Procera Networks - Policy Enforcement in Motion

Mobile Operator Challenges

Mobile operators face many challenges as they seek to take advantage of consumer's desires to accelerate their mobile broadband experience. Operators need fine-grained awareness on the behavior of their network and subscribers, sophisticated analysis tools for business planning, and real-time control that enables monetization on their networks. Most mobile networks were not built out to support the bandwidth required in their backhaul network to support new technologies that are increasing the bandwidth available on the Radio Access Network. Consumers are demanding flat rates for data usage, but their usage is dramatically altered by the new generation of data-savvy devices being offered. More streaming usage (both audio and video), file downloading, and even social network interaction are changing the dynamics of mobile data network from traditional email retrieval to a full-fledged broadband Internet experience. Long Term Evolution (LTE) deployments will place a strain on network resources, and enabling high-value users to take full advantage of new services and bandwidth will enable operators to capture the early adopters by meeting or exceeding their expectations.

Mobile Operator Requirements

Mobile operators need visibility into the usage patterns on their network. Bandwidth upgrades that are ongoing (whether they are 3G or LTE-based) mandate that any system deployed today must be able to handle the performance increase required to address LTE devices and networks. Providers that have good visualization of the behavior of their subscriber's applications and application types during peak usage times ensures that congestion management will ensure that subscribers have a good Quality of Experience. Operators also need visibility into the usage patterns of different classes of service or tiered service offerings (high volume subscribers and devices versus mobile handset browsing and email access), and their density within the Radio Access Network to allow more efficient capacity planning and operational expenditures. Tight integration with the Operational Support (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) is required to provide a single point of access into subscriber services and usage behavior, as well as integration with Online and Offline Charging Systems. Managing roaming users and preventing "Bill Shock" is required to preventing customer dissatisfaction, and in several instances around the world, to comply with region specific legislation.

PacketLogic Solutions for Mobile Service Providers

Mobile service providers worldwide deploy Procera solutions to enable innovative service personalization and intelligent charging created based on our business analytics. Mobile networks are growing exponentially as smartphone adoption grows, and subscribers are connected to the network for longer periods of time to maintain presence on social networks. PacketLogic solutions integrate with the 3GPP ecosystem BSS and OSS to provide subscriber and network topology correlation. Standards-based 3GPP policy management interworking with PCRFs enables allocation of bandwidth by application (such as VoIP) or subscriber, roaming vs. non-roaming users, and time-of-day, down to individual radio towers. Integration with 3GPP charging services using OCS or OFCS solutions enable intelligent charging based on content, application, or time of day. With a PacketLogic solution, mobile operators do not need to sacrifice performance, functionality, or scalability as compared to competitive solutions.

Mobile Use Cases: 

• Business and Network Analytics: Detailed analytics on network consumption based on users, applications, devices, location, and other metrics used to conduct business plans.
• Tethering Detection and Plans: Detection of tethering based on multiple heuristic techniques that can easily be tuned to ensure accurate yet flexible detection of applications that violate acceptable use policies.
• Multi-Device Plans: Family Plans that enable multiple devices to share a common usage pool to simplify billing for multi-device users.
• Usage Management: Management of networks based on volume of traffic consumed by subscribers on the network (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc,). 
• Intelligent Charging: Zero Rating or Tiered Charging based on time-of-day, application, or content for “Happy Hour” or “Free” service plans designed to enhance the subscriber experience.
• Tiered Services: Service Management and prioritization of content and applications based on subscriber preferences and service choice. Commonly used for “Turbo Button” services to ensure prioritization during live events.
• Traffic Steering: Subscriber and application-aware steering of traffic to value-added services and 3rd party content/service providers.
• Threat Management: Integration with threat management systems for granular data feeds, mitigation, and audit purposes.
• Captive Portals, Top-Up, and Roaming Warning, Proactive Notifications: Re-direction of web browsing to a web service for top-up, roaming warning, and service notifications (upsell, billing, emergency notification, etc).
• Congestion Management and Fair Use: Quality of Experience management to ensure high quality delivery of broadband service even in times of congestion on the access or core network.

Key PacketLogic Capabilities for Mobile Service Providers:  

• Mass personalization of services based on Procera’s DRDL and Virtual Services library of applications and customer-created service definitions.
• LTE-ready today for providers that have other technologies installed today but have LTE plans in the future – even if bandwidth usage doubles or triples!
• End-to-end integration into the provider's Billing and Operational network with customizable interfaces to multiple departments: Customer Service, Revenue Assurance, Billing Intelligence using standard 3GPP interfaces. 
• Full subscriber and service plan awareness with the ability to deploy policies dynamically using a 3GPP standards-based policy framework (Gx, Gy, Gz, CDRs)
• Scalability to multi-10GE capacity and millions of subscribers, allowing operators to evolve and grow their networks to meet technology and business goals. 
• Real-Time operational analysis on the network, users, and applications
• Traffic optimization and service creation functionality that generates customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and added-revenue opportunities