A U.S. tier one LTE operator selected mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec to expand its new Diameter network. The service provider will implement two new Tekelec Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) systems, in addition to the one announced in June 2011.

With the two new DSR systems, the service provider will be able to:

• Efficiently manage subscriber profile information and network databases. The DSR centralizes subscriber routing data and dynamically maps identification information, such as an MSISDN or IMSI, with the correct IMS Home Subscriber Server (HSS). Tekelec’s approach gives the service provider flexibility to move subscribers between databases and update databases when a new IMS HSS is added to the network, supporting future Voice over LTE (VoLTE) deployment.

• Deliver innovative services. The DSR will provide the policy Diameter Routing Agent (DRA) function which supports the network-wide binding of subscriber sessions to policy engines, required for one policy server to track a subscriber’s multiple services, such as application usage and web browsing. This will allow the service provider to deliver new services requiring advanced usage tracking such as shared data plans.

• Ease the signaling storm. Intelligent routing of policy messages reduces network signaling, helping to minimize the risk to the network from unexpected congestion events.

• Scale policy deployments. The Diameter Signaling Router will efficiently scale nationwide policy deployments by managing signaling messages across a variety of interfaces.

Read the full announcement here.

Tekelec will unveil its vision of the New Diameter Network, the foundation of a successful mobile data business, at Mobile World Congress 2012. To schedule a meeting with a Tekelec Diameter expert, click here.

Introducing the New Diameter Network

Billions of connected devices and applications, along with new service plans, are creating a signaling storm among network elements such as policy servers, charging systems, and subscriber databases. Come see demonstrations of how the market-leading Diameter Signaling Router, the core of the New Diameter Network, helps service providers successfully monetize data services and manage the rapid growth in signaling and data traffic.

Read the full announcement here.

Mobile broadband solutions company Tekelec and telecoms IT solutions provider Tecnotree Corporation today announced successful interoperability testing between Tekelec’s Policy Server (PCRF) and Tecnotree’s Real-Time Convergent Charging system. This is the first announced integration between independent policy and charging vendors over the proposed Sy interface. This gives mobile service providers the scalability and Diameter signaling efficiency required to grow their mobile data networks and deliver personalized data plans.

The 3GPP and member organizations – including Tekelec and Tecnotree – are developing the Sy interface to improve Diameter-based communications between the PCRF and online charging systems (OCS). The new standard interface is being introduced this year.

Read the full announcement here.

Integration between policy management and charging systems is both a vital requirement and a potential obstacle to new personalized service plans. The majority of tier one mobile operators plan to integrate policy servers with separate charging systems rather than deploy pre-integrated policy and charging systems from a single vendor.

Join Tekelec for a webinar on Tuesday, February 7, at 11:00 EST to learn more about the options for policy and charging integration, and why independent solutions are service providers’ preference. Heavy Reading’s Graham Finnie and Tekelec’s Joanne Steinberg will examine the survey results and discuss the importance working with a policy vendor that has integrated its policy server with charging systems across multiple tier one operators

Sign up here.

Tekelec published research from industry analyst firm Heavy Reading showing that the majority of tier one mobile operators plan to integrate policy servers with existing charging and billing systems rather than deploy pre-integrated policy and charging systems from a single vendor. The full release is here.

Some key findings include:
- Nearly 70 percent of tier ones said they will use the policy server (a policy and charging rules function, or PCRF) to perform some charging or rating functions.

- Tier one operators have run into significant challenges implementing online charging for data. For example, almost 60 percent cited higher costs due to customization and professional services.

What do you think of these findings?

CTO Doug Suriano discusses how mobile data will spur innovations in 2012 – especially in terms of pricing models – in an article for RCR Wireless. He predicts that this year will see advancements in personalized plans and cloud services, as well as a major rise in signaling traffic.

According to Suriano:

As mobile data matures in developed markets, we expect several significant evolutions in 2012. The biggest for subscribers will be pricing plan innovations, providing new personalized service and cost options. In addition, we forecast rapid cloud service adoption, new content business models and new device segmentation.

The full article can be found here.

Tekelec was recently named the top policy management vendor by Infonetics Research’s annual global service provider survey for the third consecutive year.  Tekelec leads the list of companies named as a top policy vendor with 50 percent more respondents than the second-place company.

As many operators already know, policy management is fast becoming mission critical as service providers try to cope with the broadband data boom.  Most early policy deployments have focused on one or two use cases such congestion control or fair-use management, but that’s all about to change. As traffic levels swell and competition heats up, operators are looking at a broader and more complex set of use cases. Creating a more sophisticated  policy environment means more triggers and more frequent policy adaptations. So, it’s not surprising that operators looking for easy-to-use policy creation environment that makes it as simple as possible to create and deploy policies themselves.

Tekelec’s policy server/PCRF is designed to help providers shape policies quickly to respond to changing network conditions and subscriber behavior.  With the system’s simple GUI, service-provider personnel, even non-specialists, can intuitively build complex policy rules. The GUI is based on a “wizard” interface, which contains a large number of triggers, conditions and actions. Using interactive pull-down menus, users can populate the network with any number of “if/then” cases. If needed, rules can be modified later, according to variables defined by the service provider, ­without the user having to know a specific language syntax. And, because Tekelec’s policy management system has been successfully integrated with an extensive list of other policy enforcement endpoints, operators can easily integrate the PCRF with their existing policy and charging infrastructure.

For more information, click here to download a free white paper that outlines key considerations in selecting a next-generation policy server.

Guest post by Shira Levine, Directing Analyst, Next Gen OSS and Policy, at Infonetics Research

As we approach the end of 2011 and I try to summarize the top trends of the year, three words keep flashing into my consciousness from countless PowerPoint presentations, trade show signs, and conference agendas: customer experience management. Suddenly, the customer is a hot topic, and how to manage him has been fodder for endless conversations of the last year—and, dare I say, a certain amount of hype.

What exactly is customer experience management (CEM)? It depends on who you’re talking to; there’s no standardized definition put out by the 3GPP or the TM Forum. A network management or test vendor would probably discuss CEM in terms of service management, while a CRM or billing vendor would frame it in the context of customer care. Nor do operators seem to have a universal sense of what CEM means, with varying views based on factors such as the competitive environment and regulatory requirements, and even variation between the departments of a single operator.

My personal opinion is that CEM is all about understanding how the subscriber wants to interact with his/her CSP, and acting accordingly. That could mean an acknowledgment and an apology after a certain number of dropped calls, and possibly even a credit. It could mean personalized advertising and promotions based on past usage. Or perhaps it could mean interacting with the operator via a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook, or through more traditional means. I think CEM is about giving customers options, and letting them make decisions about their services.

And though CEM does indeed have a lot to do with customer care, billing, and service assurance, policy management plays a huge and often underappreciated role. Policy may have once been all about bandwidth control, but the next generation of policy management solutions is focused on how operators can offer subscribers more targeted and personalized services with demonstrable value—characteristics most operators’ service offerings sorely lack.

Take most data plans as an example. We all know by now that flat-rate all-you-can-eat data plans are unprofitable and unsustainable, but operators looking to transition to tiered billing models face subscriber backlash—in large part because customers question the value of tiered plans. For them, a tiered plan means a bucket of bandwidth per month, without a way to understand how that translates into usage, and a constant worry about exceeding that quota (and incurring overage fees) or under-using the bandwidth and leaving that money on the table.

Policy management allows the operator to add context to those new service models, by correlating service requirements with available bandwidth and presenting that information to the subscriber in a way she can understand. Rather than selling subscribers buckets of data, an operator could sell a movie package that includes four HD movies each month with guaranteed quality of service plus a set number of hours of Internet browsing, or market a service to Twitter junkies that exempts traffic from social networking sites from monthly quotas. Or in the case of a shared data plan—the subject of a white paper I recently co-wrote—a family could share a certain number of movies or hours of online gaming or Internet usage across devices, as opposed to a bucket of Gigabits each family member pulls from.

Why, then, aren’t more operators deploying these new service plans? It’s certainly not a technical issue—these business models are all feasible, given the relative maturity of the commercially available solutions. I believe the stumbling block is the far more pervasive one of service provider mindset. CEM is a giant paradigm shift; the service is no longer about what the network can support, but about what the customer wants. For this to occur, operators need to break down their traditional internal silos—departmental silos, network silos, service silos, etc.—and work more collaboratively, sharing information and solutions. Until that occurs, the term “customer experience management” is likely to remain a buzzword instead of becoming a reality.

About Shira

With 15 years as an analyst and journalist in the telecommunications industry, Shira Levine joined Infonetics Research in April 2009 an accomplished expert in the OSS, billing, and service delivery platform markets. She authors several Infonetics equipment market size and forecast reports on policy servers, service delivery platform (SDP) software and services, and subscriber data management (SDM) software and services, as well as an ongoing series of Continuous Research Service (CRS) notes and surveys on important communication industry players, technologies, and service provider trends.

Guest Post By Richard Webb , Directing Analyst, Mobile Devices, at Infonetics Research

As the analyst responsible for tracking the mobile broadband devices market at Infonetics Research, I have been asked to participate as a judge for the smartphones category at the Mobile World Congress industry awards taking place in February 2012.

As I considered where to place my vote, I had to consider each phone’s functionality, aesthetic appeal, performance, value-for-money, and other criteria. This became increasingly tricky, because not all smartphones are trying to appeal in the same way to the same user. This sounds obvious, but of late, differentiation in this segment has become much more marked due to the market entrance of a new breed of smartphone.

A Segment Emerges: The Low-End Smartphone

Previously, all the focus of innovation in the smartphone market had been at the top end: making smartphones even smarter, faster, flashier . . . and more expensive. Functionality comes at a price and the drive from vendors had been to exceed the capabilities of its competitors, confident in the belief that early-adopters would not be able to resist.

But this focus has changed. Not completely, because of course there is still much attention being paid to making smartphones better than ever: the dream of the ‘ultra-smartphone’ (whatever exactly that might mean) still spurs vendors on to new heights. But there is now a discernible counterpoint to the likes of the iPhone and the Galaxy: the ‘low-end’ smartphone.

With the emergence of smartphones such as the Huawei Blaze, Motorola Defy and the ZTE Skate, launched this year at price-points around $150, the focus is no longer on maximizing functionality, but optimizing functionality: the low-end smartphone doesn’t try to do everything, but instead does enough. Enough, that is, for people for whom the array of capabilities of smart smartphones, and also the cost, is excessive. The low-end smartphone competes on price, not on being a cutting-edge must-have gadget.

This shift of emphasis acknowledges there is a degree of overkill in the segment – many smartphones are capable of far more than we ask of them. But higher functionality might be equated with lower user-friendliness –  smarter phones are fine, but if we do not use all the functionality we are paying for, does this represent value?

Barriers to Mobile Broadband Adoption Are Lowered

Cheaper smartphones are appealing. Not only do lower prices bring these smartphones into the price range of a larger potential market, but less functionality actually makes them appeal more. Focusing on a basic range of features (email, browsing, MP3, photos, applications) can be a good thing; these are the features most used by the majority of smartphone users. High-end features such as 3D video are not for everybody, and over-complexity can be a barrier to adoption.

Low-end smartphones should combine well with the emergence of shared data plans to drive mobile broadband adoption. In a recent whitepaper by Infonetics Research (All in the Family: How Shared Data Plans are Driving New Requirements, October 2011 ), we noted that mobile operators will offer plans giving users a ‘pool’ of data to be shared between multiple devices, or multiple users, to give greater flexibility in terms of usage and devices.

As smartphones get simpler and cheaper, users want more devices, but not necessarily more data plans. Not only are separate data plans per device expensive, they also frequently give users a higher total data allowance than they can actually use; however, shared data plans and low-end smartphones share a synergy that counters this: value-for-money.

Infonetics forecasts that approximately 15% of all smartphones will be sold as part of a shared data plan by 2015. It will become an increasingly important method for selling smartphones, particularly for new mobile broadband adopters looking for simplicity – exactly the demographic for whom low-end smartphones might appeal.

One Day, All Phones Will Be Like This!

This is not a ‘dumbing-down’ of the smartphone segment, just a focus on optimizing smartphones in terms of the right functionality at the right price point for the right market segment. At some point all mobile phones will be smartphones. With low-end smartphones driven by Huawei and others, we are certainly getting closer to that reality.

As for which smartphone will win the Mobile World Congress award . . . find out in Barcelona in February 2012!

———–

About Richard

Richard Webb is a highly sought-after analyst, consultant, writer and speaker who has been covering telecom markets for 13 years, including WiMAX since shortly after its inception in 2001, making him one of the industry’s foremost WiMAX experts. As a directing analyst with Infonetics Research, Richard authors and co-authors numerous market share and forecast reports, service provider surveys, and Continuous Research Service (CRS) opinion pieces on WiMAX, LTE, 4G, mobile broadband, FMC, microwave, mobile backhaul, and phones and devices (mobile, FMC, WiFi, smartphones).