Mobile Broadband Traffic Management and QoS Prioritisation

Telecoms

Publication Date	September 2009
Publisher	Ovum
Product Type	Report
Pages	22
ISBN Number	not applicable
Product Code	OVM00959

Buy this product or for assistance call +44 20 7060 7474

PDF £840.00$1397 | €940

PRINT £900.00$1497 | €1007

FAX Order above formats by FAX

Summary

Mobile broadband is at a crossroads as networks and business models are strained by bandwidth demand that is unmatched by revenue generation. In this context there has been a swell of interest in utilising network resources in a more optimal way, controlling data-heavy users, differentiating further on pricing and services, and ensuring applications and services continue to function well. Traffic management and quality of service (QoS) solutions will be essential to help achieve these goals, guarantee the mobile broadband business case and optimise the end-user experience.

Content

Executive summary
In a nutshell
Ovum view
Traffic management will become increasingly important
QoS prioritisation provides a way to differentiate mobile broadband service offerings
Prioritisation will be used in conjunction with fair-usage policies to control data-heavy users
Application and service prioritisation opens up new business models
Net neutrality questions will emerge
Scope of research
Prioritisation and QoS are high on operators' radars
Numerous factors have led to recent interest in QoS prioritisation
Extreme traffic growth
Desire to manage heavy users
Need to optimise use of network resources
Ability to differentiate further on services and pricing structures
Need to ensure specific applications or services function well
QoS prioritisation still nascent among mobile operators
Net neutrality will be an issue
Use of lower-priority QoS in conjunction with fair-usage policies
Five options to control usage once fair-usage limits reached
Option 1: do nothing
Option 2: throttling
Option 3: additional charging
Option 4: throttling with policy control
Option 5: lower user priority
Prioritising premium users with QoS packages
Providing the best possible user experience
Prioritising realtime traffic and applications based on QoS
De-prioritising peer-to-peer
Application or service prioritisation
Operators' own services or applications
Third-party services or applications
Background services to fill up spare capacity
Moving demand to different times or locations
Service filtering, data compression and content adaption
Data and service optimisation
Disallowing or blocking services or content
There are dangers with filtering content
List of Tables
- Table 1: Options for controlling heavy users
- Table 2: Possible Gold, Silver and Bronze mobile broadband package structure
List of Figures
- Figure 1: Mobile data use in Hong Kong
- Figure 2: De-prioritisation of P2P traffic during time of congestion