The focus of last week’s Policy Control conference in Amsterdam was “Manage, Monetise and Optimize Broadband Traffic with Policy Control and Real-Time Charging.”  As this is one of my favorite topics to discuss, I was delighted to present a pre-conference workshop called “The Eye of the Data Storm:  Integrated Network Analytics, Policy Decision and Policy Enforcement.”

I’ll get into the presentation’s key take-aways in a moment, but as I am of Latin blood and love passionate discussions, I’m going to diverge for a second here to address the fact that many of the advanced real-time charging use-cases I spoke of can be implemented simply with Sandvine’s distributed policy engine and charging (e.g. OCS) network elements, without requiring a PCRF in the middle (thus incurring additional cost and complexity). As we say around here at Sandvine, “if an element is not adding value it will only add latency”. This fact is something our competitors failed to mention in their show presentations, maybe because they’re missing needed functionality?

In my workshop, I discussed the benefits of network business intelligence for operators – namely increasing ARPU, as well deferring CAPEX and decreasing OPEX.  Using the same traffic classification technology used for the creation of our recently released Internet traffic trends report (Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H2012), Sandvine is able to give operators detailed insight into their own network trends. How would you like to know what Netflix or YouTube consumption is on your network?  What’s up with WhatsApp?  What is the quality of streaming video in your network?  What devices, applications or over-the-top services are creating the most demand on your network?

In my workshop I also shared an example of how Sandvine spearheaded the roll-out of an award-winning tiered, application-based service plan that isn’t based simply on quota usage.  These plans zero-rate low-bandwidth applications, such as email and social networking, and offer unlimited access to those applications at a reduced, fixed rate, thus providing the consumer with price certainty. Such plans are sustainable and profitable for the ISP because, despite the unlimited use of the associated applications, they are created through our Network Analytics product allowing for the accurate assessment of the data network volumes consumed by subscribers that guarantees the correct cost modeling for carriers.

I must not forget to mention and share the spotlight with our other show presenter, Bo Dines Larson (see his pic below), who discussed “Obtaining and Realising the Value of Real-Time Cell-Level Awareness: How to Make Policy Control Responsive to Dynamic Network Congestion”.  His presentation covered how mobile operators can use network intelligence to predict where and when congestion will occur, how policy control alleviates cell-level congestion and how to leverage network intelligence to predict usage patterns and consumer behavior. 

Another noteworthy show mention has to do with lively discussions (again my favorite!) following a keynote speech by a member of the EU parliament on the topic of Net Neutrality.  Sandvine has always been very involved in the topic of Net Neutrality and in fact, is called upon regularly to consult with global government bodies such as the FCC, CRTC and EC.  For more information on our work in this field, please visit our website or read a