By Birdstep
In workshop’s held during the Carrier Wi-Fi Summit at Mobile World Congress, Birdstep unveiled Experience Continuity and its role as the OTT differentiator for Telecos, MSO’s, OEMs and MVNOs.
Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of the WhatsApp messaging service underlined just how quickly online activities are migrating to mobile networks. That sounds like a phenomenal amount of money to spend on what looks on the surface little more than SMS mark 2, but highlights how Facebook has been caught napping by the pace of this change. For mobile operators the same danger exists and for them the battleground has shifted squarely to the provision of high quality user experiences, especially while roaming. This is why heterogeneous networks, or HetNets, are arising quickly by integrating Wi-Fi and cellular networks to combine the performance and capacity of the former with the outside coverage of the latter.
As a specialist in data over Wi-Fi and offloading to and from the cellular network, Birdstep has been in the fortunate position of being able to anticipate these changes and develop products that enable mobile operators to take advantage by building HetNets to give their subscribers the best possible quality of experience. At Birdstep we have coined the term Experience Continuity, to represent HetNet services with always on connectivity that switch transparently between Wi-Fi and cellular without the user even being aware of it. Experience Continuity has two critical components as far as the user experience is concerned.
Firstly it ensures that switching between Wi-Fi and cellular really is transparent, requiring no action by the user and taking place totally seamlessly without the merest blip in the service.
Secondly EXPERIENCE CONTINUITY delivers the concept of “always best connected”, meaning that where Wi-Fi and cellular connections are both available the HetNet choses whichever provides the best QoS at the time, subject to business rules defined by the operator.
Birdstep enables EXPERIENCE CONTINUITY through our Smart Mobile Data and Secure Mobility solutions combined with a server based on the industry standard ANDSF (Access network discovery and selection function), whose essential role is to enable client devices to discover wireless networks within range, primarily Wi-Fi.
EXPERIENCE CONTINUITY has its roots in conventional Wi-Fi offloading, which evolved a few years ago to alleviate congestion on mobile operators’ infrastructures caused by proliferating data traffic. This also reduces costs because the broadband networks connecting Wi-Fi hotspots are more efficient and have greater economies of scale than cellular backhaul infrastructures, which have evolved rather in piecemeal fashion. While this economic factor is still an important driver for Wi-Fi offload in HetNets, the emphasis has switched to “right loading”, with QoS for the user presiding over cost savings for the operator.
Fortunately the two objectives will often coincide, so that the best network for QoS will also be the one that is most effective for the operator. This can be seen by considering early HetNet deployments, which have shown that correct dynamic network selection works much more efficiently in congested cells than when similar offload/network selection is applied in non-congested cells. This difference in effectiveness of dynamic network selection between congested and non-congested cells is at least 10%. As a consequence, offload is most effective for the operator in the event of congestion in the cellular network and at such times the user is also most likely to benefit through improved QoS.
A critical aspect of EXPERIENCE CONTINUITY is that switching between Wi-Fi and cellular is performed intelligently with the ability to combine policy and business rules with appropriate sources of data. For content or network operators to offer the best experience continuity, these decisions must often be made in real time or near real time (seconds rather than hours or days).
The real added value that Birdstep provides in terms of analytics comes from our ability to correlate data from different sources and cross reference this with business rules. So for example if some subscribers are experiencing bandwidth issues for a given service whilst others in the same locations have plentiful bandwidth, we can say that the fault probably lies with the service itself, not the network. In this example we see the importance of both understanding where network congestion is occurring and how to measure offload efficiency/QoE in these areas.
EXPERIENCE CONTINUITY then firstly ensures transparent and seamless switching between cellular and Wi-Fi and then adds value by enabling operators to combine the two cost effectively in HetNets, balancing quality of experience for their customers with cost effective operation. These issues are covered in more depth in our white paper, OTT services and network offload, which introduces our EXPERIENCE CONTINUITY strategy and delves into the operation and benefits of intelligent network selection on the basis of big data analytics tied to business rules.
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NOTE:
- Download the new, free Whitepaper: OTT Services & Intelligent Network Selection
- Meet Birdstep at:
- WiFi Offload Summit, Johannesburg, May 8th 2014
- WiFi Offlload Summit, Palo Alto, US, June 18-19
- Listen to the Webinar ” Smart Wi-Fi Offload For Continuity Of Experience – The True OTT Differentiator” from Fierce Wireless
