Sap0812 p2-data-offload-part2

w w w . g r e e n p a c k e t . c o m

APPLICATION NOTE

DATA OFFLOAD SURVIVAL GUIDE, A PHASED APPROACH –

DIRECT INTERNET OFFLOAD FOR PHASE 2

APPLICATION NOTE

Abstract

Mobile networks are now dominated by data. If we rewind back to a

decade ago, smartphones and application stores were unheard of. Twitter

and Facebook were not in existence and YouTube wasn’t as popular.

Culturally, consumers are valuing the need to be socially connected in the

present day Internet. YouTube may seem like a trivial video platform, but do

not undermine the amount of traffic it is capable of generating. There are

over 3 billion hours of video that are watched each month on YouTube.

The traditional cellular network cannot cope with the increase in data and

signaling traffic that is generated and thus is driving carriers in the direction

of offload. The Phase 1 approach was centered on immediately relieving

congestion on the network by encouraging offload to any available Wi-Fi

hotspot. In this second part of the five part offload series, we draw attention

to Direct Internet Offload. The concept of Direct Internet Offload is nothing

new, but has taken a slight shift considering Wi-Fi’s popularity. The reality of

data traffic being offloaded to a lower-cost network is achievable. And the

flexibility to integrate them into mainstream network design offers

transformative opportunities for carriers without losing sight of the

commitment to make the user experience secure and controlled.

Direct Internet Offload is another way of responding to the evolving

smartphone data usage patterns. Most often, those sessions demonstrate

frequent high burst throughput demanding low latency. Offload, when

executed correctly, can enable better user experience. The classic

confusion and misconceived idea of the offload environment should be

corrected for the very reasons of innovation- changing the business models

and driving it the right way to offer it to their customers.

Contents

Overview 01

Direct Internet Offload 02

Who are the Stakeholders?

Harnessing the Power of Behavior

Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload 06

Carrier Wi-Fi Build-out

Partnering Wi-Fi Aggregators

Experience Offload the Greenpacket Way

Offload and Quality of Service

Carrier Wi-Fi and Open APIs Going Forward 12

Conclusion 13

Transform Your Network with Direct Internet Offload 14

APPLICATION NOTE

Overview

Mobile broadband represents the fastest-growing revenue stream for

carriers. The value of the mobile services market is forecast to expand to

$976 billion by 2016, with the majority of growth stemming from mobile

broadband services. But the numbers do not add up and far from exhibiting

a linear relationship between data traffic growth and data revenues. From a

recent report by Infonetics1, the forecasts for mobile broadband

subscribers will grow from 15% of the total mobile subscriber base in 2011

to nearly 40% in 2016. And by that, it means there is a window of

opportunity that carriers should tap into.

The speed of video, data, applications appearing and bombarding the

networks will eventually level out, but before carries arrive at that inflection

point it is critical to find ways to satisfy their customers now. Services are

becoming more varied and fragmented, that subscribers need not rely on

traditionally guarded services that carriers used to provide. The emergence

of over-the-top (OTT) gives subscriber other means to be socially

inter-connected. On top of that, subscriber behavior is now more real-time

and driven by content and content is quickly clogging up the pipelines

without the boundaries of a fixed location, but all over.

As devices become “smarter” and more sophisticated, understanding

exactly how consumers are using their smartphone is proving to be more

challenging than previous generations of handsets. Carriers must now

move faster and re-define the meaning of experience, moving away from

the conservative practices. The connected world presents its own set of

challenges, ranging across issues of network management, experience

management, privacy and security threats. Despite these challenges,

access to mobiles and the Internet is truly beginning to unlock the power of

wireless technology to unite 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and LTE networks. Carriers are

aware that in order to offer sustainable network and differentiation they

need to leverage on offload methods to enable service innovation and help

reduce capital and operating expenses through the convergence of

3G-Wi-Fi wherever possible.

Overview - 01APPLICATION NOTE

1Source : Infonetics Research, 2G,3G,4G(LTE) Services and Subscribers : Voice, SMS/MMS, and Broadband Report

Direct Internet Offload - 02APPLICATION NOTE

Direct Internet Offload

Carriers have deliberated on Wi-Fi for many years and only in recent years

have carriers warmed-up to Wi-Fi as a viable option to provide immediate

relieve over issues of network congestion. Nevertheless, the success of any

offload strategy with Wi-Fi very much depends on the ease of experience it

brings to their subscribers. Wi-Fi offload can take several forms to realize.

It can be a tightly coupled deployment, where the carriers exercise full policy

control with granular visibility over the types of service the subscribers

access and consider an integrated billing and charging architecture.

In other instances, Wi-Fi offload can be less stringent, where it is loosely

coupled to the carrier’s core architecture as termed by Direct Internet

Offload which results in data traffic being passed direct to the Internet

omitting visibility of the subscriber. This form of offload is intended for

carriers to divert traffic away from the mobile network. Most often,

the Internet bound traffic has little or zero-revenue value to some extent.

Instead of paying to carry the traffic, it makes more sense to breakout as

soon as possible. As a result, carriers can moderate the core network

investments as traffic increases.

APPLICATION NOTE

Who are the Stakeholders?

Today, users expect a little more from their service providers; they expect

their network to be smart enough to recognize the type of device and the

type of networks on which they are consuming content with the same level

of personalized service and quality assurances regardless. Also, the issue

of a value price plan is highly important for them to have added knowledge

that their data costs will not go up the roof, as the all-you-can eat buffet

plans are no longer offered.

When is the right time for carriers to take cue in implementing direct Internet

offload and the impact it causes? It is quite obvious the data offload

movement is ready for market, suggestive that carriers are beginning to

shift mindsets of seeing Wi-Fi as a threat to a complementary technology

that can help build positive experiences. As such, the offload movement is

taking ideas and integrating them into the mainstream mobile network

technology as a service-led initiative which is characterized by experience.

A carefully orchestrated strategy can work its best to delight the users and

help carriers realize better cost control, expand reach and be competitive

as illustrated in Table 1.

Direct Internet Offload - 03

Table 1 : Strategic aims for a successful offload strategy

End-user Experience

Seamless

Simple

Secure

High Bandwidth

Service Provider Objective

Increase capacity and coverage

Optimize core assets

Improve customer experience

Expand revenue opportunity


Harnessing the Power of Behavior

There are several angles that carrier should focus, when deciding to

harness the power of the direct Internet offload. The first step is to ensure

Wi-Fi offload becomes a more controlled action on the carrier’s part – giving

assurance of high quality experience regardless of cellular or Wi-Fi network

to the subscriber as part of an early Wi-Fi strategy. And thus, service

providers need to be more agile and inventive to capture untapped

customers, retain existing customers and upsell other relevant products

and services.

Given the average user on the street, they are unlikely to pause for a moment

to decide which technology would best deliver the latest YouTube video of

Justin Bieber. They are more concerned whether the quality of streaming

and speed of downloads get to their device for sharing, viewing or whichever

manner they want to use the content. Questions pertinent to carriers, when

starting out with offload should be assessed practically from:

• Who are the heaviest smartphone users?

• How do consumers use Wi-Fi hotspots with their smartphone?

• What instances do consumers favor Wi-Fi over 3G cellular?

• How does usage behavior change when consumers roam internationally

and which customers are captured and which ones are lost?

Source : Analysis Mason and Arbitron Mobile, 2012**n=1007; some respondents may have had cellular or Wi-Fi enabled but did not use the connectivity within the observation period.

Figure 1 : Smartphone usage split for cellular and Wi-Fi

Smartphone userswith cellular data

enabled (82%)

Smartphone usersWi-Fi enabled (75%)

All Smartphoneusers (100%)

Wi-Fionly

(11%)

Smartphone users thatuse both cellular and Wi-Fi

(64%)

Cellularonly

(18%)

Smartphone userswho do not use data(7%)


Almost all smartphones today are Wi-Fi-capable. A study conducted by

Analysis Mason in 2011 concluded, 75% of the smartphone sampled panel

used Wi-Fi, with 82% of the panel used cellular data. It is observed, most

panelists (64%) used both networks but a number of consumers (18%) did

not use cellular data at all. The reasons are not entirely clear, perhaps some

use smartphone mainly for the sake of having a sophisticated device, or use

it sparingly with a non-data contract or on a prepaid basis, relying on Wi-Fi

(or in some cases nothing at all) for data connectivity. What does the study

outcome indicate? From the figures gathered, it seems that users welcome

the use of Wi-Fi whenever available. The slight difference of users using

cellular data likely preferred the ease of use although slightly more costly or

possibly due to the perceived lack of security. A recent Forrester2 survey

found that 93% of companies consider customer experience a strategic

priority with over 75% with plans in place to achieve that goal. Is your network

ready to support and engage your customers; the hyper connected,

on-the-go mobile users, or the occasional user? With the right knowledge,

tools and conditions, carriers can now source key data, from multiple

dimensions, in real time, to help them reach more informed conclusions.

2Source : "The State Of Customer Experience, 2012," April 24, 2012, Forrester Research, Inc”.

Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload - 06APPLICATION NOTE

Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload

The RAN offload and core network offload is not mutually exclusive but

inter-linked in the sense of managing the incremental investment on both

ends of the coin with Internet peering and transport costs getting more

expensive. Also, the SGSN and GGSN traditionally were not built for such

unexpected capacity growth. Incremental upgrades of the core network

can be a very costly affair and may not be fully supported in some parts.

Carriers have implemented in their cellular architecture by diverting traffic

over to the Internet direct by bypassing the packet core gateway of the

carrier network through a direct tunnel technique. Some carriers break-out

traffic without retaining visibility of their subscribers.

Carriers can now turn to Wi-Fi in the context of Direct Internet Offload and

still keep tabs on their subscribers by providing a secured connection for

the subscriber and at the same time allows offloading of the core network.

Rather than a complete network bypass, carriers can retain some level of

visibility of the subscriber whilst they work on branding their own Wi-Fi service

into their service mix and capturing market share for service expansion.

Figure 2 : Direct Internet Offload with Carrier Wi-Fi

IMS, Ringtones,Enterprise VPN

PDG

GGSN

AAA

Wi-Fi AccessGateway

SGSN

Wi-Fi

2G/3G RAN


Wi-Fi helps to mitigate traffic growth that would otherwise increasingly

overload the cellular network in busy areas, leading to reduced quality of

experience. However, if the Wi-Fi connection is not controlled by the

operator, then there is a risk of disintermediation – carriers have less of an

incentive to carry non-revenue generating traffic destined for the Internet.

Why subsidize it through expensive core network platform that is already

operating at its maximum capacity - if the device is accessing content from

external networks. Since carriers are interested to use Wi-Fi to help manage

overcrowding, it makes sense to offload onto their own Wi-Fi hotspots

wherever possible. Depending on the strategy and business needs of the

carrier, carrier Wi-Fi deployment can take several phases and may require

some investments to bring in additional Wi-Fi gateways and aggregators to

manage the interfacing towards the carrier’s core network.

Carrier Wi-Fi Build-Out

For a start, carriers can build-out their own Wi-Fi hotspots in areas to serve

critical capacity boost and expanding further as the network grows to reach

ubiquity. Directly having control over the quality of the network performance

and accountability for the user experience. Some of the leading telcos such

as Telefonica, AT&T and China Mobile ensure secure and trusted Wi-Fi

connection through a standardized EAP802.1X authentication support. It is

preferred for carriers to promote carrier Wi-Fi architecture for various

reasons; added advantage of ease of common authentication without the

need of external interface integration works.

Additionally, carriers retain ownership of subscriber and help lay the

foundations to successful Wi-Fi access revenues according to the degree

of integration it achieves. And by full integration, it means charging, billing,

service provisioning are all sorted and in order. More content-based

services through developer platforms and the carriers’ realization that more

willingness to open select Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can

be a win-win situation for distribution channels to these highly sought after

consumer experiences. Combined with the attempts to bring down the

barriers for inter-roaming, is indeed a lucrative proposition that carriers

should not miss out on.


Depending on the business model of paid versus free Wi-Fi service to be

offered to their subscribers, carriers can exercise due diligence to better

understand when and where intermediary cross-over Wi-Fi will become real

revenue potential. By then, carriers can recoup the investment by pricing

Wi-Fi access in gradations. Of course, such initiatives require some

experimentation, but some forward looking carriers like Verizon and AT&T

are already taking the lead.

Partnering Wi-Fi Aggregators

If building-out carrier owned Wi-Fi hotspot is not within the carrier network

plans for reasons beyond capex investments, partnering Wi-Fi aggregators

and providers would be another option. However, there are several

drawbacks in this strategy; requiring inter-network mediation,

inter-operability, integration and to some extent managed services like

wholesale models which add to operational costs in the long run.

Given the nature of partnering, it is of utmost importance to have a

technically and commercially capable team to drive the simplification of

network and anticipate the difficulties encountered when dealing with

disparate networks and risk of IPR conflicts. On the flip side, partnering

gives total freedom from regulatory restrictions on operating a hotspot,

if any. Quick access to expanded coverage and familiarity with established

hotspot can accelerate the roll-out of value-added service. Of course, this

will come with getting the right business models, be it revenue sharing,

leasing or through some form of advertising. Independently of which

implementation, carriers stand to benefit from a well planned offload

strategy to consolidate their infrastructure to open up opportunities.

The degree of visibility and control that carriers want to enforce is highly

dependent on the readiness of the network and business objectives.


Experience Offloadthe Greenpacket Way

To benefit from offload, carriers must have the right conditions to

differentiate between a user-driven offload and carrier-driven offload.

In Greenpacket’s device-client solution, it ensures subscriber is securely

authenticated to the Wi-Fi network via EAP802.1x authentication methods

to deliver a positive effect on the subscriber as the authentication is

automatic, transparent, seamless and secure, without changing the way

the subscribers interact with their device in the offload environment. Also,

it works with any WPA or WPA2 enabled access point, making it a readily

available solution.

Whether building-out Wi-Fi completely on their own or partnering ISPs or

Wi-Fi aggregators to share network resources, carriers are seeing it to

pragmatic practice to have Wi-Fi in their mix of services. It makes sense to

take a proactive approach, as they hold the key to the billing relationship to

their customers. Table 2 below summarizes the Wi-Fi experience from a

user interaction with their device.

Table 2 : Changing Expectations of Wi-Fi Experience

Wi-Fi Experience Previously

User unaware of networkconditions and changes

Manual configurations thatare confusing

Static policy

Interrupted experience whenconnecting anddisconnecting Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi Experience Tomorrow

Global Wi-Fi access

Instant-on

Advanced policy managementand QoS aware

Full mobility and roaming

Wi-Fi Experience Now

Intuitive and informativenotifications with Wi-Fi directory

Automated selection andeasy to configure

Dynamic policy

Seamless experience duringand after switching


Given that EAP802.1X authentication is supported and enabled in most

native devices, it is good governance to maintain the subscriber relationship

in the Wi-Fi environment, wherever possible. It’s quite obvious for the

reasons of data cost control and availability of higher bandwidth, becomes

attractive to the subscribers. For the carriers, its motivation is largely to ease

congestion and ensure offload execution is ideally over carrier-owned Wi-Fi

so that the treatment of fundamental carrier core network integration is

made easier to the Authorization, Authentication & Accounting (AAA) server

which is primarily responsible for managing the subscriber relationship to

the carrier network such as access rights, service provisioning, user profile

and accounting interface. Other attributes important to user experience

includes the automation of network selection and switching protocols and

contains to a certain extent QoS control.

Carriers wanting to take offload to another level can likely focus on the

ability to promote carrier subscribed content and extend policy control. This

discussion is beyond the breadth of this paper, but will be featured in the

subsequent Phase 3 of this Offload series. More progressive carriers will

attempt to make better use of technologies such as access network

discovery and selection function (ANDSF) and policy control to better

determine where and when to connect. Also, to integrate better the

common provisioning of service, billing and roaming to be much easier

between the carrier network and Wi-Fi. Further to 3GPP specifications,

more ambitious techniques like Selective IP Traffic Offload (SIPTO) and IP

Flow Mobility (IFOM) are introduced and sees more of its role played out in

future mobile broadband networks.


Offload and Quality of Service

Carriers in search of added value proposition in Wi-Fi are increasingly aware of

the necessity of quality of service (QoS) management. As carriers continue to

seek ways to reduce OPEX, boost ARPU and improve the customer

experience, on-device self-service problem resolution has the potential to allow

carriers to differentiate their services from those of competitors. Greenpacket’s

device-client is more than just an enabler of offload and connectivity

management. It builds on the user experience by supporting partially QoS

measures such as crowd-sourcing feedback to provide a clearer view of the

performance of the Wi-Fi access points (AP), prior to offload.

Simply enforcing fixed rules and device policies to aid offload may seem like a

simple and effective method, but could it risk making the user experience

worse than before? The approach that Greenpacket uses is more dynamic by

periodically taking samples of the current connected access points and its

related device information to be reported to a central Reporting Server that can

be hosted in the carrier’s network and integrated with the Analytic Server. The

information collected is further scrutinized and to feedback to the core network

for improved offload policy definition. By doing so, the device-client connects

to the best Wi-Fi based on current environment, location, time of day and Wi-Fi

AP status.

Carrier Wi-Fi and Open APIs Going Forward - 12APPLICATION NOTE

Carrier Wi-Fi andOpen APIs Going Forward

Having better control over congestion doesn’t stop at effective offload

strategies. It’s not enough for carriers to stop at offload, but to continue with

innovations. Unlocking the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is the

way forward for managing multitude of partners with custom interfaces to

their network. Despite falling behind the likes of Apple, Amazon and Google

in capturing the heart of their customers, developers and content owners,

carriers can respond to the changes by adopting API models.

Telecommunication industry is no longer a stand-alone business model. The

sources of applications and services are varied ranging from the carriers’,

application developers, 3rd party content owners and service providers,

customer, both consumer and enterprise; and complementary web-based

service providers. By implementing some kind of service exposure platform,

carriers have the advantage to greatly reduce their time to market and gain

from a common distribution channel with vast mindshare assets. The key to

a successful productized solution is one that operates seamlessly and

delivers impartial services on a single platform; serves across different types

of devices being one of the key values.

Some carriers argue that the business case with network APIs are difficult,

and they risk commoditizing the core voice and messaging assets. But Tier

1 carriers like Telefonica and Telecom Italia opening their APIs is a signal of

acceptance and willingness to enable open innovation and the future of

networks is about understanding emerging ecosystems.

Conclusion - 13APPLICATION NOTE

Conclusion

Carriers are restricted by the amount of spectrum resources and is

challenged economically to deliver the high performance services.

Undoubtedly, mobile data is clogging up networks globally; interesting

statistics from Cisco predicts - global data traffic is projected to rise over 18

fold between 2011 and 2016, growing at a CAGR of 78% to reach 10.8

exabytes per month by 2016. But it can’t be said of similar revenue growth.

There are a number of innovative concepts in both RAN and core network

offload. In this paper, we discussed how a simple device-client solution fits

into Wi-Fi and its role through Direct Internet Offload can help address

congestion. Interesting enough, operators that have implemented data

offloading strategies generally do not suffer from negative implications

instead gain to benefit from it. The associated stigma to offloading is mainly

exacerbated by the carriers themselves, who refuse to have anything to do

with their networks perceived as congested by their customers. Congestion

is real. To the consumers, it is not about how the service providers deliver

those services, via the latest access technology but why the experience is

better? LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi whichever works.

Wi-Fi used to be individually installed, unmanaged and doesn’t drive

behavior. It was an un-inspiring proposition in sporadic coverage that

brought in zero value. How can carriers turn around a technology in pursuit

of results? Simply change the way in which it operates and inspire

engagement. It is only logical that new services will require new approaches

to network design. Innovation usually starts out only to be dismissed before

it gets widespread, just as Wi-Fi exemplifies this. Today, Wi-Fi is so

pervasive, that it draws consumers in search of it. By combining the

strengths of Wi-Fi and translating it into the carrier’s network design, the

approach of Direct Internet Offload is capable of helping carrier’s pursuit of

managing better experiences. The need for a broader view of offload is

necessary to promote further formal standards development and best

practices to emerge from actual deployments.

Transform Your Network with Direct Internet Offload - 14APPLICATION NOTE

Transform Your Network withDirect Internet Offload

Make Carrier Wi-Fi a differentiator. The sense of offload is taking a renewed

twist and entering mainstream adoption and networks no longer work in silo.

What is needed is the ability to respond with openness to take ideas and

integrate them to transform mobile network design to reap in revenues.

Turn your challenges into opportunities as we progressively approach the

strategies for data offload to suit your needs.

Embark on a journey with Greenpacket to discover the value-add of

offloading and start realizing the possibilities for growth.

With Greenpacket, you bring value to your subscribers and become their

partner of communication needs.

Free Consultation

If you would like a free consultation on how you can leverage data offload

solutions for enhanced network performance and user experience, feel free

to contact us at [email protected]. Kindly quote the

reference code, SAP0812-P2 when you contact us.

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Sap0812 p2-data-offload-part2