Open Policy Control Platforms

Whitepaper

/How open policy control platforms help operators save costs and launch new services fast

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Why traditional approaches to PCRF aren’t fit for purpose anymore ............................................................................................................. 4

A future proof approach to PCRF .................................................................................................................................................................. 5

Video on-demand at tier 1 Central European operator .................................................................................................................................. 6

Beyond PCRF ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Disruptive buzz words that don’t mean much to policy control ...................................................................................................................... 9

What Computaris offers ............................................................................................................................................................................... 10

DigitalRoute solution promotion………………………………………............................................................................................................... 11

About………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..12

Introduction

The role of policy in telecoms has changed

radically over the last few years. A series of

disruptive dynamics are coming together,

dynamics that have caused operators to re-

assess their business models, their

technological foundations and the services

they offer to customers and partners. With

near-total penetration in terms of mobile

device ownership in developed markets and

continued growth in developing markets,

operators are looking to maximize utilization of

their network assets while continuing to assure

quality of service and experience at a carrier-

grade level.

The stakes are far greater than ever before

because operators are no longer providing a

limited range of services that they alone

control. Instead, they’re offering a far greater

number of services, sometimes with partners,

sometimes by themselves and sometimes with

the services of over-the-top (OTT) providers

which ride over their networks but do not

involve operators in the value chain.

Accepting the fact that they (operators) are

moving away from owning the service and that

they need to be the “best and smartest” carrier

of 3rd party services will be next competitive

frontier.

Importantly, some of these services will have

extremely short lifecycles – of as little as a few

days for services related to a specific event –

so operators need to be able to launch,

manage and kill services rapidly and regularly.

Service proliferation has moved the policy and

charging rules function (PCRF) on from being

about protecting the network and enabling

policy to be applied to a limited number of

static services that have long lifecycles, such

as flat rate data tariffs or simple monthly

allowance.

Shared data plans include offerings such as,

as per service, per device, per day time or per

location data bundles as well as free access to

specific services to be shared across a family

unit. The capabilities of the bundle can be

apportioned among family members and

directly controlled by the user with an exposed

WEB interface, typically the contract-holding

parent. Often additional detailed rules may be

added by the master user such as filtering for

the parental control. Equally, enterprises are

adopting bundles in which capacity and

services are apportioned among employees.

They’re also looking to segment private and

business use. That’s important for corporate

taxation compliance but it also enables

enterprises to ensure employees pay for

personal use but do not get charged for their

business-related consumption.

In spite of the transformations that are

continuing in the telecoms market, the motives

for policy remain unchanged with four key

drivers for deploying PCRF:

1) Making money by using policy to support

premium services such as HD video and

enabling new propositions to be launched

2) Saving cost through maximizing utilization

of network equipment to postpone new

network investment and limiting

unprofitable network consumption

3) Addressing new technology and new

services such as LTE and VoLTE by

supporting them with policy control in new

Diameter-based signaling environments

4) Achieving regulatory compliance by

enabling usage caps on roaming to ensure

compliance with anti-bill shock or roaming

regulation


page 3

Why traditional approaches to PCRF aren’t fit for purpose anymore

Traditional PCRF products – generally –

were adequate for addressing the specific

requirements of a service they were

designed to support. However, greater

flexibility is now required and operators’

time to market challenges mean that the

traditional approach of developing a PCRF

product to support a new service is too

time consuming, requires too much

repeated work every time a new service is

launched and relies too heavily on the

product vendor.

Triggering a programme of service-specific

product development by a PCRF vendor

every time an operator wants to launch a

new service is a flawed methodology on

two levels. First it will take time to

communicate the functionality required

and further time for the vendor to develop

the product to address the requirements –

and often it turns out not to be possible to

address such requirements effectively.

Secondly, that development work comes at

a cost to an operator.

Operators can’t go through this type of

planning process that can take many

months in order to launch an event-

specific service that may have a life of only

a few weeks or days while a sports

tournament is going on, for example. That

would see operators not only incur the cost

of development but also limit their ability to

make money because of the delay in being

able to launch a new service. In some

cases opportunities to provide a service at

a specific event may be missed because

the system cannot be made ready in time.

Greater flexibility is now required and

operators’ time to market challenges mean

that the traditional approach of developing

a PCRF product to support a new service

is too time consuming and requires too

much repeated work every time a new

service is launched and relies too heavily

on the product vendor.

More routinely, though, operators will find

their ability to compete hindered. For

example, if an operator-competitor

launches a new service, the operator will

need to launch a competing and

comparable service in as short a time

frame as possible.

Every day lost in time to market is a day of

service revenue lost and, worse if the new

service is compelling, the operator could

start to lose subscribers and suffer all the

substantial costs connected to subscriber

churn as a result.

page 4


A future proof approach to PCRF

What is needed is a new approach to PCRF that removes the constraints associated with traditional policy control products. Those constraints are mainly related to a lack of flexibility, which can lead to complex configuration requirements when operators want to add new services or make changes to policy.

Open platforms for PCRF that enable flexible configuration are required to meet operators’ goals of achieving new service deployment in days and achieving that in a cost effective way. One way of achieving that acceleration of time to market and a reduction in cost is to select a system to which changes can be made without vendor involvement.

Flexible configuration is at the heart of that because it can easily complement any type of predefined scenarios that operators have to follow. Typical policy systems are limiting because of the inflexible nature of the pre-defined scenarios that policy product vendors offer, any additional configuration or adaptation to particular business needs involving time consuming and costly additional development work done exclusively by the product vendor. A key benefit is to avoid reinventing the

wheel every time an operator launches a new service.

The flexible configuration approach means that the same technical foundations can be used to support different types of services. With an open PCRF platform even the data model behind it can be modified so it can be based not only on time or data consumption but centered on some other metric such as capacity availability, the status of the user or the value to the operator of the service being consumed. Services built on such an open PCRF can very quickly integrate with external elements and operators and potentially partner companies can add new interfaces without touching the core of the platform.

The PCRF can be connected to an application or connected to a new billing platform, for example, and that is what makes it so flexible. The logic can be manipulated or changed as demand dictates.

Beyond the domestic services managed by the operator, a large extent of new services are becoming ready to be deployed over the network, but with an external party as the owner. These are not just OTT services but also traditional

MVNO services, very much managed and orchestrated outside the operator infrastructure. In order to be the “best and smartest” carrier of these services there needs to be an “openness” to the key elements of service control, which spells PCRF amongst others. This “openness” manifests itself as the ability to expose network-controlling functions as more abstract and simple functions to be consumed by different external BSS systems.

Wouldn’t an operator who provides the outside content community with the tools to self-service their services and subscribers be more attractive than one who locks everything into a black box without visibility? Flexible configuration and openness in terms of API and Information availability as part of the PCRF product will ensure that this opportunity can be capitalized on.

page 5


Video-on-demand at tier 1 Central European operator

An example of how flexible configuration

enables operators to accelerate time to

market and create new services tailored

for specific expenses is a recent

Computaris engagement at a central

European operator.

The operator’s country was host to a large

sports tournament and wanted to offer a

range of custom services, including video

content, relating to the tournament.

However, its existing PCRF was a closed

solution that could not address the time to

market needs of the operator so the

operator began to look for alternatives.

The operator was faced with a situation in

which even very simple projects took from

a few weeks to several months to

complete and the operator wanted to be

able to launch new services and functions

in days. Delay caused by vendor lock-in

and waiting for a vendor’s research and

development department to make changes

would be unacceptable.

Computaris proposed a new system based

on an open platform that offered a much

more flexible architecture. In addition,

because Computaris is a systems

integrator, it develops new services for the

operator without involving the platform

vendor’s research and development

department.

During the deployment, Computaris

migrated the services from the old PCRF

to the new environment in a completely

transparent way. The new PCRF solution

looks the same from the interface

perspective as the old system but offers

radically faster time to market for new

services without vendor lock-in. This

enabled the operator to offer a video-on-

demand service almost immediately,

providing content from the sports

championship. Computaris was required to

implement sophisticated logic on the

PCRF within a few weeks and the service

was live for just a few weeks.

Customers of the operator received

special treatment and were not required to

pay for the videoon-demand service when

they were on an LTE network. Computaris

created policies based on the method of

access used and in that respect the

deployment was not a typical video-on-

demand experience. However, the

platform reveals far greater benefit

because it is applicable to many future use

cases without substantial additional

development. The new PCRF solution

looks the same from the interface

perspective as the old system but offers

radically faster time to market for new

services without vendor lock-in.

Launch of fixed mobile convergence at

an operator

Another example of how Computaris

works with operators to enable a fast roll-

out of new data services is a recent

engagement at a large tier 1 mobile

operator planning to offer a new converged

fixed and mobile service on the market.

The operator had already begun the

process of rolling out a solution from a

traditional PCRF provider.

page 6


Video-on-demand at tier 1 Central European operator

However, two months before the

commercial launch, it was clear this would

not be fast enough to meet the operator’s

deadlines and having public

announcements already made there were

both an expectation on the market and an

internal pressure to have all services

ready. The operator turned to Computaris

for the implementation of the PCRF

functionality on an open platform. The

result is that, within less than two months

the service was live and successfully

running.

VoLTE with PCRF integration

Computaris has completed a proof of

concept that integrates VoLTE with the

PCRF and enables tests to be performed

end-to-end. That proof of concept was

configured in just a few days and

demonstrates how accelerated policy

configuration can enable operators to bring

new services to market rapidly and also

enable the business case behind a new

service.


page 7

Beyond PCRF

PCEF and DPI, VoLTE, OCS Integration

Policy control, policy and charging

enforcement function (PCEF) and deep

packet inspection (DPI) platforms are all

systems build to enable operators to

create the data services that the market

demands from them. Also, in terms of

VoLTE IMS integration over Rx interface

will become increasingly important.

Computaris can help operators cope with

all the platforms and components they

have, leveraging its experience in using

them. Increasingly there is the requirement

for integration of PCRF with online

charging systems (OCS) and interaction

with BSS layer or with external providers

through open PCRF infrastructure.

Traditionally, that has been performed by

an S4 interface, which was not defined in a

detailed way, and integration has been

done by OCS vendors according to their

understanding of operators’ requirements.

It’s therefore important to have a PCRF

that can integrate with the OCS without

changes being required to the OCS. That

would create additional delay in bringing

new functions to market. The difference

with an open PCRF platform is that it can

adapt to the network, and associated

systems, rather than requiring the network

to adapt to the particular policy system.

Integration of that with PCEF, including

fast integration with DPI function of packet

gateways, delivers the ability to modify

logic or interfaces very quickly.

In order to implement sophisticated

services or products within PCRF, this

logic needs to be implemented on the

packet gateway side and this allows

features to be added on the PCRF side

that cannot be added on the PCEF side.

This is less applicable to applications such

as limiting traffic but more valuable

because it enables an operator to assign a

usage quota for particular customers or for

the buckets of usage within a shared or

bundled tariff. Computaris’ approach

means the quotas for a given service can

be controlled on the PCRF side or the

PCEF side. That knowledge of both is

important because delivery of PCRF,

PCEF and DPI makes it easier to build

complicated services more quickly.


Disruptive buzz words that don’t mean much to policy control

Big Data

Although there has been huge hype surrounding big data and analytics as potential new sources of revenue, the implications for policy control are negligible at the moment.

Operators certainly have huge data repositories and those are under-exploited from a monetization perspective but, from a practical point of view, the application of big data to PCRF is still a remote prospect.

Computaris understands big data and sees it being applied to policy management but not in the short-term. Instead, the data in policy management is more likely to be combined – in a method yet to be determined – with data from other systems. Potentially an area such as mediation is where the data source in more likely to be taken from.

For now, though, big data from a practical point of view remains a remote concept when it comes to policy control and management.

Network functions virtualization

Network functions virtualization (NFV),

along with adjacent technology software defined networks (SDN), are seen as transformative to operators because they decouple the service carried over the network from the hardware. Virtualization means that operators will not need servicespecific hardware and they will be able to ensure maximized utilization of network equipment.

In addition, because the network is not constrained by the equipment it is composed of, new services will be able to be launched more rapidly and there will, in general, be greater flexibility available to operators because of their usage of virtual machines. The flipside of that is that more will be managed by software and a greater reliance on IT rather network expertise will emerge.

Where operators traditionally had switches that were controlled by proprietary network equipment vendor software, SDN and NFV extract control out of the network and bring the scalability of cloud computing to the network.

The policy function is software-based and therefore fits well with the NFV concept but it really is nothing new and Computaris doesn’t see virtualization as a key source

of disruption for policy control and management in the future. However the NFV will still be a differentiator in the policy vendor landscape. Mostly since openness and configurability are key attributes of any virtual network function in the NFV. The ability to be externally configurable and later deployed with new connectivity settings, new or updated processing rules, such as policy and charging rules, and later deployed with the new rule-base is not something that “all” PCRF vendors provide support for.

Yes, much of the increased utilization arguments start to become less clear in smaller operators, or operators that only have one operating unit. Those operators don’t need the scalability that large operator groups have because each market has its own characteristics so the need for volume capability is not so acute.

In large markets, such as the US, the operators have already consolidated their operations and, although Computaris has virtualization capabilities, demand for virtualization of policy functions has not materialized.


What Computaris offers

Computaris is different to a traditional

policy control and management vendor

because it does not have specific products

to sell. Instead it takes a consultative,

rather than product-oriented, approach

that enables it to build an understanding of

the issues an operator faces before using

its experience to build an appropriate

solution.

That solution may use a policy product

from a specific vendor but Computaris is

not locked-in to a specific technology or

product so will always build the best

solution available to meet the operator’s

requirements. Often that will involve

bespoke development of the products

used so they are configured to match the

operator’s needs.

This means that Computaris is not limited

by the capabilities of a specific product

and can engage with operators on widely

diverse projects, using the best available

technical base for each.

The systems integration background that

Computaris has enables them to select the

most appropriate solution for a particular

operator product or service. In addition,

that integration experience means

Computaris has the knowledge to identify

what works and what will not. That’s why

when operators need to achieve fast

results they turn to Computaris.

Computaris’ project involvements at 50+

operators across the globe empower them

to give impartial advice and develop

customized solutions quickly. For example,

Computaris already offers consultancy and

services on an open PCRF platform for

VoLTE services. VoLTE challenges

operators in many ways because service

quality is critical to ensure the voice

experience is good and VoLTE relies on an

all-IP environment.

Computaris is not only a provider of policy

solutions, it covers all BSS/OSS domain,

having a broad hands-on experience

gathered from 1000+ telecom projects. It

has expertise that covers the data plane

encompassing: real time network

monitoring, congestion control and

capacity planning, intelligent mobile traffic

offload to Wi-Fi quality of experience

management, web and video optimization,

content caching, and extensive network

analytics and reporting. In the signaling

plane, Computaris has expertise in

diameter signaling and load balancing, in

addition to

Working as prime integrator, Computaris is

able to provide complete solutions to

operators, taking responsibility for system

design and combining best of breed

products from leading vendors into

comprehensive platforms for operators.

The flexibility provided enables operators

to break the shackles of vendor lock-in and

achieve true operational flexibility as they

transform to succeed amongst the

disruptive challenges inherent in the

market. PCRF.


DigitalRoute solution promotion

Not all mediation products on the market meet the requirements for playing the role of a strategic integration platform. We would like to present a proven example –Mediation Zone from Digital Route. The platform has proved itself in numerous real life deployments. It supports multiple integration areas from batch CDR mediation, on line charging and billing communication and Extract Transform Load processes to delivering Service Creation environments and even specific, complete, built over solutions like Policy Management (PCRF), Usage Management and Routing Control.

/ Natural step in evolution of mediation platforms

/ Links to DR documents

/ NFV

DigitalRoute general description

The MediationZone platform is based on an open architecture and is adaptable through configuration to support multiple use cases that may be required in a customer solution. Any necessary functionality can easily be obtained by combining off the shelf features and

options. These options can themselves be configured in order to accommodate custom business logic. The MediationZoneplatform is fundamentally different to alternatives on the market because it was built from first principles with ease of use, scalability and performance in mind. A platform independent solution due to the early decision to use Java long before it was fashionable to do so, MZ runs on Commodity, off-the- shelf hardware. The system’s performance is sufficient to handle both the incredible volumes of data and the increasing diversity and variety of data formats and sources relevant to any Service provider anywhere in the world, over 2G, 3G, or 4G networks or a combination of all of them.

In any situation that requires network data to be collected, processed and forwarded and regardless of output parameters, MediationZone is proven able to cope. Its integrated Real-time, Batch and database collection functionality together with an intuitive graphical interface allow the user to easily build new business models and deploy them without disrupting existing runtime environments.

Using Java, DigitalRoute has designed

MediationZone to run on any operating system. It provides dynamic loading of new software, which in return allows the user to add and change functions at run-time.

Additionally, the just-in-time compilation functionality optimizes the executing code to achieve bestin-class performance. Given the breadth of the Java community globally, the number of libraries and degree of technology support available is near unlimited. DigitalRoute’s industry leading GUI, Development Toolkit and unique, modular design enable MediationZone users to make changes with ease, adding not only new interfaces but also altering existing ones without any vendor involvement (unless requested). Users can easily add functionality in the solution to support their own process. Furthermore, the scalable nature of MediationZone enables both horizontal and vertical ways of adding processing power, whether via additional hardware such as CPU, RAM, disc or working instances such as execution contexts to share the load of the processing, or another approach.


About

DigitalRoute

DigitalRoute has been providing new

approaches to enterprise data

management since 1999. Its software

platform offers high throughput and

provides a unique degree of user

configurability, processing all usage and

statistical data extracted from the

networks, including both billable and non-

billable events. This means customers

gain greater cost efficiencies, improved

times-to-market for new service offerings,

the ability to monetize any data, and the

means to enhance end-customer

satisfaction. DigitalRoute makes network

events available to the right systems in the

right formats in the most appropriate

volumes at the required times, without

losing a single bit. This is the foundation

from which multiple, mission-critical use-

cases can be addressed in the areas of

Online Control and Data Processing.

Over 300 leading companies worldwide

actively use DigitalRoute technology to

meet their data management needs,

including a number of OEM partners who

use our platform as a central part of their

own offerings. DigitalRoute is built on the

core values of Expertise, Open-

Mindedness and Commitment.

DigitalRoute is a venture-backed, privately

held company with a turnover of 30m EUR

in 2013 and a record of profitability since

2005. With close to 200 employees, the

company is headquartered in Stockholm,

Sweden with regional offices in

Gothenburg, Atlanta, and Kuala Lumpur.

Computaris

Computaris provides system integration

and software development for the mobile

industry. Its customers know that even

highly complex projects are always

delivered on time and on budget. It does

this through its disciplined yet flexible

approach toward problem-solving.

Computaris has experts with deep domain

expertise that guide customers through

their challenges from start to finish, making

all projects streamlined and personal.

Computaris has delivered over 1,000

successful projects across 20 years and

has worked with over 70 operators in 50

countries.

Computaris has an enviable track-record

across real-time rating and charging,

messaging, provisioning, mediation,

subscriber data management, mobile

broadband data policy management,

loyalty and churn management.

Computaris is part of the R Systems

Group, a company with over 2,500

employees and 100 million USD turnover.

For more information, please visit

www.computaris.com.

Got any questions? Contact us:

/

Email: [email protected]

page 12


mailto:[email protected]

/Thankyou!

/[+44]20.7193.9189www.computaris.com

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Open Policy Control Platforms