In the mobile Internet arena, reports from all of the world’s leading telecom analysts point to one thing: the imminent data deluge. The combination of increasing smartphone penetration, evolution in data consumption patterns and the advent of LTE are driving this incredible growth in data volumes. With more than 7 billion connected devices by 2015, mobile data promises to be the future of telecom. This phenomenon is not just limited to developed markets. In fact, emerging market regions (Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa) are expected to have the highest growth and will represent an increasing share of total mobile data traffic in the next five years.
In emerging markets, although growth and usage patterns of mobile Internet usage exhibit a high degree of variability, mobile broadband traffic volumes are registering exponential growth. While this provides excellent revenue opportunities, several challenges need to be addressed before operators can benefit from this data growth. Operators need the ability to manage bandwidth usage by different subscribers and services, create differentiated services to stand out from the competition, and manage congestion at the backhaul and radio network levels. To address these challenges, operators worldwide are turning to policy management.
Policy management refers to defining and applying different policies to control browsing speed, charging, authorization, etc., based on traffic type, subscriber profile, time and location, amongst others. Policy management enables operators to deliver personalized services, a better browsing experience, competitive discounts, innovative promotional strategies, loyalty programs and much more. From enabling operators to perform effective traffic shaping by providing different QoS for different services to facilitating the launch of flexible data plans, policy management solutions form an integral part of the service provider’s mobile data platform.
While I have been tracking developments in policy management, one of the emerging use cases of policy management in recent times is ‘bandwidth on demand’. This refers to the concept of providing higher bandwidth to a subscriber for a short period of time. A research study by Infonetics shows that operators rate ‘bandwidth on demand’ as the top application driver for policy management deployment.
Policy management enables operators to not only provide bandwidth on demand but also choose from different ways to offer this feature. Using a policy management solution, operators can offer ‘bandwidth on demand’ for different time periods such as 1 hour, 2 hours, 24 hours, etc. Operators can also provide this feature to subscribers who are using certain data plans. Operators can define the QoS that can be provided during this period as well as choose to charge the subscriber in different ways, such as charging them every time they enable this feature or providing “n” such options per month as part of the subscriber’s data package.
Hence, the impending data deluge promises great revenue potential, but only for operators who are prepared to handle the increasing data volumes, manage rising subscriber expectations and differentiate themselves from competitors. Policy management provides operators with effective tools to manage traffic at both the backhaul and radio network levels, and eliminate network congestion. Further, policy management enables operators to provide customized and personalized offerings, which improve the subscriber experience and thereby reduce churn. In addition, policy management enables operators to create innovative services that not only provide additional revenue but also enable them to differentiate themselves from competitors.
