Remuneration During Migration

Migrating to 3G can offer you 3Vs (visualization, value and variety) on the road to "always on" capability.

Analysts predict that within the next three years, half of the world's Internet traffic will be accessed through wireless-data devices. Today, however, data revenue is a negligible portion of most wireless-service providers' bottom lines. To make the quantum leap, most service providers are migrating toward 2.5G (GPRS, EDGE, IS-95B/C) and 3G (UMTS, cdma2000) technologies that provide the bandwidth essential for offering potentially lucrative data services. The majority of infrastructure investments being made are in 2.5G technologies for network efficiency, time to market and relatively low deployment costs.

Technologies such as 2.5G offer an evolutionary path to 3G, however, the "always on" nature of Internet connectivity has created a revolution in services, content and communications offered to subscribers.

Many wireless-service providers are demanding network infrastructure that will seamlessly integrate with all other manufacturers' technology. Regardless of release, they want technology that is always "backward compatible." No excuses. No patches. No problems.

Although many traditional infrastructure providers may discard this as an impossible feat, solutions available today easily can provide seamless multivendor integration and backward compatibility. One of the biggest challenges associated with migrating to next-generation wireless is ensuring the compatibility of back-office operation/business support systems with new vendor-specific network elements.

"The future challenge for service providers will not be associated with building out the network hardware infrastructure," said David Raezer, Montgomery Securities senior communications services and software analyst, "but rather with constructing the software designed to add intelligence, control and accountability to this infrastructure."

To conquer this, service providers could use signaling-network-management platforms that feed back-office systems with SS7/C7, IP over SS7, or IP signaling data such as SIP. The data it provides eventually will be independent of both the network-element manufacturer and its software versions — making wireless-service providers' technical and business processes more efficient and economical.

New technologies, such as GPRS and UMTS, co-existing with previous technologies has brought new requirements for multitechnology and multiservice operations support systems. The immediate need for interoperability among these diverse network elements has been exacerbated by service-delivery promises. And of course, service providers must not compromise quality of service (QoS) at either the interconnection points or to the end subscribers. Understandably, some service providers continue to rely on modifications to existing network-management platforms, which may or may not support 2.5G and 3G technologies, provide timely QoS details, and present the business intelligence essential to compete.

Service providers that don't have a signaling-network-management solution, own one that does not offer scaleability without performance degradation or simply cannot offer affordable end-to-end redundancy are in danger of falling behind in network security, interconnection, roaming settlements, QoS, customer-specific care and other key revenue-assurance areas. So to maintain the competitive advantage, service providers need network-management solutions that support efficient business processes, are built on event-driven, distributed architectures, and offer scaleability and redundancy. All of these mission-critical functions must be done in an "eco-system" environment that anticipates high growth, multiple partnerships, mergers and acquisitions.

Managing Network & Service Growth
In the next-generation multiservice network environment, personalized, location-specific content will be king. With the proliferation of application and service providers, delivering content to the end-user via service providers' facilities has caused a battle over customer "ownership." The fact remains, however, that content owns the customer. Most wireless-service providers will realize this and either offer their own portals and content or partner with third parties to move up in the value chain to prevent ending up as just another "pipe" to the customer.

To remain competitive and profitable, service providers and their application partners must roll out a barrage of new services. However, profits from these services will get eaten away quickly if operation costs go up and QoS goes down. This can happen easily if service providers do not continuously monitor the impact of adding services on the entire network to pro-actively manage growth. A tremendous amount of non-call-related signaling traffic exists in a hybrid, multiservice mobile environment. Regardless of network type, signaling is necessary to maintain the location database, service activation and deactivation, authentication of handset and subscriptions, as well as call or session setup and tear-down functions. To visualize this traffic, signaling-management systems analyze network behavior, and present the information in a meaningful and timely manner to assure reliability, efficiency and profitability.

OSS & BSS Options
Signaling-network-management systems can support existing high-order OSSs by feeding them appropriate signaling records. They also may be integrated into the network as standalone systems for key customer care, interconnection accounting, QoS and other network-management purposes. As networks migrate to 3G, a signaling-network-management solution addresses a number of critical issues.

Network Assurance & Security
The last decade has not seen any significant security breaches in 2G digital networks where security is inherent in its design. The technology in 2.5G and 3G brings new threats such as data interception, identity spoofing and unsolicited content (i.e. viruses). In addition, new application providers, inexperienced next-generation interconnect partners and hackers also put service providers at risk. The recent malicious sabotage on certain Internet sites has been a chilling wake-up call to the potential downside of the open data networks of the future. GPRS brings a new dimension to the level of security needed at all three network layers.

Once a service provider opens its network to IP, hackers or interconnection partners could easily take control of the service provider's advanced IN platforms, turning features on and off at will. They may even swipe information about the competitors' subscribers. To secure the network, "gateway" solutions offer enhanced security by limiting the types of messages, and the parameters within those messages, that can enter into a service provider's signaling network. These gateways and even passive signaling-management platforms offer security at the network's foundation. These management platforms provide real-time alerts, identification of the offending network element or links, visibility into the offending messages and the traffic impacted by the event. This information allows service providers to stop security breaches such as:

• An interconnect service provider's equipment initiates "transfer prohibit" message to the signaling points that will disable or overload large portions of the service provider's network.

• Termination and blockage of all calls on a group of circuits by interconnect equipment broadcasting "circuit-group reset" and "circuit-group blocking" messages.

• A mass call event triggered by a call-generation device at an interconnection point that targets specific phone numbers, preventing the completion of valid calls and unnecessarily used network resources.

Remuneration at Interconnection Points
Market and regulatory forces have dictated growth of interconnection and roaming agreements. Service providers now have multiple interconnections and complex roaming agreements, making settling and reconciling accounts a daunting task. A good signaling-network-management system, along with efficient IT applications, can improve communications among service providers, their interconnection partners and content providers.

These systems will collect, process and provide usage information to ensure accurate settlements for all parties involved. So, if a service provider wants to charge for a service, the signaling-network-management solution will generate reports detailing the number of messages sent, the time frame and the amount of signaling bandwidth occupied by those messages. It will then aggregate the information by interconnection service provider. This way, the service provider can bill by either traffic volume or network-resource usage. Based on the service provider's billing model, network or service-usage data derived from the signaling network can be formatted on an external server before being sent to a legacy customer-care and billing system that produces invoices.

Service providers can settle roaming charges in the next-generation multiservice environment through transferred-account procedure-3 (TAP-3). TAP-3 is a process that allows visited service providers to send billing records of roaming subscribers to their respective home-service providers. TAP-3, being promoted as a worldwide standard for all next-generation networks, will support GPRS, prepaid roaming, separation of business and private billing profile, and host of next-generation services. Service providers have an option to consider IT applications generating TAP-3 records based on the information retrieved from signaling and IP networks. They also may use the QoS information available through the network-management system to verify consistency in billing for roaming services with the QoS experienced by the subscriber.

SLAs: The Service Provider's Report Card
Signaling-network-management systems also play a critical role in enforcing service-level agreements (SLAs). With these solutions, service providers can measure QoS on voice and data networks to prove they are honoring SLAs. For example, service providers can gather information directly from the signaling network to report on network busy signals, cell congestion, handoff failures, call failures, unanswered calls, call-setup times and answer/seizure ratios to deliver these reports to their interconnection partners.

They also may add data-mining capabilities to conduct studies on each interconnecting service provider's usage patterns. This helps show proof-of-performance, plan services and determine bearer circuit usage. So if service provider A wants to see which services service provider B has been using or check the QoS it has provided to or received from service provider B, the information can be taken directly from the signaling network. These proof-of-performance reports provide evidence that the service provider has met its SLA obligations. And, if the service provider finds that its interconnect partners have not been providing the committed QoS, the reports will help enforce penalties, negotiate better settlement rates or even help them select new partners.

In a m-commerce environment, service providers may have to prove to an entity, such as a bank, that a transaction was successfully completed before they receive compensation. To verify the transaction is complete, service providers can use IT applications that use signaling data to generate the appropriate reports.

Targeted Marketing Services
When it comes to marketing new services, service providers can't afford to take a shot in the dark. Using information derived from the signaling network, service providers can enhance revenue from each consumer application. Network-management solutions, based on signaling data, can provide detailed call/session information.

Compiling this information into a database makes it a powerful tool for sales and marketing. The reports generated can maximize specific profitability by identifying customer-usage patterns and services that can be targeted toward specific customers. For example, a service provider marketing WAP services could use this reporting functionality to identify top users of WAP services. It could then use this information to tailor billing plans and target advertising campaigns as well as target high-speed access service toward these heavy wireless-data users.

For most revenue-generating information and entertainment services, signaling-management systems will provide the location of specified subscribers required to provide personalized location-specific content. These management solutions eliminate the need for expensive systems to track exact subscriber location, unless the service provider prefers to or is required to provide emergency (E-911) or roadside assistance services.

As wireless Internet hype turns to reality with the evolution of new technologies and applications, the signaling-network-management systems will become critical to service providers from a strategic, business, network, and operations-efficiency perspective. Migration to 3G may be a difficult journey, but these systems help simplify the process by offering 3Vs (visualization, value and variety) on the way to the anytime, anywhere, any media world.

Marwaha is Inet Technologies market strategies director for wireless.