Mehmet Balos: We can reduce capital and operating expenses
for core network elements, increase network robustness and
improve users’ quality of experience 
                       
                       
The numbers are growing from smartphone adoption to content consumption and operators are rushing to keep up with the demand that is being placed on their networks. Mobile operators in particular are moving from 3G to 4G wireless technologies, with LTE ultimately set to become the most prevalent wireless network technology.
This year, an estimated 330 million smartphones and 42 million tablets will be sold and 50% of internet users will connect using wireless devices. That’s a key statistic and, coupled with figures suggesting 80% of new software will be available via the cloud and more than 25 billion apps will be downloaded this year, demonstrates that mobility is at the heart of the consumer experience.
Consumers want to be untethered and to have access to all their applications — anytime, anywhere and on any device.
LTE is a key enabling technology in this new era of communications with endless possibility. It will move the world from a smartphone era to an always-on era to ultimately a connected-anything era. Network-driven technology will be a key enabler of daily activities, yet it will become less and less visible to the end user. The user will no longer care about how it works — just that it works and works well.
The move towards 4G technology with LTE will push networks closer towards fixed mobile convergence. In the near term, LTE will enable billions, perhaps trillions, of devices to connect and will begin to enable a new generation of broadband to wireless applications.
The challenge for operators is to make the experience seamless so traffic can move from LTE to 3G, other 4G or 2G networks and onto the IP backhaul network without users detecting the shift or suffering from a degraded experience. While LTE roll-out is about radio access, the backhaul network and other wireless networks need to be ready to serve users with the applications and content that they demand.
On-demand bandwidth capability is available today, though not yet widely used. Over the next decade, use will increase dramatically. Organisations will still need to be conscious of bandwidth needs when designing networks, but will find that the flexibility after the initial deployment is far greater. Greater flexibility allows easy adjustments that more readily meet changing business needs.
The growth of bandwidth-intensive applications will make dynamic and on-demand bandwidth capabilities routine. In many cases, businesses will be able to upgrade bandwidth almost instantly, without human intervention, triggered by consumption patterns and parameters set in advance. Organizations may pay for underlying capacity and then peak bandwidth and data transfer utilization, in a model similar to today’s commercial electricity suppliers.
This will lead to a need for network intelligence so operators can offer tiered pricing; provide personalisation of broadband services, offer intelligent caching and content acceleration capabilities to support the growth in video traffic and to provide signalling optimisation to address inefficient use of network and radio resources by smart devices. This will grow the demand for traffic and policy management solutions leveraging deep packet inspection (DPI) technology.
Some suppliers are providing integrated solutions in what they’re selling as the easiest path to traffic and policy management (TPM), embedding these capabilities into other network elements, such GGSNs. However this leads to significant performance degradation of core network elements and provides service providers with less flexibility.
Instead, service providers can seek stand-alone TPM solutions that can be inserted at any point in the network they are required, and that can be customized to address new applications as they arise.
The problem mobile operators face is heavy mobile data congestion, particularly in the radio access network or RAN, notes Mehmet Balos, chief marketing officer at Genband.
That’s why Genband offers a stand-alone product — the P Series traffic and policy management solution — that can work both in the core network and in the RAN. That means the P Series solutions provide visibility into a lot more of the traffic, be it media or signalling traffic, both inline and as a probe. And solutions that can look at signalling traffic in addition to media are much more deterministic in addressing congestion, Balos says.
Speaking to these issues at Mobile World Congress earlier this year in Barcelona, the company introduced the Genband Mobile Edge Optimization Suite as an enhancement to its P Series of traffic and policy management solutions.
“Our Mobile Edge Optimization Suite enables service providers to accurately identify and characterize mobile congestion issues in the RAN,” says Balos. “Through a more intuitive and nuanced TPM approach, we can significantly reduce capital and operating expenses for core network elements, increase network robustness and improve the quality of experience for users.”
Genband is also unique in its ability to deliver TPM solutions that are customized to address the particular application requirements of different mobile operators. Balos says that unless a traffic and policy management solution knows which applications are in use in any particular market, it doesn’t know what to look for.
The biggest of the stand-alone TPM players, Genband has significant resources, and it understands the nuances of different markets and which applications are filling up the networks in various locales, so it can deliver customized TPM solutions to address that. To make sure its TPM solutions adapt with changing application and traffic trends, Genband provides frequent updates to its signature database, he adds.
All of the above means that Genband can deliver solutions that are best suited to provide mobile network operators with a real-time, granular view of the applications and traffic on their networks. As a result, mobile service providers can optimize their networks from end to end.
But TPM solutions are about more than just network optimization and ensuring the quality of carriers’ existing services. The Genband P Series also can be leveraged by mobile network operators to deliver new revenue-generating and loyalty-enhancing services today and well into the future.
“Traffic and policy management is the foundation for innovative solutions in content delivery, services creation and personalization,” says Balos. 
                       
                       
Flexibility from the ground up 
                       
The big leap in going from 3G to LTE is that it results in a fully IP-based end-to-end environment which will lead to convergence of computers, consumer electronics, communication technology, as well as several other convergences. It is an open network, supports global roaming and seamless hand-off between devices and is backward compatible.
It will provide very high speeds with very low latency. It will provide an environment in outdoor and indoor situations with end-to-end QoS for superior user experience and high security, offering any kind of services anytime, anywhere, at affordable cost and with a single bill. This environment is all about providing the killer user experience rather than the killer app.
Genband’s portfolio of solutions has been designed to address this brave new era of communications with continual innovation in the underlying network architecture, with solutions that enable operator customers to run, manage and optimise their networks in the most efficient way to assure their business cases and enable them to deliver high quality experiences to their customers.
With that in mind, Genband launched GENiUS, an all-IP platform designed to simplify and fuel the transformation and convergence of fixed and mobile networks. GENiUS, which stands for Genband IP Unified Services platform, is the first of its kind and is revolutionizing service provider networks.
“The bottom line behind GENiUS is reducing the total cost of ownership for service provider networks,” says Balos.
GENiUS uses the highest density computing hardware and an advanced Service Availability Forum compliant middleware to deliver world-class applications, performance, availability and cost savings. GENiUS is an open Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) software-centric IP platform that fully integrates call control, session, signalling, security, application and traffic and policy management.
The universal IP switching and networking platform has been designed to ensure that service providers are able to build their networks with state-of-the-art IP technology that provides the ability to scale up along with flexibility and cost.
GENiUS supports integrated application, call control, session border and security as well as traffic and policy management applications from Genband. The platform is built on high-performance, high-density computing hardware together with sophisticated middleware, GENWare, to deliver the highest functionality, availability and robustness in the market. GENiUS is being deployed as the common platform for many Genband applications and products.
Applicable to both wireless and fixed line operators, GENiUS underpins Genband’s strategy of empowering operators to derive more revenue from the increased usage of their networks by consumers. That involves having the fundamental ability to provide more applications and services while using the same infrastructure and equipment to reduce costs and increase revenue.
As the market moves towards LTE it is important to recognise that not every operator will go all-LTE or even deploy LTE at all. The large operators are creating an environment composed of multiple technologies that will exist for a long time. Arguably that blend of technology represents a true multi-service network. Flexible solutions such as the GENiUS platform enables the move to LTE while continuing to enable the 3G and fixed line environment, all of which combine to deliver the compelling communications experiences that users now demand. GTB