One of the biggest challenges facing communications service providers today is how to best monetize mobile data and avoid data becoming a commodity. To do so effectively, CSPs need to look at the value that data enables and not just think of pricing based on data volume alone. Enabling innovative models of service delivery and pricing is essential for CSPs to play a leading role in the digital value chain and not be relegated to bit players providing only commoditized connectivity.
Customer expectations of digital services are increasing all the time as data-enabled services are becoming more and more part of customers’ daily lives. CSPs must meet rising consumer expectations and emulate the same user experience fixed broadband delivers. These customer expectations have only increased as LTE has become even more pervasive. Even if operators successfully harness the additional network bandwidth on offer, they must still demonstrate the agility and flexibility to charge, bill and monetize these services. And this is where there is a problem and one that is becoming increasingly apparent as the capabilities of LTE evolve. CSPs are now seeing the limitations of legacy intelligent networks in monetizing mobile data.
Taking INs out … but not completely
IN historically enabled the introduction of services such as number portability and various forms of call control. The technology really came into its own when it enabled prepaid mobile users to receive the same IN services when roaming as they could on their home networks. The service control function is core to this success as it allows services to be enabled outside the switching network. The intention of SCF was always to increase the speed of service roll out and enhanced overall innovation.
The reality is, however, that this rarely proved the case. Although IN is widely used for controlling a large proportion of mobile calls, it failed to truly enable innovation, didn’t really shorten service rollout times and proved costly to support basic data services.
This does not mean to say that IN doesn’t still have a valuable role to play. The technology is still essential for supporting legacy voice and messaging systems, including the ability to support circuit-switched fallback for voice services in advance of voice over LTE and voice over Wi-Fi reaching full commercial mainstream. Operators still have a wide requirement to support legacy 2G and 3G networks – at least for the next five to seven years until total LTE migration has been completed. Indeed, supporting VoLTE will require a different network architecture, the IMS, which must also be considered.
Policy, online charging and bridging old and new
Policy and online charging systems remain relatively new arrivals but offer broad capabilities in terms of combining billing, charging and customer experience management. Combining the two technologies has been crucial in effectively monetizing next-generation mobile data services. Policy is no longer being used as a defensive capacity-throttling mechanism by operators. Instead it is being increasingly integrated with OCS to better enable data services. If IN services are to be effectively carried forward in next-generation LTE network ecosystems, they must support new features such as VoLTE.
LTE will require the introduction of the IMS to support and charge for VoLTE and VoWi-Fi delivery. Existing IN systems simply don’t have this capability and wouldn’t be able to go through the IMS domain. As demand for VoLTE is increasing, so too is the need for IN replacement. At the end of 2014 there were more than 497 million LTE customers globally. Having a legitimate voice capability across LTE networks therefore remains a critical revenue stream.
IN must therefore be replaced to ensure both legacy and emerging IMS networks are covered. New 3GPP architecture, which supports LTE, provides additional flexibility to emulate the capabilities of the SCF within next-generation packet-switched systems. This is achieved by the introduction of the telecom’s applications server, which sits alongside the SCF and creates a harmonized service layer that reduces the cost of change when evolving and innovating new data services and makes them faster to implement. Therefore, one service layer should provide the same experience for subscribers on both generations of the network.
IN replacement solutions must break away from the service-silo model and enable multiple services and applications to be delivered from a single platform (such as an SDF). This is the only way operators can facilitate fast service evolution and innovation, achieve parity with over-the-top providers and monetize LTE networks effectively.
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