By Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis
Background
This document is intended as an introduction to a new series of three separate papers on policy management and the role of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) in mobile broadband networks.
The basic premise is that first-generation “silo” approaches to controlling data traffic have been highly fragmented, and aimed at solving urgent “fire-fighting” problems – the next generation of solutions will need to be more “holistic” and joined-up. Shifts in network technology, smartphones, regulator environment and applications and use cases are together prompting a re-think.
As the industry looks more strategically at how to manage the data flowing across 3G/4G networks, it is apparent that the different elements will need to work together much more closely, in order to create compelling user experience, and enable new business models. The radio network, backhaul, core, devices, applications and billing/charging systems will need to be brought together to optimise the overall mobile data ecosystem. Trying to force onto users policies that seem unreasonable, inflexible and arbitrary will lead to dissatisfaction and churn.
In particular, future policy management platforms will need to be:
- Bearer- and radio-aware
- Device-aware
- Capable of managing complex and contextual offload
The paper has been written by the independent industry analyst & consulting firm Disruptive Analysis, and sponsored by Continuous Computing, as part of an initiative to promote thought-leadership, differentiation and innovative networking concepts for the mobile broadband and network policy-management marketplace. The opinions expressed are Disruptive Analysis’ own, and are not specific endorsements of any vendor’s or operator’s products or strategy.
Introduction
Over the past two years, everyone in the mobile industry has seen the famous “scissors” diagram, with mobile data traffic growing exponentially, despite revenues only creeping upwards slowly. Most regulars to industry conferences have seen variations of the same picture probably dozens, or even hundreds of times. Disruptive Analysis is as guilty as anyone else here, having used that same image over several years, with the simplistic conclusion that either “costs per Megabyte” need to be reduced, or that total volumes need to be managed down.
But while that chart has been useful for raising awareness of the trends and risks, it is becoming clear that it represents a quite naïve and unsophisticated analysis of the actual situation, which is much more complex. Many operator networks have been impacted more by signalling load than actual “tonnage” of data. Applications such as P2P BitTorrent can be more damaging because of relatively high uplink traffic rather than the sheer amounts downloaded.
