@ LTE LatAm: Enforcing rules and more 'a la carte' service may liberate broadband providers

RIO DE JANEIRO – Future profitability of LTE may be decided by service providers that enforce their usage policies more strictly and tailor new packages to a wider variety of customers, according to a major vendor at Informa’s LTE Latin America conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Video streaming and Voice over Internet Protocol/instant messaging have become the largest portions of mobile broadband’s market growth in the last few years, and it’s more common for a small minority of users to dominate larger portions of network bandwidth, says Eyal Yaron, director of solution marketing for Allot Communications Ltd., a vendor of policy enforecement equipment.
“That’s simply unfair based on the investments you’re going to make in the network,” Yaron said, who presented different ways for providers to curb this trend by getting tough on policy enforecement. “We’re talking about just putting some limits on the (consumer). We’re not hurting the subscriber, we’re really improving every subscriber’s average daily experience.”
Many service providers may not be seeing usage growth rapidly outpace revenue growth, and that has been complicated in more markets by battles over gigabyte price. Service providers also have to deal with outside players like YouTube and Facebook piggybacking off their investments in infrastructure, making significant profits without any responsibility for building the network.
Yaron offered various examples of case studies where Allot’s customers began enforcing usage policies more strictly, and recovered significant bandwidth that had been occupied by peer-to-peer downloading activity. He also highlighted new ideas for tiering service into value-added packages that can help service providers manage how users and third-parties profit off of one another on their network.
New tiered services and bundling options are coming to light around the world, Yaron said, offering clients premium service at prices they can afford and moments they need it most. Soccer fans could have the option of paying extra for a few hours of high quality streaming video when their team has a match being broadcast, and business clients could choose packages for their BlackBerries that charge less for access only to e-mail, and more if they want the privilege of surfing the Web freely.
Free Internet access with limited content could help providers reach even lower economic classes in developing countries, Yaron said, while sponsored connectivity options could build off the Kindle model, where an equipment vendor boosts its brand by subsidizing Web connecitivity for users, albeit on a very limited basis.