Data Offload Survival Guide - Part 2

APPLICATION NOTE

DATA OFFLOAD SURVIVAL GUIDE - PART 2

www.greenpacket.com

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.

APPLICATION NOTE

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 - 01

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 and applications appearing and bombarding the
networks will eventually level out, but before carriers 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.
1Source : Infonetics Research,
2G,3G,4G(LTE) Services
and Subscribers : Voice,
SMS/MMS, and
Broadband Report

APPLICATION NOTE Direct Internet Offload - 02

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.


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.

Table 1 : Strategic aims for a successful offload strategy

End-user Experience Service Provider Objective
Seamless Increase capacity and coverage
Simple Optimize core assets
Secure Improve customer experience
High Bandwidth 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?

Smartphone users
who do not use data Smartphone users
(7%) with cellular data
enabled (82%)

Wi-Fi Smartphone users that Cellular
only use both cellular and Wi-Fi only
(11%) (64%) (18%)

Smartphone users All Smartphone
with Wi-Fi enabled (75%) users (100%)

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


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 some 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”.

APPLICATION NOTE Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload - 06

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.

PDG
IMS, Ringtones,
SGSN Enterprise VPN

GGSN

AAA

2G/3G RAN

Wi-Fi Access
Gateway

Wi-Fi

Figure 2 : Direct Internet Offload with Carrier Wi-Fi


Wi-Fi helps to mitigate traffic growth that would otherwise 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 expand 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. By encouraging a more
diverse pool of platform support, carriers can deliver more content-based
services. Carriers’ realization that more willingness to open select
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can be a win-win situation for
both the operators and OTT developers, as they seek wider 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. Independent of which
implementation, carriers stand to benefit from a well planned offload
strategy to consolidate their infrastructure to open up opportunities in
value-added service like location-based service, mobile wallet and so forth.
The degree of visibility and control that carriers want to enforce is highly
dependent on the readiness of the network and business objectives.


Experience Offload
the 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 Wi-Fi Experience Now Wi-Fi Experience Tomorrow
User unaware of network Intuitive and informative Global Wi-Fi access
conditions and changes notifications with Wi-Fi directory
Manual configurations that Automated selection and Instant-on
are confusing easy to configure
Static policy Dynamic policy Advanced policy management
and QoS aware
Interrupted experience when Seamless experience during Full mobility and roaming
connecting and and after switching
disconnecting Wi-Fi


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 that are important to user
experience includes the automation of network selection and switching
protocols and 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 the 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 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.

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

Carrier Wi-Fi and
Open APIs Going Forward

Having better control over congestion doesn’t stop at effective offload
strategies. It is 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, content owners and
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, third 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 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.

APPLICATION NOTE Conclusion - 13

Conclusion

Carriers are restricted by the amount of spectrum resources and are
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. Interestingly 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.

APPLICATION NOTE Transform Your Network with Direct Internet Offload - 14

Transform Your Network with
Direct Internet Offload

Make Carrier Wi-Fi a differentiator. The sense of offload is taking a renewed
twist and is 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 marketing.gp@greenpacket.com. Kindly quote the
reference code, SAP0812-P2 when you contact us.

For more information on Greenpacket’s products and solutions, Associate
please contact us at marketing.gp@greenpacket.com Member

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