Ron de Lange: service providers find themselves in a difficult
spot, trying to meet the increasing demands on their networks
while maintaining a healthy balance sheet
                                  
                              
Devices, technology and applications have converged to unleash a vast swell of data traffic on global networks. Data-enabled devices – smartphones, e-readers, tablets, and netbooks – are gobbling up network bandwidth at a pace that’s knocking many service providers back on their heels. And, there’s no slowdown in sight. By 2015, if analyst firm Informa Telecoms and Media is on the mark, the average amount of traffic generated by each smartphone will have increased by a massive 700%. Over-the-top providers are deluging the market with data-hungry apps and content. Cloud services are unleashing business and consumers from the constraints of their desktops and devices, enabling subscribers engage with their data-driven services 24x7. And, the continued growth of M2M apps like inventory-tracking and automated utility readers coupled with millions of M2M devices have the potential to tax even the most resilient networks.
In this fast-paced, volatile environment, service providers find themselves in a difficult spot, trying to meet the increasing demands on their networks while maintaining a healthy balance sheet. With its lightening speed and lower costs, LTE could be the solution to the service providers’ dilemma. But, there’s a hitch. Making the transition to LTE won’t be a clean break for most service providers; they’ll be saddled with their existing 2G, 3G and 4G networks for years to come. Any successful LTE build-out strategy, therefore, has to not only enable the delivery of high-bandwidth services but also pave a smooth migration path for non-LTE subscribers. Meeting these objectives requires a three-pronged approach: managing content delivery dynamically in real time, consolidating subscriber data, and creating a scalable network control plane. 
                                   
                             
Dynamic, real-time management of content delivery 
                             
Delivering every service over a single, next-gen broadband network raises some significant challenges for service providers. How can they satisfy the relentless demand for richer, more bandwidth-intensive content and applications while also keeping their network-expansion costs in check? How can they generate new revenue and guarantee high-quality delivery with a consistent quality of experience (QoE)? What impact will emerging cloud services have on the network?
Tekelec tackles these challenges with its intelligent policy management solution. It helps service providers control costs by managing bandwidth and network resources to handle traffic growth efficiently. Used in combination with a next-generation subscriber data management (SDM) solution, it provides a single, cross-domain view of each subscriber’s profile. With a consolidated subscriber view, service providers can verify subscriber identities and streamline service delivery. And, with the power to harness the network’s intelligence, service providers can use available resources more efficiently and deliver top-notch QoE to subscribers.
By enabling opt-in, high-quality/premium services like high-definition video and multimedia communications, intelligent policy management solutions boost ARPU. The ability to tier services and personalise their subscribers’ experience allows service providers to capture larger and more diversified segments of the market. These capabilities ultimately create a stickier relationship between service providers and their subscriber, reducing costly churn.
To maximise revenue and ensure service quality, service providers must be able to dynamically manipulate services as often as necessary in real time to meet changing network requirements and subscriber demands. Static policy control worked fine in the days of a one-size-fits-all approach to data services, when services rarely changed. But LTE’s different. What subscribers use, how much they use, where they use, and how much they pay can change daily or even hourly. 
                             
                             
Non-siloed subscriber data management 
                             
Widespread use of data-enabled devices, personalisation of subscriber services, the need to access and deliver cloud services and the deployment of all-IP networks are forcing service providers to rethink how they manage subscriber data. Currently, subscriber data is stored in many different locations in a variety of databases, typically defined by different access technologies and/or the applications that use the data. The situation is compounded by the fact that today’s diverse services require subscribers to maintain numerous settings and profiles on a per-service or even a per-access basis. Keeping up with all that information is often confusing for subscribers, which can hinder service adoption rates and reduce overall revenues. To simplify operations and the subscriber’s experience, service providers need a new approach to data management.
Changing the way subscriber data is managed can be a tough challenge. The existing subscriber database infrastructure is divided into silos – by network, application, service and/or geography. Data is duplicated across multiple silos and application front-end processing nodes. Applications are unaware of peer applications or databases. Modifying existing databases require software upgrades. As new services continue to grow, more silos are created, increasing complexity and driving up expenses. As service providers know only too well, it’s a situation that creates signalling and database scaling headaches.
Unlike traditional SDM (subscriber data management) platforms, next-generation solutions, like Tekelec’s, eliminate silos altogether. Flexible and extendable data schemas allow service providers to create new services without software upgrades. There’s no data duplication, and application front-end nodes can access the data they need from a single, highly-scalable relational database. In scaling the control plane, SDM solutions that consolidate data are just as important as a centralised signalling layer. Non-siloed SDM solutions are especially critical in LTE solutions because key network elements like Diameter routing and policy control require subscriber-level information to perform their functions. 
                             
                             
A highly scalable control plane 
                             
When it comes to handling signalling between LTE network elements and endpoints such as mobility management entities (MMEs) and home subscriber servers (HSSs), there are essentially two options: direct – point-to-point –signalling connections or a separate Diameter signalling infrastructure at the network core.
Direct connections create a mesh-like network architecture in which endpoints have to handle all session-related tasks – routing, traffic management, redundancy, security, and service implementation. This approach might work initially. However, as traffic levels swell, the lack of a capable signalling infrastructure creates a chaotic mesh which, in turn, adds to deployment and operational challenges and increases costs. 
As the number of multi-vendor devices increases, so do the number of protocol variants. Without a separate signalling framework, the addition of a new node or software load means that service providers must test and maintain interoperability with every existing node – consuming significant time and resources. Costs increase in proportion to the number of nodes in the network.
A centralised signalling architecture such as that provided by Tekelec’s Diameter Signalling Router (DSR), SIP Signalling Router (SSR) and SDM portfolio, provides the scalability service providers need to cost effectively expand the control plane. Creating a signalling infrastructure drives inefficiencies out of the network and makes it easy to scale the signalling portion of the control plane.
Many service providers are eyeing LTE technology as the panacea to the network challenges created by the explosive growth in data traffic. However, to realize LTE’s potential for boosting bandwidth and reducing costs, they must consider their deployment strategy carefully. To be successful, that strategy must enable intelligent bandwidth management, consolidation of subscriber data, and the creation of a scalable control plane. Equipped with those capabilities, service providers can stay ahead of the swelling demand for bandwidth, take control of their CAPEX/OPEX costs, create new revenue streams, and deliver consistently high QoE for their subscribers. 
                             
The author, Ron de Lange, is president and chief executive of Tekelec.