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SUBSCRIBER MANAGEMENT - Intelligent identification
The telecoms market is renowned for its rapid billing cycles, but service creation has always been expensive, time-consuming and operator-led. Antoine Guy explains that a new approach 
promises to revolutionise this situation by addressing the very core of the problem: subscriber management
Taking its lead from other sectors, such as IT and manufacturing, telecoms vendors are now beginning to embrace a new discipline - Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) - which originates from Computer Aided Design (CAD). PLM applications unify the marketing, service management and network resources of the operator to provide end-to-end product creation, re-using data to shrink the time and cost associated with taking services to market. PLM is gaining interest, with the TM Forum recently forming the Product and Service Assembly Forum to standardise the discipline, and it's already begun to pave the way for personalised provisioning.
An example of PLM in action is a new breed of Subscriber Management Platform (SMP) capable of uniting traffic management systems with the operator's dedicated subscriber management system, RADIUS and DHCP servers. Drawing upon the data from each of these, the SMP is able to correlate the user's network activity against the services he or she takes and those at the operator's disposal. In effect, it enables a broadband network to become ‘subscriber-aware', mapping the connection between individual subscribers and the services they consume.
The first step to subscriber-led servicing is to understand subscriber usage by mapping applications on the network. Over today's IP infrastructure, a multitude of applications compete for capacity unchecked, and many operators are unaware of how capacity is being used. Deep packet inspection (DPI) technology can provide the operator with visibility into network usage, identifying content in the packet's header and payload and cross referencing this with a library of applications to determine the nature of the traffic. DPI technology segments packets by protocol, application type and patterns within data payloads, offering detailed visibility into traffic usage and trends. This level of visibility - understanding the users, protocols, and applications on the network and how they are behaving - is the first step in controlling traffic and usage down to the subscriber level.
With this baseline in place, application control can begin. This allows the operator to allocate sufficient resources to promote or demote an application. The operator can classify traffic and assign actions to each class to create network rules, or policies. For example, if peer-to-peer traffic is hindering network performance, a pre-set application control policy can segment this traffic to a portion of the network, opening up more bandwidth for critical applications, such as third party VoIP or online gaming. Application types can also be set to maintain a constant maximum level of bandwidth. And the level of detailed information provided by DPI means that network deficiencies can be spotted and corrected. As a result, the operator can provide best customer service when trouble arises, limiting complaints or speeding up response times.
In a PLM context, DPI provides the means to assess which subscribers are utilising which services. Armed with this information, it's possible to begin honing service offerings. And we're not just talking about tiering services into gold, silver and bronze, but providing individual subscribers with tailor-made offerings on a mass scale. Subscriber managed services can be used to target specific groups of subscribers, such as voice-over-IP (VoIP) users, gamers, businesses, high-bandwidth users, casual users, peer-to-peer (P2P) users, P2P-free users and others. Examples of service types include:
Yet subscriber management can go even further, providing the operator with opportunities to upsell. Thanks to its ability to meter usage, enforce quality of service and generate usage statistics and accounting records, DPI traffic management can enable the operator to deploy joint revenue models with alternate providers or non-provisioned services such as gaming and VoIP applications. Symbiotic business models will begin to emerge. Network operators may provide a well-known service with free carriage and even prioritise the application in order to benefit by association. So we may see small ISPs advertising five star QoS for Skype to attract new subscribers, for example. Alternatively, a start-up may contact a large-scale network operator requesting that its new innovative application be prioritised. In this scenario, the content provider would pay the operator to gain access to a guaranteed large subscriber base.
Using an individual example, the operator might find that Joe Bloggs is a keen user of a third party VoIP service such as Skype or Vonage which can be sensitive to delay and jitter. Rather than throttling the capacity for this service, which could damage brand perception, the service provider has several options. It can offer the user the option of convert to its own VoIP service, perhaps at a lower rate for calls to the US that Joe regularly makes. It could suggest he pay an additional £5 per month to prioritise the third party VoIP service he is already using to ensure quality of the service. Or the operator could collaborate with the service provider and provide QoS in exchange for royalties from the application. This proactive approach enables the service operator not only to capitalise on a subscriber's existing usage but even to gain revenue from services it doesn't control.
Mapping the connection between individual subscribers and the services they consume creates the ability to mass customise. Through real-time and long-term monitoring and reports on subscriber data, operators can identify and develop the most profitable services or tiered service plans. Services can be developed and brought to market in a matter of days rather than months. Information is sent back to those OSS systems that interface with the Subscriber Management Platform, conveying data usage statistics for instantaneous charging and provisioning.
With the number of services and applications expected to increase exponentially over the next few years, issues over bandwidth consumption and quality of experience (QoE) will arise. The race to the top spot will no longer simply be about access to services. The battle for the consumer will be fought over the quality of content and services. Operators will need to balance QoE for individual users while retaining control of network usage and cost: both require strict service management.
A subscriber-aware network is the answer, and it's a network capable of intelligently identifying its subscribers based on their unique subscriber ID, regardless of the subscriber's dynamic IP or inconsistent connectivity. Operators that can identify individual or groups of subscribers and dynamically apply policies or rules based on use or other network patterns will be ahead of the crowd. Monitoring trends, the operator who can offer subscriber service options, service level agreements, packages and prices which can be refined to constantly meet demand, will be able to reap the benefits of rising ARPU and customer satisfaction.
Antoine Guy is Marketing Director, EMEA, Allot Communications, and can be contacted via tel: +33 (4) 9300 1167; e-mail: aguy@allot.com www.allot.com
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