Posted by Don Bowman in Are you faced with the dilemma of satisfying growing bandwidth demands on your mobile network, while keeping capital and operating expenditures in check? Looking for ways to simultaneously gain revenue from your network and avoid user bill shock? In this day and age of mobile broadband, users expect to be able to enjoy their favorite apps anywhere, anytime. This poses a challenge for mobile operators that wish to preserve a high quality of experience for their subscribers regardless of their location. As a mobile network provider, you understand the importance of maintaining a close relationship with your subscriber, and of growing customer loyalty through valued service offerings and excellent network performance.
One often thinks of roamers in the context of one-time vacations, but there can be many times during the day when commuters are crossing back and forth from their home network into a visited network. So, roaming does happen frequently. Pandora has emerged as the leading provider of streaming audio in mobile networks in North America, comprising over 5% of downstream traffic according to Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report, and many people use it for long-term radio streaming during daily commutes. This leads rise to the situation where commuters cross from their home network into a visited network and their Pandora usage charges can add up – either on their bill or on your bill. As the operator of the home network, you may be offering fixed roaming allowances, or even unlimited roaming allowances, to your subscribers while your commercial agreements with peer mobile networks require you to pay a variable $/MB fee for your roaming subscribers’ traffic. This scenario can make these types of subscribers unprofitable for your mobile data business.
One method of solving the dilemma is to design service plans that appeal to roamers, by offering a fixed-price plan for the applications they love, eliminating bill shock when they return home. Simultaneously, the revenue stream offsets the carrying costs that the home network is required to pay for the transport of that roamer’s traffic on the visited network. So, let’s imagine a subscriber whose favorite app is audio streaming from sites such as Pandora, Spotify, or Rhapsody. Imagine also that subscriber is traveling outside of their home network, roaming to a visited network. Instead of a simple text message notifying the roamer that s/he is now in a visited network and ‘additional charges may apply’, why not expand the service offering in a customer-friendly way? The subscriber can be notified mid-stream as s/he accesses the favorite audio-streaming site that there is a “Rockin’ Roamer” pre-paid service plan available for a fixed price so that s/he can listen to as much music as desired, worry-free of excess roaming charges.
Sandvine’s ServiceDesigner allows you to do just that. With ServiceDesigner, a feature of the Control Center GUI, which abstracts the intricate process of defining and implementing new subscriber services, you can easily design a “Rockin’ Roamer” service plan using a visual interface. Want a quota limit for the amount of music traffic that a roamer can use? Just plug in the number. By pre-defining a quota limit you can manage the total amount of network resources the roamers will consume, and your opex associated with the transit of that traffic in the visited network. Want a specific bandwidth speed? Enter another number. Want to specify priority for music traffic? Can enter that too. Want to zero-rate messenger apps (aka rich communication services), as well as audio-streaming? Just drag-and-drop the messenger icon into your service plan. No need to spend time and money on customized complex solutions and extensive professional services that require expertise with rule structure and the underlying technology. Once the service plan is defined, the policy logic that implements the service plan is also defined with the power of the SandScript policy language, allowing for quick and easy try-and-deploy service plans. Importantly, the Sandvine network policy platform interoperates with the requisite B/OSS systems via 3GPP standards-based interfaces to ensure accurate metering of the prepaid service plan.
The tools to accelerate differentiated service plan rollouts, without costly complexity, are at your fingertips. “Rockin’ Roamer” is just one example; a number of CSPs have rolled out a variety of innovative service plans. For a demonstration of how to easily design and deploy a “Rockin’ Roamer” service plan, using ServiceDesigner, visit Sandvine at CTIA, May 21-23, booth 4720.
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