic throttling, filtering and/or the use of
data caps of thresholds
Once the cap is exceeded, customers or end-users may be, knowingly or not,
confronted with the fact that, "Internet access" provided to them is no longer
Internet access, but a service provided by their ISP;
Such possible circumstances have influenced debates over net neutrality and
differentiated traffic management
These issues are increasingly likely to come to the fore, if data traffic continues to
grow at its current projected rate
Currently, many regulators are launching public consultations and investigations into
traffic throttling practices

Status of Net Neutrality Initiatives in selected Countries
Stage in process Position along the spectrum Country

(least to most stringent)
No consultation Considered net neutrality, but found no Denmark
problems requiring a consultation and Germany
subsequent rule; will continue to monitor
Ireland
Portugal
Non-binding neutrality guidelines Norway
In consultation stage Information gathering on current practices to Italy
potentially establish rules
Transparency/disclosure rules proposed, but United Kingdom
no traffic management
Transparency/disclosure rules and traffic Brazil
management/non-discrimination rules Sweden
proposed
Rules/legislation Transparency/disclosure rules but no traffic European Commission
adopted management/non-discrimination rules
Transparency/disclosure rules and traffic Canada
management/non-discrimination rules Chile
France
Netherlands
United States

Current Policy Challenges
Best Practice Guidelines for Enabling Open Access from ITUs Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) in 2010
Recommend that only objectively justifiable differentiations be made in the way in which various data streams are
treated
The Guidelines stress the importance of legislation to set out the general principles of open access: non-discrimination,
effectiveness and transparency.
The European Commission (EC) policy on net neutrality published in April 2011, The Open Internet and Net
Neutrality in Europe
calls for greater disclosure of traffic management practices
recognizes that traffic management is necessary to ensure the smooth flow of Internet traffic
One of the key policy questions regarding network neutrality regulation is
whether to ban optional business-to-business transactions between broadband ISPs and content providers or application
providers for enhanced QoS in the delivery of their packets over the network
The discussions have significant economic and financial aspects
Affect who pays for what with respect to delivery of the network infrastructure and content.
This in turn affects how future infrastructure will be financed and rolled out.
Much of the traffic growth is coming from video
Some fixed-line operators have been seeking for a way to implement differentiated pricing in order to increase their
revenues
In the European Union, discussions are taking place to one degree or another regarding the following:
The ability of consumers to address all legal content on the Internet.
Transparency, in the sense of clear information on services and prices.
Non-discrimination, in the sense of not prioritizing certain content or applications in harmful ways.
Traffic management, in the sense of intervening in the flow of traffic, for example to optimize bandwidth or to eliminate
spam.
Differentiation, in the sense of allowing customers to choose service offers that differ with respect to characteristics such
as price and speed.

a connected world
[Content]
Introduction
Global Challenges
the matter
Summary
The ITU has a long-standing history of QoS Work

Starting as early as 1957 the ITU has been conducting expert
work in the fields of transmission planning, subjective testing
and standards for telephone sets.
Since 1986 the Speech Quality Experts Group (SQEG)
provided coordination of the quality requirements and
subjective testing methodologies for speech coding
algorithms
Since 1997 the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) provides
coordination of the quality requirements and subjective
testing methodologies for video coding algorithms
Today, in the ITU-T, Study Group 12 is the Lead Study
Group on Performance, Quality of Service (QoS) and
Quality of Experience (QoE)

There are approximately 175 Recommendations, 7 Supplements and 3

Handbooks on QoS published by the ITU and in force.
Recently, a free download of ITU-T Test Signals for Telecommunication
Systems was provided.
POLQA (Perceptual Objective Listening Quality Assessment) as per new Rec.
ITU-T P.863 is the most sophisticated tool the ITU ever published for
assessment of a QoS parameter "by objective means. Listening Quality can
be "measured" with excellent accuracy, e.g. during mobile network drive-by
testing.
Rec. ITU-T Y.1541 (Network performance objectives for IP-based services)
provides technical parameters for the differentiation of IP network traffic
classes, encompassed by a huge number of appendices explaining
application scenarios and background.
Rec. Y.1542 (Framework for achieving end-to-end IP performance objectives)
considers various approaches toward achieving end-to-end (UNI-UNI) IP
network performance objectives.
The ITU GSR10 Best Practice Guidelines for Enabling Open Access have been
developed (available at www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/bestpractices.html ).

a connected world
[Content]
Introduction
Global Challenges
the matter
Summary
No significant internationally binding

agreements on end-to-end QoS outside the ITU
Specification work takes place in some industry fora
ETSI Technical Committee "Speech and multimedia
Transmission Quality" (STQ)
Terminals and networks for speech and media quality
End-to-end single multimedia transmission performance
QoS parameters for networks and services
QoE descriptors and methods
Binding international agreements should be
seen in the responsibility of the ITU
a connected world
[Content]
Introduction
Global Challenges
the matter
Summary
Proposals from the Membership for dealing with the Matter
Many proposals in recent years

Technical aspects of management of QoE
In various forums, including ETSI
Most of these items have been on the table in ITU-T Study
Group 12
But no contributions from stakeholders
Work is contribution-driven
Questionable whether new standards will be established
Other kind of approach comes from regulators
Seeking balance between
the protection of the rights of consumers and
excessively rigid regulation
Ofcom in the UK have proposed "easy-to-understand" labelling
as illustrated on the next slides

Elements for "easy-to-understand" labelling

Illustrative QoE Summary for 3 hypothetical ISPs

Illustrative transparent traffic management status representations

Proposals from the Membership for dealing with the Matter
Interesting approach
Does not solve the technical problem
Assumes standardized services which is not true
However will improve the QoE
User can realize that a sudden decrease in quality is
caused by a contractual limit of the service rather than a
technical deficiency

a connected world
[Content]
Introduction
Global Challenges
the matter
Summary
Summary
Move to packet-switched networks creates challenges

and opportunities for all stakeholders
Network operators need to develop appropriate business
models and QoS technologies
Policy makers and regulators need to consider the
advantages and disadvantages
of a hands-free approach to differentiated QoS offers
versus imposing QoS levels
versus imposing no differentiation of traffic management
the so-called network neutrality paradigm
Consumers need to consider the tradeoffs between
undifferentiated bit-pipe offer and
more complex offers
including different priorities or bandwidths for different types of
services

Thank you
Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters International

Vienna, 27- 28 November 2012 Telecommunication
Union 31

ITU and A Global Approach Towards QoS 2012

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ITU and a global approach towards QoS

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters International

Quality of Service (QoS)

User Perception influenced by much more:

customer expectation of QoS

Network Terminal Customer

User Perception of quality not limited to the objective

Move from traditional networks

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Rely on the QoS related performance requests

Confronted with a mass market

Huge investments in both infrastructure and access technology, likely to

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Responsibility to consumer protection affected by rapid introduction of vendor-

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Personal affairs of using telecommunication services

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Dramatic increase in mobile communication, both in terms of the number of

Need to consider new approaches to anchor national strategies or regulatory

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Stage in process Position along the spectrum Country

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

The ITU has a long-standing history of QoS Work

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

There are approximately 175 Recommendations, 7 Supplements and 3

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

No significant internationally binding

Many proposals in recent years

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Move to packet-switched networks creates challenges

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters

Workshop Selected Items on Telecommunication Quality Matters International

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