Broadband Management: Controlling The Stakes

Today, some service providers report that as few as 5% of subscribers consume
up to 60% of network resources. This can lead to poor quality or unavailable
service for the other 95% of subscribers. Offering poor service is no way to
ensure increased penetration. Many service providers find themselves caught in
the vicious cycle of improving infrastructure to increase available bandwidth,
only to find themselves in the same conundrum a year or two later with no
improvements in revenue stream.

Satisfying Subscribers

The unexpected popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking and file sharing
applications, combined with the increased adoption of streaming media and
on-line gaming has taxed the supply of bandwidth. Long gone are the days when
the greatest consumers of bandwidth were those passing large file attachments
through e-mails. With other types of service providers beginning to actively
compete in the broadband market, cable operators have a limited opportunity left
to capture customers, build a loyal customer base, and find ways to improve
average revenue per user from their installed base. Increasing available
bandwidth is a temporary fix that will attract new customers; however, it will
not prevent churn as those subscribers leave in search of the cheapest broadband
access, and it will not improve revenue per subscriber.

For instance, broadband cable connections of 512 Kbps were common several
years ago. The connection speed gradually progressed from 1 Mbps to as high as
10 Mbps without much if any increase in revenue for the broadband provider. When
this type of network improvement took place, broadband providers had to upgrade
equipment throughout their networks and customer premises, retrain the entire
system, and ensure the backhaul could handle the additional traffic. Basically,
they found themselves caught in a vicious cycle of ever
increasing service with a static or decreasing revenue per subscriber.

To Monitor and Control

Since it monitors usage in real time, a dynamic broadband management
solution allows service providers to offer tiered services with monthly
bandwidth quotas. When these thresholds are reached, the subscriber is simply
prompted to purchase more blocks of bandwidth. A complete dynamic broadband
management solution will include a policy data store and subscriber portal. The
policy data store acts as a single unified database for all user profiles and
policies, while the subscriber portal acts as the central self-administration
tool that allows subscribers to actively manage their own accounts and service
packages.

One of the greatest challenges facing service providers is ensuring the
quality and availability that the subscriber expects/pays for. A dynamic
broadband management solution optimizes the available bandwidth by leveraging
the tiered service packages and providing guaranteed QoS levels for each
package. By implementing policy-based bandwidth management, the service provider
can limit bandwidth by application. For instance, P2P traffic has a certain
allocation. This allows service providers to control costs and ensure consistent
service levels for all subscribers. This type of “variable” QoS allows
service providers to create offerings with QoS mapped to them, providing
high-quality voice, data, and video as needed.

The dynamic broadband manager gives subscribers the ability to manage their accounts, temporarily or permanently increase their bandwidth levels, and change or upgrade their packages though a self-serve portal

Improving ARPU

A dynamic broadband management tool needs to work in conjunction with
revenue collection systems. For instance, a dynamic broadband manager solution
would interface with a revenue collector and formatter to identify subscribers
and their usage, and to track any changes to a subscriber's service level.
This solution then streams the relevant data to incumbent billing systems. Being
able to track and control each subscriber's service not only offers easy
opportunities to offer subscribers who go over the limit more bandwidth, but
also give service providers the opportunity to turn on new services for a short
time to see if a subscriber is interested.

A dynamic broadband manager can be used to provide subscribers with a
“Turbo” button, to boost bandwidth for a desired length of time, such as
when downloading music or videos, or participating in a live web event. This
keeps the basic monthly fee low, but increases average revenue per unit (ARPU)
by charging for extra bandwidth usage.

Controlling Network Usage

Service providers need better options to maintain their QoS and capitalize
on the high-value services that their networks are already providing. They need
to selectively control their QoS and bandwidth levels, monitor and manage heavy
users, and, at the same time, increase average revenue on a per-user basis. This
means creating tiered service levels that subscribers are prepared to pay for,
and giving them the ability to dynamically change their service levels as
needed. It means offering bandwidth on demand for periods of heavy usage and
offering QoS that is mapped to specific services.

Since the dynamic broadband manager give subscribers the ability to manage
their accounts, temporarily or permanently increase their bandwidth levels, and
change or upgrade their packages though a self-serve portal, internal customer
service costs are reduce, and customer satisfaction is improved.

Russ Freen, co-founder and CTO,
Bridgewater Systems

vadmail@cybermedia.co.in