BroadHop Policy 2.0™ Blog

The end of “All you Can Eat."

  

  

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SPs deserve profit but customers deserve more interesting options.

Plates piled high from the “all you can eat” salad bar conjure up images of a kind of self-defeating purpose…salad and all you can eat.  While you still may be able to find this eating icon of the American 70’s at some restaurants – it’s almost unanimously disappearing from telecom operators’ menu of subscriber choices.

May 2011 quietly marked the end of an era – with Verizon officially announcing the end to its “all you can eat” flat fee offer -- replacing it with tiered pricing.  Verizon’s heavy data users (plates piled high) will now have to pay overage charges – as AT&T customers are already doing.  With the two largest operators in the market having moved away from unlimited pricing, it will be interesting to see what Sprint will do.  While Sprint hasn’t announced anything publically it’s been hinted that they might be considering a similar move with their Network Vision plan.  Australia’s Telstra and T-Mobile also announced respective tiered data plan models, but instead of overage charges -- subscribers will be alerted via text that their speed is being throttled down to 2G or EDGE speeds when they cross their data consumption threshold.  Users can then decide if they want to pay more to regain normal data services -- or not.

“All you can eat” conjures up images of great variety – at least when you are talking about salad ingredients – but do you really need to have the bacon bits, cottage cheese, beets and marinated green beans  all on the same plate – or is it better to have only what you really want and need?  With flat fee pricing out  – tiered pricing in – throttling in – subscribers are going to have to be more selective about what services they really want and need -- and SPs must offer them more interesting options to be selective about.  Subscribers will need to look for their telecom operators to provide them with freedom of choice for innovative services they really want and need.  In my next blog, we’ll look at how next-gen, Policy 2.0™ can help operators get beyond two simplistic choices -- tiered pricing and throttling to dish up more appetizing menu selections to keep users coming back for more —users who are willing to pay for what they really want and need.   

Policy 2.0™ ready to serve 4G/LTE

  

  

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One of the biggest challenges for policy in 4G/LTE networks is working with a sustained, extremely high rate of Gx/data and Rx/VoIP traffic. The policy solution must track this usage, apply service selection policies (for gold, silver, and bronze customers), and implement charging rules all on a per-subscriber basis. Basically, then, the policy solution must be fast. And it needs to handle large amounts of data simultaneously.

With these demands in mind, we designed the Quantum Network Suite as a new generation of policy solution, Policy 2.0. But question remained, would it satisfy the needs of these new networks? And, didn't these new types of networks require some new industry benchmarks? To answer these questions, we worked with EANTC and HP to put the Quantum Network Suite through a sustained IMS/4G/LTE test.  The results were stunning:

1. Demonstrated support for 20M concurrent subscribers from a single, 10U server chassis. This is scalability of more than 10X the current and publicly known independent benchmarks in the industry. The benefits to service providers? Lower cost of ownership based on an extremely small footprint and load-balancing capabilities. In effect, they can support up to 100million subscribers with a single chassis (assuming a 5 to 1 active session to subscriber ratio.)
2. Support for 28,000 Gx/data transactions per second and linearity across sixteen server blades at high rates of transactions, from a single 10U server chassis. This will allow more subscribers and policies to be managed at rates far superior to those available from standard policy servers.
3. Handled 13,000 TPS on 8 server blades while applying real-world policy and charging rules to multimedia 4G traffic (Gx/data and Rx/VoIP), surpassing current published independent benchmarks. This new benchmark allows the highest transactional throughput ever shown with IMS/4G/LTE data and VoIP traffic. enabling providers to create richer and more personalized services.

It's good to know that independent tests have shown Policy 2.0 is ready to serve the latest 4G/LTE networks.

Large scale benchmarking proves next-gen policy is here

  

  

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In 2010, BroadHop introduced the Quantum Network Suite. Our teams had worked hard to create a new kind of policy solution that would allow operators to scale their networks and easily bring on new services and applications. We knew it was something special, but we wanted some evidence. So, we worked with EANTC and HP to put the Quantum Network Suite through a large-scale policy benchmark test. During the test, the Quantum Network Suite ran on an HP C7000 blade chassis running up to sixteen HP BL460c G7 blade servers.

Tests included real-world policy use cases, including concurrent session test, transactions per second (TPS) test, and an IMS/4G/LTE test (with the aim of determining the TPS rate while managing multiple next-generation services in conjunction with policy and charging rules). What we found was that the Quantum Network Suite was a game changer, setting new performance and industry benchmarks for 3G/4G mobile policy deployments. Here's what was achieved:

1. 20 million concurrent mobile subscriber sessions from a single, 10U server chassis with 16 server blades. This is 20X the previous active session benchmark.
2. 28,000 total TPS performance from a single, 10U server chassis. This is nearly 2X previousTPS performance and ~10X TPS density benchmarks.
3. 1,650 transactions per second (TPS) for Rx+Gx (VoIP+data) per server blade. This is a new IMS/4G TPS performance benchmark.

The bottom line is: In this independent test, the Quantum Network Suite shattered all previous benchmarks. Today's new networks are radically different from their predecessors, and subscribers have much higher expectations of their service providers. With these new benchmarks, operators preparing to deploy new policy solutions have a solid basis for comparison, and new questions to ask in their request for proposal/request for information (RFP/RFI) efforts. And, if they select a Policy 2.0 solution, they will have the opportunity to use policy for innovation, increase revenue, increase loyalty, and maintain control of the broadband service value chain.

Why policy needs to change

  

  

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For years, operators have had a bandwidth-management focus, and, once certain policy use cases were in place, they could pretty much put their network on auto-pilot. That is no longer true. The wide variety of service combinations are driving subscribers to demand more control over their network experience. So, you might ask, how different is it really between the Policy 1.0 era (bandwidth management) and Policy 2.0 era (flexible, real-time solutions)? Well, pull up a chair...

In most current networks, there are an average of 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) with up to 100 policy-controlled applications. Upcoming deployments are expected to hit or exceed 100,000 TPS on average with more than 1000 policy-controlled applications and services. Generally, in today's networks, policy is applied to about 10% of subscribers, but in next-generation networks, operators expect it to apply to 100% of subscribers.

Old policy methods just won't work well in these new circumstances. Where we once had one or two policy triggers in a network, now we will have 10 to 100! In the past, operators could be content to wait weeks or months for the development of new services. Now they need to configure new policy-driven services within hours or days.

Operators do not need to panic. Instead, policy needs to scale. New benchmarks need to be set, met, and exceeded. In a recent EANTC test using real-world policy use cases, BroadHop demonstrated support for 20 million active mobile user sessions from a single, 10U server chassis with sixteen server blades. Allow me to repeat that: 20 million active mobile user sessions from a single, 10U server chassis with sixteen server blades That is the highest TPS ever demonstrated for policy management in an open, objective industry test. I am happy to report that Policy 2.0 is here, proven, and ready to take on next-gen network challenges.

Policy 2.0™ on the move (part 3 0f 3)

  

  

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By selecting the Quantum Network Suite to enable their wireless, wireline, and converged broadband networks, global operators are coming to understand the power of pursuing a Policy 2.0 strategy. I had a pretty good idea what the benefits of this new product would be when we launched it earlier this year, but we've asked some operators what they like best about Policy 2.0, and here's some of what we learned:

Third-party services
While subscribers tend to love third-party services, operators have struggled to integrate them and maintain control of the subscribers' experiences. The Quantum Network Suite provides a much easier integration of third-party applications into the telecom set of services, and gives operators an opportunity to monetize them.

No wait for policy vendor to develop custom apps
With an open programming environment, the policy server allows operators to create their own new services with non-specialized developers rather than having to rely on a much more limited set of telecom focused developers.

Rapid development of new services
New services can be deployed up to 10X faster with our Policy 2.0 Policy Builder tool. And, marketing and business units are sitting down with developers to better tailor new services to customer needs, enabling more options and revenue-generating opportunities.

Same policy, different network
Policy 2.0 from BroadHop provides a consistent and global set of policies, regardless of network scale, type of network, multi-vendor network composition, or location.

We have no doubt that our innovative customers will use these benefits to think of new use cases and revenue streams. Watch this space in the months ahead as we highlight them for you.

Next-Gen Policy Comes of Age (part 2 of 3)

  

  

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Despite the appeal of enabling new applications, not all policy management or PCRF products are created equally. If you are looking for a new policy solution for your network, I suggest that you use this checklist to make sure your new solution is Policy 2.0 compliant. For example, does it:

1. Apply policies dynamically in real time based on user preference, application, time of day, location, local congestion conditions, location, and any number of other conditions.
2. Apply policies at the level of individual customers, rather than to all users of a particular application (e.g. video streaming) or highly generalized groups (e.g. everyone in Tier A).
3. Enable policies to trigger charging and billing actions, since in a more service-centric role, policies will (and must) increasingly be used to generate new revenue.
4. Enable policies to be created and deployed by non-specialists, e.g., service provider product marketing and development staff using standard Web (i.e. RESTful) APIs.
5. Allow policies to be controlled by the customer directly via a handset application or other electronic device, and enable customers to upgrade, downgrade, tap into congestion peak banks, change treatment of specific apps, block or allow URL access, and so on, and on any type of terminal.
6. Enable policies and (variable) pricing to be applied directly by the third party apps developers themselves—so they are actively creating new ideas via an open API program, using a service provider's policy/applications ecosystem.
7. Enable policies to be applied to third party apps and services directly by telecom developers themselves—so telecoms are actively incorporating new ways to monetize over-the-top services.
8. Expose a wide range of resources in a familiar software environment, including sought-after resources such as subscriber profile information.
9. Apply policies in different types of networks, including fixed and wireless networks and enable the same policies to be extended across these different networks.
10. Apply policies uniformly across large global networks without being limited by challenges associated with scale and location.   
11. Apply policies across multi-vendor environments.

Yes, this is a demanding list, but today’s policy management must be able to conform to many different requirements and considerations.  And, with the addition of revenue enhancing, application enabling policy, policy servers will need to flexibly deliver new capabilities as those opportunities arise.

Policy 2.0™ - Time for policy to evolve (part 1 of 3)

  

  

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In the early days of policy management, most operators were happy just to get a handle on managing their bandwidth. In today's competitive environment, that type of thinking is going to do nothing to address customer churn, nor will it boost revenue. In the dynamic realm of mobile broadband and high-speed DSL, policy management needed to evolve. 

We call the new generation of policy management Policy 2.0™. Policy cannot be an afterthought anymore because the truth is: The policy management solution that an operator selects can be a real game changer.

So what is Policy 2.0? It creates new capabilities that dramatically increase our ability to personalize, monetize, and control he many new applications and services that run over today's networks.  It intelligently applies policies in real time, addressing a much broader set of capabilities than the static congestion and bandwidth management capabilities associated with traditional policy (which you can think of as Policy 1.0).  

So, you may be thinking, that sounds nice Dan, but what does it do really? Here are just a few examples. Policy 2.0 automatically manages changing subscriber profile information. It enables two-way mobile communication between the operator and subscriber, as well as remote control. And, it makes it possible to control, deliver, manage, and make money on over-the-top and third party on-demand applications. Sound good?

The bottom line is, these new capabilities deliver a much better experience for customers. Moving to Policy 2.0 offers a platform for innovation that can turn data traffic challenges into revenue-enhancing value added services—in mobile broadband, 4G, DSL, and fixed-mobile deployments.  Watch this space as we take you on the journey of Policy 2.0 as it rolls out around the world.