TMN Quarterly 2014 issue 08

The Mobile Network // www.the-mobile-network.com

ALSO FEATURING Making sense of the world’s mobile networks

30 S ECURITY REDUX 34 COUNTRY PROFILE: IRELAND // MORE...

2014 // Issue 08

d l r o W e l i b Mo s s e r Cong Edition ///////

Double ne ////////////// tO r a P / / / / / ///

ting u p m o eC g d E e l i ///// / / / G 5 16 Mob RING O L P X E 22 ce n a r u s s TE A 26 VoL ellia Ast m o r f p a m ence g i l E l e E t n I R F ber Subscri

Network

and

ISSUE

REGULARS GLOBAL CORRESPONDENTS // ANATOMY OF A MOBILE OPERATOR: TELSTRA

#08

Trillium速 Small Cell Software

T-Series Platforms for SDN/NFV

CONTENTS

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS EDITION PART 1 ////////////////// 16

From our Correspondent

MOBILE EDGE COMPUTING

06 UNITED KINGDOM

Intelligent life at the edge of the network

07 GSMA GLOBAL 08 INDIA/NIGERIA 09 USA/ARGENTINA

FEATURE

FEATURE

FEATURE

FEATURE

20

22

26

30

Learn seven things that you can do in the LTE network to increase an operator’s bottom line, decrease churn and introduce new service offers.

A new waveform for a new generation? If 5G is going to encompass all the use cases being proposed for it, what are the candidate waveforms being proposed and studied right now?

It’s a complex thing, VoLTE, introducing both technical and organisation challenges for operators. Do operators need a dedicated assurance strategy for the service?

We were on the money last year. Sadly. We said that security would become a strategic issue for operators can events in 2014 have only born that out.

Seven Things I Know: Astellia

4 TMNQUARTERLY

Exploring 5G: Part 1

VoLTE: Part 1

Security Redux

FEATURE

FEATURE

EDITOR

Hi!

This is the first of two companion issues. This is something that we haven’t done before so perhaps I should explain what I mean by that.

10

Anatomy of a Mobile Operator: Telstra

You may have noticed that Mobile World Congress now tends to disproportionately skew product release cycles to the first part of the year. It also throws up, or acts as a concentrator for, a wide variety of talking points.

This concentration of energy and thought in mobile led us to think that perhaps we could mirror that, and serve the discussion at the same time. Hence having two issues around this critical time of the year would allow us to go in depth into some of the topics that require it, and take a double hit, as it were.

34

Country profile: Ireland Right size, right time?

39

Picture Story: Inside Nokia’s Security Centre

So in this issue and the next we will run the first and second parts of features on 5G, VoLTE and Mobile Edge Computing. That means that we can look at the increasing organisational complexity that VoLTE seems to be introducing, as well as looking at LTE roaming structures; we can get in depth on some of the potential technical enablers for 5G; and we can look at exactly what Mobile Edge Computing is all about, and who is involved.

The second issue will also see us add in a few more topical technology features, alongside these two-parters.

So there we have it, two issues, very much alike, but also different. Welcome to Issue 8 of The Mobile Network Quarterly.

Commercial Director: Shahid Ramzan // shahid@the-mobile-network.com Editorial Director: Keith Dyer // keith@the-mobile-network.com Creative Direction and Design: Shona Gow // hello@shonagow.co.uk // www.shonagow.co.uk

KD

Keith Dyer keith@the-mobile-network.com

© 2014 TMN Communications Ltd.

TMNQUARTERLY 5

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT If you would like to contribute to this section, mail TMN’s editor keith@the-mobile-network.com

CORRESPONDENT : Anon

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

KD

“From Our Correspondent” collects writing from around the world, covering mobile network stories in local markets.

UK Consolidation frenzy in the UK One of the curious features of the UK mobile market is that despite having four national wholesale mobile operators, not one of them is owned or run by that country’s incumbent fixed line operator.

This is in marked contrast to all of Europe’s other “Big Five” markets, where Orange, DT, TIM and Telefonica straddle fixed and mobile broadband. The reasons are historical, of course, as BT was pretty much forced by the markets to divest its BT Cellnet arm in 2001 due to said financial geniuses being unhappy with BT’s debt ratio. Of course, if BT had had a mobile arm under direct ownership since 2001, then who knows how much growth it could have generated for the business. As it is, BT has been forced to play in other areas – such as media and TV – for growth, and protect as best its can its fixed wholesale and residential position.

Now, however, it looks as if BT has judged the time is right for it to ride back into mobile network ownership, rather than acting as an MVNO or reseller.

6 TMNQUARTERLY

There are two prime targets, O2 and EE, both of whom have owners who have been giving off “come and get me” signals for a while now. In EE’s case, this is because co-owners Orange and DT are an uneasy alliance, despite what they may state publicly, and in FT’s case has not been in love with EE’s performance.

There’s also the huge chunk of cash that a sale would give to the parent businesses of course. That’s something which is also attractive to Telefonica, which is keen to address its own debt position and is fighting on many fronts, including the strategically vital (and favoured) growth potential of markets in South America.

But then… as journalists floated the “BT to buy O2 or EE” stories, a second potential market maker raised its arm – in this case Three UK’s owner Hutchison.

Three, which has been treated like an irritant by the big three operators in the UK would relish a takeover of one of its tormenters, and it would also solve Three’s perennial issue of growing from its clear number four position. And owner Hutchison has already pulled off similar deals (on a smaller scale) in Austria and Ireland. Yet, although a BT takeover may be more shattering in terms of overall market impact, it is the

prospect of a Three/Hutchison takeover that will have more regulatory impact as it would reduce the UK market to just three main national wholesale mobile operators. Not only that, two of them, O2 and Vodafone, will be sharing a grid. This would be an issue for Ofcom, which has often stated its commitment to four national wholesale (ie networkowning) operators as a key plank of its “regulating for the benefit of the consumer” strategy.

This commitment to the “power of four”, however, will place the UK regulator in opposition to a concerted lobbying attempt from the mobile industry, led by the GSMA, for regulators and governments to do more to foster operator consolidation within Europe.

Indeed, the GSMA is recruiting for a new PR Director level post, to be stationed in Brussels, to lead its public affairs efforts.

Top of her to-do list? You can be sure it will be consolidation.

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

UK:

EE investing in new vendor tech

EE has secured an exclusive deal for a new technology that will see it deploy an innovative small cell solution to reach rural areas. Technology sets up a few meshed small cells, with one of the small cells backhauling in-band back to a macrocell. The technology provider is a company called Parallel Wireless.

Now, governments across the world love this sort of rural coverage stuff, because it plays to their digital inclusion strategies. Operators get good PR from it too, of course. The issue for operators is that solutions to date have ben expensive or impractical. However, EE is so convinced it is on to a good thing with Parallel Wireless that it has taken exclusive rights to use the tech in the UK.

DENMARK If you want to see what a European market with two 40% market share operators and a distant third player looks like, then it may do to keep an eye on Denmark, where Norway’s Telenor and Sweden’s Telia Sonera have decided they want to merge their competing operations. That would leave Denmark with just TDC and Telenor-Telia each with 40%+ market share, and Three again bumping along the bottom.

The companies, which are already deep into network sharing, want to go all-in and fully tie the knot, forming a 50-50 Joint Venture vehicle to do so (much like the FT-DT alliance when Everything Everywhere as it was then known was formed in the UK). Meanwhile, over in the fixed world, incumbent TDC is said to be considering a move for cable operator Com Hem.

GSMA gets spied on by the NSA – or does it?

The GSMA’s own documentation formed a key part of the NSA’s attempts to introduce security vulnerabilities into mobile networks, including cracking encryption, according to documents from the Snowden trove. It’s quite an alarming situation, given the trade body was also being given money by the US government to, er, invest in solutions to enhance consumer mobile security.

So what’s going on? Well, documents published by The Intercept, and given the maximum spin by that website, appeared to suggest that the NSA want not only to know what vulnerabilities there are in mobile networks, but also to introduce vulnerabilities where none exist. The problem for the NSA is that mobile technology is continuously developing, and operators implement different iterations, and different versions of, say, encryption technology, in their networks. To wit, the NSA seems to have proposed accessing documentation known as IR.21s, which are forms that contain the technical data that mobile operators share with each other to enable interconnect and roaming.

Now, the GSMA reacted pretty swiftly to the implication that it had

been in some way compromised.

It said it had had a look through the office and nobody seemed to have been going through the filing cabinets, so things were as safe as they could be. It also said it doubted that the information the NSA seemed to have did in fact come from IR.21s.

Whatever the truth, there was an added irony to the story: another branch of the US Government had just this year given the GSMA money to fund R&D into solutions that would improve consumer mobile security and data.

In fact, the revelations, if that is what they are, play quite well for operators.

Many activist have suspected, and indeed accused, operators of being too close to national security agencies. In some countries, where a swift chat with the secret police is never more than a tap on the shoulder away, this is to be expected. In western democracies such a close relationship is more problematic.

If the NSA story is true, it gives the lie to the accusation that operators are operating an open door policy for the likes of the NSA and GCHQ, and are at least making them work hard for their Intelligence.

TMNQUARTERLY 7

NIGERIA:

To see incumbents

privatised

INDIA:

Ericsson secures huge managed services deal

Ericsson has announced a $1 billion, eight-year managed services contract with Reliance Communications that spans 11 of India’s telecom circles.

(Circles are the name given to areas of regional or district coverage in India that operators are granted coverage for.)

That equates to 24,000 towns in India, the companies said.

The deal builds on an existing agreement between the two companies, and marks the Swedish equipment maker’s first nationwide managed services deal in India. It covers field maintenance, network operations and operational planning for Reliance’s 2G, 3G, and CDMA networks, as well as its fixed access network and its 150,000 kilometre fibre network.

8 TMNQUARTERLY

Managed services deals are big deals in India, as you can see. Nokia has a massive NOC deployed to support its managed services deal with Bharti Airtel - a five year deal which sees the Finnish supplier manage operations in eight circles. Ericsson takes that a level further by including fixed network management as well as mobile.

As Ericsson will be transferring 5,000 employees over from the operator to work within Ericsson, you can see one clear motivation for Reliance in the deal.

Aside from getting staff off the books, operators buy into the assumed global technical competency of a player like Ericsson. Indeed, Gurdeep Singh, CEO, said as much, “Given the complexity of network increasing with platforms, technologies and application offerings, we are banking on the experience, innovation and technical expertise of Ericsson to improve the productivity of our network and ensure that it delivers to its full potential.”

There may finally be approval for the privatisation of Nigeria’s fixed and mobile incumbent, state-owned, operators Nitel and Mtel, following a $250 million bid from investment vehicle NATCOM. The country has been looking at privatising the incumbent for a few years now, in fact you may be surprised quite how many years – about 13 in fact. That period has seen failed attempts to get the telco off the government balance sheet in 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2011.

This period saw a litany of broken promises and dreams, and evaporating confidence in an entity that was, especially in mobile, being left behind by competitors.

But this time around with NATCOM now the sole qualified bidder, and with its bid having met the government reserve, it may be that we in Nigeria are finally to see our stricken national carrier “freed” from overall Government control. This is just the start of things for the new investors, however. Nitel is now miles behind its competitors, who have signed up 134 million mobile users in the country and will need to invest heavily in new infrastructure. Some market watchers still believe there are opportunities in the market – especially when it comes to mobile broadband and data. However, it’s that same opportunity that MTN, Airtel, and Etisalat are all already targetting. So if this privatisation goes ahead, it’s to be hoped it’s not a case of 13 years being an unlucky number for NATCOM.

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

Still, operators can hardly argue (as they do) on the one hand that they are facing a spectrum crunch and are spectrum constrained, and then when more spectrum becomes available shrug their shoulders and say really they’d rather not bid, not at that price in any case. One operator who has been saying neither, of course, is Sprint, which is in the happy position of having enough spectrum to go round but is, more to the point, holding fire until TV spectrum at 600MHz becomes available next year.

ARGENTINA Revealing spectrum

AMERICA:

Spectrum actions As this issue went to press, total bidding in the US airwaves auction of what are known as AWS-3 frequencies had gone past the $42 billion mark. This was a number that was described as anything from “staggering” to “crazy” to “four times the reserve price”.

In 2008, the FCC raised $18.6 billion for licences in the 700-MHz band.

In 2006, it raised $13.7 billion in the 1700-MHz and 2100-MHz bands. This time around it is paired spectrum at 1700MHz and 2100MHz that has proved irresistible to operators, although many have suspected that it is the presence of Dish Networks which is driving up the price. Some have even proposed that it is only by having this new rival for Verizon and AT&T that we are seeing the true value of spectrum to these operators. That is – once they are faced with the prospect of not actually carving

auction winners up spectrum in a reasonably cosy way, and facing some genuinely competitive bidding, they have little choice but to up the price they are willing to pay. Another aspect – Dish’s AWS-4 spectrum suddenly looks a little more valuable now we’ve seen what the others are willing to pay for AWS-3.

The simple fact is though, although auctions are a great way of raising short term windfalls for Government, they’re a pretty poor way of deciding who is best placed to do the best for consumers with spectrum. It all depends whether you think the best value for a nation lies in a short term $40 billion cash injection, or something more nuanced about the way a physical resource is managed for the greater good.

Down south, Argentina has been having its own spectrum auction, with the regulator revealing winners piece by piece. The latest success was Telefonica, with the operator winning AWS spectrum in the 1700 MHz and 2.1 GHz band. We also know that Claro (America Movil) has been a winner – being awarded awarded six regional blocks of frequency in the 1900MHz bands for 3G and a national license for the same two 4G bands: 1,7201,730MHz and 2,120-2,130MHz. Another winner was Personal (Telecom Argentina) which also got regional 3G blocks and national 4G spectrum.

There is still no news of one bidder, Grupo Uno’s Arlink, which was also a qualified bidder.

The auction as a whole raised over $2 billion, and closed in November.

FEATURE: ANATOMY OF A MOBILE OPERATOR

OPERATOR PROFILE

TELSTRA 10 TMNQUARTERLY

INNOVATION DOWN UNDER T

elstra has, along the years, proved itself to be willing to innovate in network access technologies, often in accordance with long time partner Ericsson. Early rollouts of HSPA+ and dual carrier technologies, LTE and its carrier aggregation versions, as well as its willingness to trial live demos of technologies such as LTE-Broadast have all given the company a good reputation internationally.

One reason for this is that Telstra makes no secret of the fact that, like many operators, it puts its network at the centre of its strategy. Many talk this talk, but Telstra sees the benefits in terms of customer net promoter scores.

The company launched LTE in 2011 – not amongst the very first in the world but certainly in the earlier adopters. “We’re seeing insatiable demands for wireless data,” said Mike Wright, Telstra Group Managing Director, Networks, at the time. “This has been going on for 6 or 7 years with demand for data traffic nearly doubling every 12 months, so LTE was the logical conclusion to evolve our network in high performance and to give us the capacity and the speed that customers want.”

Telstra partnered with Ericsson to expand its offering, launching 4G services on its Next G network.

Mike Wright explains: “Ericsson delivered to us the 1800 MHz

radio equipment which was very important and they also helped us with the design of the network and part of the deployment and rollout, so jointly we made this commitment, and we launched it on time.”

The LTE 1800 MHz equipment supplied was part of a complete solution, in which Ericsson provided Radio and Core networks, services and OSS management. This included multi-standard RBS 6000 base stations and the world’s first triple access Evolved Packet Core, with SGSNMME Pool and Evolved Packet Gateway on the SSR 8020. The Next G network, which was first built for 3G service in 2006, covers 2.1 million km2 plus an additional 1 million km2 out to sea.

Over the two years following the LTE launch, revenue grew 15 percent while EBITDA rose 35 percent. This was alongside a 40 percent decrease in the number of network nodes over the two years.

The 2011 LTE launch was followed by the launch of 900 + 1800MHz band Carrier Aggregation in 2013 – which Telstra said made it the first carrier in Australia to have launched commercial LTE-A features. In 2014 the carrier launched 300Mbps carrier aggregation combining 700 + 1800MHz, and it says wherever it deploys 700 MHz, the LTE- A service will be available. The operator also has plans to launch VoLTE, which is has demonstrated already in its live production network, to consumers in 2015.

FEATURE: ANATOMY OF A MOBILE OPERATOR

RESULTS: TELSTRA SAW ITS MOBILE REVENUES GROW OF 5.1 PER CENT, OR $468 MILLION TO $9,668 MILLION, DURING 2014. POST-PAID HANDHELD REVENUE GREW 4.2 PER CENT TO $5,006 MILLION. ARPU, EXCLUDING THE IMPACT OF MOBILE REPAYMENT OPTIONS (MRO), INCREASED 0.7 PER CENT TO $65.80 AS CUSTOMERS USED MORE DATA. Pre-paid handheld revenue increased 20.9 per cent to $879 million with an increase of 249,000 unique pre-paid handheld users. ARPU grew by 11.4 per cent due to increased data usage.

The operator added 109,000 customer services in the mobile broadband category. Revenue grew by 7.6 per cent to $1,287 million. ARPU declined slightly to $29.59. Machine to machine (M2M) services experienced revenue growth of 12.2 per cent to $101 million, adding 291,000 services.

Investment continued in the 4G network, which is four times the geographical coverage area of any other 4G network in Australia. This has helped grow penetration of 4G devices with 34 per cent of handheld customers on 4G and more than 5.2 million 4G devices on the network, comprising 3.8 million handsets, 500,000 tablets, 400,000 dongles and 550,000 Wi-Fi hotspots.

WIFI PLAN

“WE WANT CUSTOMERS TO HAVE GREATER OPTIONS FOR CONNECTING WHEN THEY’RE OUT AND ABOUT.”

12 TMNQUARTERLY

Telstra’s 4G plans go alongside an ambitious plan for a national free WiFi network. Telstra has switched on the first 150 Wi-Fi hotspots in its national Wi-Fi network has more than 100 towns and cities in line for the roll out before the end of 2014.

Group Executive Telstra Retail, Gordon Ballantyne said Telstra’s plan to roll out the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network across the country was taking shape.

“This trial marks the beginning of our ambition to switch on more than two million hotspots across the nation over five years and give customers the best Wi-Fi experience in and out of the home,” said Mr Ballantyne.

“We want customers to have greater options for connecting when they’re

out and about. From browsing the web, streaming videos or sharing photos with friends, we want customers to have a taste of what the network will be like next year, when Telstra Wi-Fi members will be able to use their home broadband allowance at the hotspots.

The first Wi-Fi trials will be located at payphone sites in the heart of local communities in metro and regional areas as well as holiday hotspots, focusing on parts of the communities where people congregate and spend time. In future, Telstra-built hotspots will also be located at Telstra retail outlets and exchange buildings.

Access to Wi-Fi will be free at the 1000 trial sites before the network officially launches early next year.

FEATURE: ANATOMY OF A MOBILE OPERATOR

INNOVATION: Telstra 4GX Telstra has a brand name for its aggregation of 1800MHz and 700MHz LTE: 4GX. 4GX combines Telstra’s 1800MHz and 700MHz spectrum bands in parts of Hobart and Brisbane, as well as Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and 10 other regional centres. In addition, 4GX services will cover all capital CBD centres (within three kilometres of the GPO) and 50 regional locations by January 1 2015 and will be expanded across Telstra’s mobile footprint over time.

Andrew Volard, Director of Devices at Telstra said the 4GX name was important as it would help customers understand where the new 4G service is available and the devices it is available on as it’s rolled out.

“As humans we love technology that allows us to go faster and connect in the moment. 4GX sets a new benchmark in mobile internet speeds in Australia allowing people to download, share, stream and connect faster and more reliably than ever,” Mr Volard said.

Devices compatible with the 700MHz 4GX network include the Samsung Galaxy Note and the Note Edge, as well as the iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2. Telstra has also released the Telstra Wi-Fi 4G Advanced II, which is a Cat 6 LTE-A device able to work on the ‘up to’ 300Mbps 4GX network.

4GX will serve as the foundation for the introduction of extra mobile calling features like Voice over LTE (VoLTE), HD Video calling and multi-media calling using VoLTE technology in the future.

In 4GX areas, people with 4GX category 6 devices can expect download speeds of between 2Mbps and 100Mbps.

Customers with 4GX category 4 devices can enjoy typical download speeds of between 2Mbps to 75Mbps. 4GX will

also boost in-building coverage due to the 700MHz spectrum usage.

And it looks as if Telstra is not stopping there. It has conducted a trials of three carrier aggregation with Ericsson, achieving peak speeds of 450Mbps. The downlink speed was achieved by utilizing 60MHz of spectrum, with a 20MHz LTE carrier in the 1800MHz band plus 2 x 20MHz LTE carriers in the 2600MHz band.

The next evolution of LTE devices, known as Category 9 (supplied by Aeroflex) was used, reflecting Ericsson’s support for the advanced device ecosystem.

Mike Wright, Telstra Group Managing Director, Networks, says: “Together with Ericsson, Telstra continues its commitment to advancing mobile networks to manage the future wireless data needs of our customers.

“We demonstrated 300Mbps with Ericsson in December 2013 and only five months later we are now demonstrating 450Mbps. Take up of LTE-A enabled devices is growing and advanced technology tests like this are essential to our network development strategy to ensure we are ready and able to deliver the most reliable network speeds and experience to customers.”

TMNQUARTERLY 13

Âť A better way to deliver multiscreen media ÂŤ The pulse of innovation

Transcode more live video channels per watt per 2U per year* Enjoy a new magnitude of cloud efficiency and workload performance for any multiscreen content delivery application – including transcoding streaming video – that you deploy in cloud infrastructure.

The Kontron SYMKLOUD MS2900 Media platform provides more control over performance, power, management, and elastic scalability for mobile TV, IPTV, User Generated Content and Video on Demand subscriber services. »

Maximize subscriber revenue: efficient use of rack space with built-in switches and load balancers

»

More control: over power and cluster configurations for reduced IT OPEX

»

Highly efficient: distributed and hot-pluggable, dedicated 3rd/4th gen Intel® Core i7 processing

» * Tested to support: channel density of 144 live transcoded (MPEG2 to H.264) 1080p video streams with 3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7; and, at least 1.5 times more with 4th gen Core i7.

Talk to us about HEVC support.

SYMKLOUD Media MS2900 Platform with Integrated Switch + Load Balancer and up to 18x Intel Core i7 Processors

Integrated platforms that bring infrastructure to life Kontron integrated platforms bring applications to life deployed anywhere in telecom and cloud network infrastructures.

Discover more at kontron.com/symkloud • cloudplatformsolutions@kontron.com The pulse of innovation

FEATURE: MOBILE EDGE COMPUTING: PART I

LIFE LIFE LIFE ON ON ON THE THE THE EDGE EDGE EDGE

The mobile industry has a new alliance of operators and vendors determined to bring about a change in the way services are delivered. So what is Mobile Edge Computing, and what are the goals of its proponents?

It was nearly two years ago, at Mobile World Congress 2013, that Nokia (or Nokia Siemens Networks as it was then) announced a new technology that it said would have a lasting impact on the business models of deploying radio networks.

It introduced Liquid Applications, its first mention of a concept that placed increased computing resource at the edge of the network so that content and apps hosted on the platform could be delivered locally. There were several proposed benefits. First, that the apps and content could be “aware” of local network conditions. Second, that content and apps could be very low latency, where relevant.

16 TMNQUARTERLY

Third, that rich user location awareness could be added to apps. Fourth, that backhaul links could be optimised because of the ability to cache popular content close to the user.

Nokia’s system was built on Intel-based technology, with the IBM Websphere Applications Service Platform for Networks (ASPN) being integrated alongside Nokia’s base stations, creating an element called the Radio Applications Cloud Server.

Nokia pushed the idea again a year later, and had some limited (public) operator success, with Vodafone and NTT amongst those looking at the technology in their networks.

Perhaps unusually, there was not a rush from other vendors to put out “me too” products – or at least not in a highly visible manner. Not surprising, perhaps, when you consider that it is still early days for operators to get their heads round the concept of siting cloud computing platforms on the back of their base stations.

But fast forward to October 2014, and the market was witness to an expansion on that vision, with the founding of a new industry initiative to standardise this technology to create a wider ecosystem around Nokia, Intel and IBM’s vision.

These vendors, along with Huawei, Saguna Networks (long known to be a Nokia partner in Liquid Apps but never announced as such), NEC and a handful of operators including Orange, Vodafone and NTT DocoMo, formed an ISG (Industry Specifiction Group) within ETSI to formalise standards for the technology to be known as Mobile Edge Computing.

The first tasks for the ISG are to put together a framework and reference architecture, specification of platform services and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), a Virtual Machine Service Level Agreement, and (always important this) an ontology of terminology used.

As an introductory paper from the group explains: “The purpose of the ISG MEC is to create a standardised, open environment which will allow the efficient and seamless integration of applications from vendors, service providers, and 3rd parties across multivendor Mobile-edge Computing platforms. This will ensure that the vast majority of the customers of a mobile operator can be served. In addition, the group will work to enable and accelerate the development of edge applications across the industry as well as to increase the market scale and to improve market economics. The group will also address compliance with regulatory and legal requirements.”

FEATURE: MOBILE EDGE COMPUTING: PART I

So why form the group?

Phil Twist, who leads Nokia’s network marketing, takes up the story.

“A key transformation that Liquid Apps has brought has been the ability to run IT based at the network edge, applying the concepts of cloud computing. We define this as Mobile Edge Computing. Mobile Edge Computing can be seen as a cloud server running at the edge of a mobile network and performing specific tasks that could not be achieved with traditional network infrastructure.

“The reason for the formation of the Group is the opportunity to form a standard. We have been getting traction with Liquid Apps and the single overriding request is that operators want the ability to work [services] across the entire network, not differentiate services in different parts of the network.” In other words, operators didn’t like the idea they had some services that could only work on certain infrastructure, in certain parts of the network.

Twist adds that to grow MEC, operators will need to feel confident that they can operate services across equipment from different vendors in the network, and for instance that a Nokia cloud server could work in alliance with another vendor’s base station. So Nokia and IBM and Intel took a proposal to form the group to DoCoMo and Huawei, and they agreed and that’s how the group was formed.

The idea is to have the first specfications available, toolkits and deliverables, within 18-24 months.

So what elements are required to enable MEC, and to get it to work in a standardised manner? Twist says that

standards are required on how to get hold of the radio information from the base station, the data registry, to inform apps running on top of the Virtual Machine environment or provide communications services or drive how traffic is to be offloaded. Standardised interfaces will mean that operators can support such services independent of the hardware layer.

Twist’s view is that MEC could lead to reduction in backhaul and transport by up to 35%, and enable applications such as automated remote CCTV montoring, by placing advanced video analytics in the radio cloud server. Other applications could be anything that requires very low latency – and would be harmed by the requirement to be moved back to the core, analysed, processed, and then delivered back to the edge.

So is it hard to architect as a technical solution? Twist said that because Nokia’s base station had a slot into which it could plug in the Intel-based processing card, it was “relatively” easy to add the compute platform to the base station. On top of the hardware the company has opened up app factories to foster development of apps that could be enriched by radio and network data, and user location.

Twist adds that small cells are also a very viable part of the MEC vision. In this instance, at least for indoor deployments, the MEC introductory paper proposes the use of a controller node – or on premises gateways that run multiple services applied to the particular location they are installed in.

However, not everyone is so convinced by the overall vision – especially when it comes to adding processing power directly to base stations. Ericsson’s head of networks Johan Wibergh told TMN that Ericsson did consider joining the group, and does think there is a role for edge intelligence, but had a disagreement with MEC’s architecture. Put simply, Ericsson does not at the moment think that it is viable to put the cloud node out at the

base station. It would rather do this one jump back in the network.

Wibergh: “We believe in edge computing but it is costly to bring it to every base station. We think it should be done one step back. If you look at the hardware that’s required, processors and memory, we think it makes more sense to put it one node [further back] in [the network] versus putting it in every BTS.” Wibergh argued that in (dense urban) areas where there is a mobile bandwidth limitation there is also likely to be available fibre to deploy from the network node out to the base stations. That way one node can provide edge functionality to 100-200 base stations. “But they [Nokia and MEC ISG] want to put the execution of it at the base station,” Wibergh said.

And as for Huawei – you can judge how early it is for this company by this response TMN received when asking for comment for this feature. “Unfortunately, due to it being a relatively new technology for them, [Huawei] does not have a spokesperson who would be able to answer your questions.”

So it is early days for the working group, but you should think of Mobile Edge Computing as something that could be very useful in the following ways: • big reductions in latency (likely to be a key plank of 5G specificiations) • potential revenue raiser by “enriching” apps with network/radio data • potential revenue raiser by optimising content per network condtions • potential to create new class of hyper-local apps • potential money saver by optimising backhaul links It’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

TMNQUARTERLY 17

FEATURE: MOBILE EDGE COMPUTING: PART I

MEC Architecture

“The MEC hosting infrastructure consists of hardware resources and a virtualisation layer. The details of the actual implementation of the MEC hosting infrastructure (including the actual hardware components) are abstracted from the applications being hosted on the platform.

The MEC hosting infrastructure, including the connectivity to the radio network element (eNB or RNC) and/or the network, is BEYOND the scope of the work of the MEC initiative.

Multiple implementation options can be used to integrate the server within the RAN. Likewise, the interface towards the hosting infrastructure management system is BEYOND the scope of the work of the MEC initiative. The MEC application platform provides the capabilities for hosting applications and consists of the application’s virtualisation manager and application platform services.

“The virtualization manager supports a flexible and efficient, multi-tenancy, run-time and hosting environment for applications by providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) facilities. The IaaS controller provides a security and resource sandbox for the applications and the platform. Virtual-appliance applications run on top of an IaaS and are delivered as packagedoperating systemVirtual Machine (VM) images, allowing complete freedom of implementation.

“Note that in future releases of the initiative, Platform as a Service (PaaS) facilities may also be supported by the application platform services to allow application developers a different level of control over processing power, memory, storage and operating system support.

“The MEC application-platform services provide a set of middleware application services and infrastructure services to the

applications hosted on the MEC platform.

MEC applications from vendors, service providers, and third-parties are deployed and executed within Virtual Machines.

The MEC server and its services are application agnostic. The applications are managed by their related Application Management Systems which are application-specific components.” Neither the applications nor their interfaces with the Application Management Systems are included in the scope of the work of the MEC initiative. The application management capabilities do not include application life-cycle management (e.g. start, stop, etc.), which is under the responsibility of the MEC application platform management system” (The above is quoted from: “Mobile-Edge Computing – Introductory Technical White Paper”)

MEC Use Cases ETSI’s MEC ISG produced an initial white paper outlinining MEC core architecture and potential use cases. TMN reproduces three key use cases here. See https://portal.etsi. org/Portals/0/TBpages/MEC/Docs/Mobile-edge_Computing_-_Introductory_Technical_White_ Paper_V1%2018-09-14.pdf for the original.

MEC SERVER

BROWSING VIDEO BACKGROUND

CELL TRAFFIC

18 TMNQUARTERLY

APPLICATION AWARNESS APPS

LTE BASE STATION/RNC

CORE NETWORK

INTERNET

Application Aware Performance Optimisation.

Application-aware cell performance optimisation for each device in real time can improve network efficiency and customer experience. It can reduce video stalling and increase browsing throughput.

Latency may also be significantly reduced.

The solution can also provide independent metrics on application performance (video stalls, browsing throughput, and latency) for enhanced network management and reporting.

FEATURE: MOBILE EDGE COMPUTING: PART I

CONTENT OPTIMISATION

RAN Aware Content Optimisation

Active Device Location Tracking

In this use case, the application exposes accurate cell and subscriber radio interface information (cell load, link quality) to the content optimiser, enabling dynamic content optimisation, improving QoE, network efficiency and enabling new service and revenue opportunities. Dynamic content optimisation enhances video delivery through reduced stalling, reduced time-to-start and ‘best’ video quality.

The concept also enables enhanced use cases, such as promoted content delivery and subscriber throughput boosting.

This use case enables realtime, network measurement-based tracking of active (GPS independent and network determined) terminal equipment, using ‘best-in-class’ third-party geo-location algorithms within a geo-location application hosted on the MEC server.

This provides an efficient and scalable solution with local measurement processing and event based triggers. It enables location based services for enterprises and consumers (e.g. on opt-in basis), for example in venues, retail locations and traditional coverage areas where GPS coverage is not available.

Services may include mobile advertising, ‘Smart City’, footfall analysis, campus management, etc.

SUBSCRIBER ID, CELL LOAD, LINK QUALITY...

RAN AWARE APP

MEC SERVER LTE BASE STATION

CORE NETWORK

CONTENT OPTIMISER

NETWORK MEASUREMENT

In Part II of this feature in next issue: MEC development and further vendor views.

INTERNET

CENTRAL SERVICES

GEO-LOC APP

MEC SERVER

SUBSCRIBER ID LOCATION (X,Y)

LTE BASE STATION/RNC

CORE/IT

INTERNET

TMNQUARTERLY 19

Seven things I know about…

transforming your business models through LTE Cedric Arnaud-Battandier, CMO, Astellia, tells TMN seven things he knows about using LTE network analytics to create new revenues and business models.

More speed brings new behaviours, which brings more revenue opportunities Just by providing a better user experience, offering faster throughputs on the uplink and downlink, LTE opens up opportunities for operators. When users had a choice of 3G or WiFi they would look to connect to WiFi at the first opportunity because it was faster. That would put large chunks of their behaviour beyond the reach of the operator, so the operator didn’t know what apps, data, services the user was accessing, or what quality they were experiencing.

Now, with LTE, that is no longer the case. LTE often offers a better experience than WiFi, keeping subscribers on net for longer, and that means that operators now have visibility into the totality, or near to it, of a user’s behaviour and usage.

That, in turn, provides much more, and much richer, data for operators to work with to create new and better customer segmentation, new service offers and better customer care.

That’s a change in business model.

20 TMNQUARTERLY

Real, actionable data beats customer surveys We have customers who have invested in customer surveys, creating detailed and lengthy reports about what customers think their experience is. But it’s always a snapshot in time of what a selection of customers perceive about their service experience. If you have complete visibility of the network, through network monitoring and application recognition and analytics, then that allows you to have a fact-based read of the real experience consumers have. On top of that, you can have that view at any time and instantly.

With voice, data, USSD and SMS usage monitoring you have a 360 degree view of that customer’s services.

For example, if it’s an enterprise customer you can see exactly what the behaviour is and how that relates to the SLA they have, which allows you to design a service that better matches their requirements.

SPONSORED FEATURE

Real, actionable data beats marketing consultants One of our customers had spent a fortune with a marketing consultant that had built intricate customer segmentation profiles. But the customer then found that they were getting very low results in terms of applying that to their customer base – they had hardly learnt anything of value! When Astellia introduced a solution that provided insights into the customers based on actual data, it was night and day.

4

You can transform your customer care

We found that by exporting the results of our analytics to customer-facing care agents, we increased first call resolution by 15%, diminished handling time by 35% and cut escalations to network support by 20%. That’s because when a customer calls in an agent can see, from real network data, if there has in fact been an issue on the network, and therefore what can be done.

Or if a user has an issue and the agent knows it’s not due to the network, then they know there’s a different issue to address, and the network operations is not tasked unnecessarily. ROI on our customer care product is typically under a year.

LTE data analysis opens up partnership opportunities OK, so you know more about your customer because the better experience that LTE offers is keeping them on-net for longer.

So now you can use that data, anonymised and aggregated in an innovative manner to provide geo-centric data to third parties.

In France, a Tier 1 operator is using such data to inform retail owners about footfall so that they can make better siting decisions on new stores, and to inform city authorities about traffic patterns so they know where to locate parking facilities, and so on. We know other operators who are using the data to enrich the marketing offers of other parties – local offers, vouchers etc. Having connected, available users on the LTE network is critical to that level of engagement. Without it, operators lose to the WiFi service providers, and app-based voucher providers. With it, the operator becomes a key partner and adds value to his customers too.

For more on how Astellia’s Nova solution can help transform your LTE business models and improve customer’s experience by providing unique network and subscriber intelligence, contact infos@astellia.com

www.astellia.com

Now the customer is progressing and lining up new offers, and starting to generate incremental revenues as a result.

In fact, the impact has been so profound that our project leader there has become an evangelist within that operator for what our solutions can provide across the business – not just within the marketing team.

You can make new service offers Once you truly understand your customer base, and can segment it and have visibility to that customer’s experience, then your ability to interact with your customer is transformed. Operators can use the knowledge they have gained from usage and network analytics to make new offers that add revenues where previously a user would have shut off service. For instance – make a roaming offer that actually entices a user to turn on his data. Or offer an extension to a data allowance rather than shut of service.

Or use the power and quality of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) to offer enterprise customers deals on voice and video conferencing over LTE, rather than seeing those customers use a lower quality OTT service just because it’s free. Or use knowledge of a user’s experience to reach out and make an offer to prevent a customer from churning. Or in prepaid markets, operators can target just the users they know have been recently inactive, rather than message their entire customer base, to make an offer to bring that customer segment back to the market.

You can enable all your people to speak the same language, at last OK, it’s fine to have the network and customer care data, to have the analytics engine, but a key transformation is that this enables your marketing, your customer care and even your network operations teams to speak the same language. They see the same data, in the same interfaces, can generate KPIs that make sense across the business.

That’s a huge change in inter-operator culture and working practice. It’s really very powerful. It’s amazing to think that all of this starts with a probe in the network, a DPI engine and a lot of analytics smarts. In a way, we’re performing a translation service for operators – turning what looks like an impenetrable language into something understandable, turning what was a cost centre – network monitoring and operations – into a profit centre. LTE, with the key user experience enhancement, is the underlying driver of all that.

TMNQUARTERLY 21

A S ’ T A “WH FOR E V A W WAY Y N A FEATURE: EXPLORING 5G: PART I

? face r e t in re air w at a e h n w a t d, bou ? min a ) n i t r t ases a a c p h e t (in us th 5G , wi o be t o t r S o g p s. goin sup a ye o G t e 5 k s Is m g li y? efor v okin a ywa o l n w s a ’ e It m at efor ndid v a a c aw the t is a h w And

22 TMNQUARTERLY

FEATURE: EXPLORING 5G: PART I

M R ?

Y

“

One of the recent discussions around 5G has been whether the technology will be all or in part about a new air interface.

At the core of this discussion is the fact that 5G seems to promise different things to different people. It is at the same time a technology that offers massive throughputs to small amounts of users and one that can handle thousands or even millions of connected devices per cell doing lots of very low level, but latencysensitive, things.

The core question is, is it possible to create a waveform that can meet these differing demands? If so, what would be the best candidates for 5G? But first things first. What is a waveform anyway?

Steve Bowker, VP of Technology and Strategy at assurance, analytics and optimisation solutions provider TEOCO, puts it like this for TMN readers: “A mobile network transmits information by varying the properties of an electromagnetic signal. Changing its frequency, phase and amplitude over the time domain creates a unique “waveform”.

Depending on the type of modulation, a communications channel with different spectral efficiency, maximum throughput, latency, quality and robustness is achieved.”

All good? So the waveform is the basis of the signal that will actually form the channels used in 5G. To this end, researchers have been “modelling” the channels that might be required in 5G. TOMMI JÄMSÄ, SENIOR MANAGER, RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY for Anite, outlined the requirements for 5G channel modelling at METIS’ recent 5G Global Conference. (METIS says it will have its channel models available by February 2015.) He outlined the channel model requirements like so: • Extremely wide frequency range from sub-1 GHz to 100 GHz and beyond • Very high bandwidth • Full 3-Dimensional and accurate polarisation modelling • Massive-MIMO: spherical waves and very high spatial resolution • Extremely large arrays even beyond coherence distance • Direct D2D, M2M and V2V (vehicle to vehicle) Communication • Wide range of propagation scenarios and network topologies (from stationary to very high speed, outdoor-to-indoor, from single antenna to massive arrays, from single link to massive Mesh etc.)

• Spatial Consistency between topologies and between users • geographical locations of first and last bounce scatterers • birth-death process and/or visibility regions for clusters • High reliability: emergency communication and traffic safety As you can see – there are those diverging demands again, in terms of spectrum bands and propagation scenarios. So why the need for a new interface – why not stick with OFDMA, the technology for LTE and WiFI?

The main reason is that LTE and LTE-Advanced transport mechanisms have been tailored to maximise single cell performance by enforcing strict synchronism and orthogonality within a single cell and within a single contiguous frequency band. The shortcomings of those design criteria are that they are inefficient machinetype-communications (MTC) and that bulky procedures are necessary to ensure strict synchronism.

For example, collaborative schemes have been introduced to boost capacity and coverage (eg. CoMP), and wireless networks are becoming more and more heterogeneous following the non-uniform distribution of users.

Tremendous efforts must be spent to collect the gains and to manage such systems under the premise of strict synchronism and orthogonality. Instead, a new waveform could overcome these limitations.

Bowker says: “5G is considering the use of many parallel radio channels simultaneously between each device being co-ordinated across multiple base stations. The aim is to achieve better overall performance, particularly at the edge of cells, where geographical (or spatial) separation can be leveraged.

Multiple-In Multiple - Out (MIMO) configurations in LTE are typically 2x2 configured. However, in 5G “Massive MIMO” is being explored where tens or hundreds of radio channels would be in use simultaneously by each user in the network.”

Other factors driving the selection of waveform include: • inter-carrier interference performance • removing the dependency on accurate time synchronisation • improving energy efficiency • supporting very low latency requirements TMNQUARTERLY 23

FEATURE: EXPLORING 5G: PART I

M Y N O R P C U A SO

Here are some of the current waveforms being proposed by researchers: Filter Bank Multi-Carrier (FBMC),

Sparse Codebook Multiple Access (SCMA),

Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing (GFDM) and Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC).

Understanding the differences between these waveforms is beyond the reaches of most of mere mortals.

What researchers are trying to work out is if there could be a single waveform underpinning an air interface that could meet diverse 5G requirements.

UFMC is the candidate waveform for 5G being developed by the 5G Now project – a project supported by the European Union. One of the chief proponents is Alcatel-Lucent, which also terms the waveform UFOFDM (Universal OFDM). As that latter names suggests, this waveform is a modulation of OFDM, but one that its proposers argue offers advantages over FBMC because of its cyclic prefix, high spectral side-lobes, QAM and the fact that it is pushed towards time domain containment. FMBC, on the other hand, offers long filters, low spectral side-lobes, Offset QAM, and is pushed towards frequency domain containment.

5G requirements will mean that a waveform will need to support heterogeneous deployment settings as well as heterogeneous service and device classes. So, key for L1/L2 (e.g. access procedure, waveform …) is to provide options so that the system is able to be tailored to specific use cases. A Unified Frame Structure would

24 TMNQUARTERLY

allow these heterogeneous service and device classes to operate withinone band – enabling a highly efficient and scalable multi-service support. For certain services (e.g. small packet transmission), relaxed time-frequency alignment will help reducing signaling overhead and battery consumption.

UF-OFDM enables the Unified Frame Structure. As a new waveform it can form the core of a 5G air interface, and having a common core with classical OFDM could ease its introduction.

However, FMBC’s proponents wouldn’t necessarily agree that the waveform is hampered by, for example, its use of Offset QAM. Huwei researcher Zhao Zhao said, “FBMC can indeed support MIMO and short packages, with ‘some new proposed solutions’. With Offset QAM people think MIMO support is difficult but with some additional solutions it can be done.”

Zhao Zhao claims FBMC can also support single carrier transmission, by adopting customised subcarrier spacing for other types of service (D2D, Machine type comms). According to Huawei test cases being undertaken are: 1 Massive sensor development. eg 300,000 sensors per cell. 2. Latency intolerant use cases like smart grid teleprotection in the event of an emergency (8ms end to end latency). 3 Open air events - a highly dense number of users.

Some are still working on OFDM in other ways. A joint research project between Ericsson and Nokia is looking at a harmonised OFDM concept to provide greater frequency flexibility for dense deployment environments.

This concept proposes adaptive TDD with a flexible UL/DL ratio providing the main enabler for increased throughput. Shortening the frame length enables this dynamic UL/DL ratio, and the proposal here is to put a simplified control plane and control channel in every frame.

Researchers think a subframe length of 0.25 ms at cmW area could provide around a 10x reduction on average, for example reducing HARQ RTT to 1 ms in cmW. Additionally, longer gaps between shorter frames means better battery life.

The thing that strikes you about all these candidates is that we are still in the very early stages – really we are seeing this most physical layer of the technology, the one that will underpin the actual carrying of the data across the air in a “5G” network just beginning to be explored within research projects and labs. Whichever “wins” will be the technology that can satisfy the widest spectrum bands, the widest devices and service use cases, in the most practical way. The truth is, we don’t know what that is going to be yet.

FEATURE: VOLTE: PART ONE

ASSURANCE FOR VOIP VoLTE is different from 3G voice, and different from other

VoIP apps. So how do operators actually assure VoIP quality?

When Verizon launched VoLTE in August 2014, it sent customers a flyer explaining that its “Advanced Calling 1.0” service might not always work as well as customers might expect. This was because it was a new service, with a fair amount of complexity.

“As a first-generation service, please note that your calling experience may differ from your experience today and may include audio issues or dropped calls.” The flyer even advised users that customers could disable VoLTE if they wanted, and go back to “Verizon’s traditional voice network.”

It’s worth pausing to take that in for a moment. In the USA, in 2014, a new voice service – the absolute entry stake service for mobile operators – was launched in the full awareness that it might not work very well. To be fair, Verizon had to deal with its position as a legacy CDMA operator, with its background as a CDMA operator meaning that it would not be able to offer the same CSFB option to 3G that T-Mobile and AT&T could offer.

26 TMNQUARTERLY

In a post for customers, Verizon noted that “calls won’t switch between 3G and 4G LTE networks. If your call starts on the 3G network and you move to a 4G LTE coverage area, your call will continue as a 3G/CDMA call. However, if your call starts on the 4G LTE network and you move to a non-4G coverage area, your call will drop.”

But still and all the same – here is progress? A new voice service that, yes, offers things like simultaneous voice and data, but may not work.

So come forward in time, and consider that 2015 is expected to be the year of VoLTE, as an increasing number of operators, driven on by more device availability and wider LTE coverage in general, are expected to launch VoLTE commercially. Is this core quality of experience qualification going to be an issue for the mobile industry? If so, it’s going to be a big one.

Newfield Wireless CEO, Marc Bensadoun, says that one core issue for operators is that as a new technology VoLTE is about a cross-operator organisational change.

Speaking to TMN Bensadoun says, “VoLTE

brings complexity and challenges that require new processes, tools and OSS upgrades, with all platforms implicated in Customer Experience in a very intimate way that can be confusing.” Because VoLTE is an IP technology controlled within the IMS it gives, as Bensadoun says, an issue of “knowing who to call” when things go wrong. This system-level complexity is what creates the need for an assurance platform that provides cross-network visibility.

FEATURE: VOLTE: PART ONE

“There might be five operational departments, 10 vendors, involved across the IMS, core and RAN, and that creates value in our kind of [network visibility] platform,” Bensadoun says.

So where are these challenges, operationally, across the network?

Martin Morgan, of policy and charging system provider Openet, says that from a QoS, and from a BSS perspective, VoLTE will create some interesting challenges for the charging, billing and policy elements in the network.

“First of all, most operators will rate VoLTE calls as voice calls. But while VoLTE calls are effectively voice calls made on a ‘data’ network, the charging and billing systems will need to include zero rate data transmission, and then apply voice rating rules.

“Secondly, if operators are going to market VoLTE as high definition voice, then they need to ensure that quality is there, and that it is better than the OTT VoIP services. Delivering Quality of Service is essential for VoLTE, and to do this operators need high performance and flexible policy management that supports VoLTE.” For Morgan, one of the main problems with VoLTE is going to be one of operators accurately predicting VoLTE signalling requirements and understanding their impact on their existing Policy and Charging Rules Functions (PCRF). If the PCRF systems can’t handle the volume in real-time then the promised quality improvements of hi-def voice may not be realised. VoLTE will drive higher transactions per second and session counts than some traditional PCRFs are used to dealing with.

“The PCRF is in the middle of every voice call to handle resources, acting between the IMS and core to handle SIP

signaling and the data plane carrying the voice traffic to make sure they work well together. You need to set up a data channel for this call and that’s where the PCRF comes in, to make sure of the set-up and monitor that it is sufficient to carry voice traffic. If that voice call changes to a video call, or if a user conferences somebody in, then the PCRF makes the call to request more bandwidth to deliver that. Any of those changes require resourcing need to carry actual traffic – and that then requires the PCRF to authorise, monitor and make sure it is being delivered. It acts as a buffer to the IMS signalling and data plane.”

Indeed, some operators have actually deployed a VoLTE dedicated PCRF function, with a dedicated APN for voice and video calls over LTE and a separate function for data. Morgan also argues that virtualisation will be a big enabler of the scale required in the control plane to move from a few thousand calls to supporting millions of VoLTE users on a network. Going back to our “network visibility” angle, the PCRF also offers itself up as a good node to understand what is happening in the network.

GUARANTEED BEARER One important differentiator between “best effort” IP voice and VoLTE is that VoLTE comes with an end to end guaranteed bit rate bearer – right from one phone to another – through the network. So that means that the actual bit rate required to carry the call is defined, and guaranteed, and that that bearer will have priority of over “best effort” data.

That should in fact mean that VoLTE gains a significant benefit over other VoIP apps – especially when a cell is busy or a link under pressure.

TMNQUARTERLY 27

FEATURE: VOLTE: PART ONE

The report evaluated several attributes including call setup time, call reliability, call quality, network resource requirements, and the impact on battery life.

What it found: VoLTE call quality greatly exceeded that of 3G CS voice and was measurable higher than the HD voice service offered by Skype With network loading, and in particular with background applications running on the mobile phone and transferring data with the network, the VoLTE results were considerably better than Skype

28 TMNQUARTERLY

medium load. In contrast, the VoLTE drop call rate was always zero.”

Another company to analyse VoLTE quality in 2014 was the Signals Research Group (backed with money from AlcatelLucent), which conducted its research from June to July 2014 to evaluate the performance of VoLTE against 3G CS voice and Skype. Michael Thelander, CEO, said, “VoLTE delivered a higher call quality than Circuit Switched voice and Over-the-Top (OTT) applications. While other network or background traffic downloading on a smartphone could bring Skype voice to its knees, there was no indication that it impacted the VoLTE call. In addition, VoLTE really shined when it came to its network requirements, consuming far less than a Skype voice call which translates into a meaningfully longer smartphone battery life.”

oLTE used substantially fewer V network resources than Skype voice, which in turn resulted in longer estimated device battery life for the subscriber and a more efficient network for the operator When leaving LTE coverage, VoLTE calls were successfully handed over to 3G CS voice. The network’s enhanced Single Radio Voice Call Continuity ensures calls continue without interruption

DEC 2014

Indeed, in simulations carried out by Nokia that mimicked a loaded cell, VoLTE did outperform other VoIP apps. Nokia reported the following: “It turns out that VoLTE voice quality is not affected at all by non-GBR traffic thanks to Quality of Service (QoS) configuration, so VoLTE voice quality was kept at a good level.

“And what about OTT VoIP? Here the story was very different. Under low to medium load conditions, OTT VoIP degraded from 20 to 30%, giving a medium MOS* result which translates into poor to very poor quality. Under high network load, the MOS result was low which means the voice quality was completely unacceptable.

“Even worse, the OTT VoIP service experienced a 100% call drop rate under very high non-GBR load and 65% under

VoLTE call setup time was nearly twice as fast as 3G Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) call setup

T-MOBILE US REPORTS AN AVERAGE

EACH DAY

FEATURE: VOLTE: PART ONE

This, of course, is all good news for the OTT VoIP VoLTE TESTS BY NOKIA’S SMART LABS operator, as long as all the systems that VoLTE relies on is working well. This is Quality Loss = 0% MOS* why vendors such as ExFo, Spirent and Anite produce test equipment targeted Quality Loss = 20 - 30% at checking key elements of the VoLTE supporting architecture, and assurance companies such as Polystar, Astellia, Empirix and Newfield Wireless are focussing on monitoring and network intelligence products that provide the Mean end to end network visibility across IMS, Optinion Score core and RAN elements. All of these LOW MEDIUM HIGH companies have focussed on VoLTE assurance over the past two years.

OTT VoLTE DROP CALL RATE VoIP Another company doing so is JDSU, whose Paul Gowans points out the requirement for real time correlation.

Citing the requirement for assuring that GETTING THE MESSAGE “The moves we’re seeing are that guaranteed bit rate across RAN, core and Despite its name, VoLTE, or rather the people are putting voice with traditional IMS, as well as 3G-4G handoff. Gowans architecture that underpins it, is not just SMS and then thinking about how get IP says, “If ever there was a service that about voice. One difference with VoLTE is messaging on phones and enhance things required real time metrics - it is VoLTE.” that it also introduces a new messaging like group chat, file transfer, presence. So “In traditional assurance you would architecture, and this is something that it’s 1. Voice. 2 Messaging over IP. 3. New build records and make them available Alex Duncan, CEO of Openmind Networks, enhanced IP based features – which we every 15 minutes or so and then carry thinks will also enter the quality assurance have been calling IP Comms, with RCS the out post-analysis on those records. matrix – usually a year or so after the initial standard that sits behind that.”

Today with VoLTE data you can’t do that VoLTE rollout.

For Duncan, this may be something that - it makes no sense. So don’t mess with “People tend to forget that VoLTE goes beyond the capabilities of operators’ the records - if there is a good VoLTE call also requires IP components to handle core network providers. “Messaging is with high QoS end to end then get a KPI messaging - and that’s quite important to quite a complex area, there are quite a lot associated, count it and take that. There’s switch IP messages, bring messages back of protoocls and standards and although no point building a record for that, to traditional phones, enable people to be the NEPS are fantastic in voice, our view especially not if you are not billing for it able to store and forward messages, know is you need to bring in messaging experts either. The real time aspect comes from which phones are on SMS and which on IP to deliver messaging solutions - people that, if you are only building and upgade/downgrade as messages go underestimate the complexity and records for things that fail and KPIs for through the networks.” Openmind’s IP SMS difficulty of messaging. The NEPS do not things that are successful then you can Gateway in fact acts as that store forward have a good messaging solution, and it’s get the data out and get to that more function with the ability to switch between even more complex in switching to IPquickly, in seconds.” two IP phones and not go back through based messaging. traditional SMS - thereby handling all “So I think it’s going to be a year between IN PART TWO: VoLTE ROAMING new traffic for IP SMS and into traditional VoLTE and IP messaging and then another AND INTERCONNECT – WHERE IT networks as well. year before doing RCS.” GETS REALLY INTERESTING

65%

100%

0%

0%

TMNQUARTERLY 29

FEATURE: SECURITY REDUX

?

Y

G R E U T O Y TRA ’T S S Y A T H RI W U C E S

EVENTS IN 2014 HAVE CONFIRMED THE VIEW THAT SECURITY CONCERNS ARE NOW A KEY STRATEGIC ISSUE FOR MOBILE OPERATORS.

S

ometimes it’s nice to be proved right: in this case, not so much.

A year ago The Mobile Network dedicated all its features within one issue to the topic of security. Why? Because we thought it was important that the industry gets to grips publicly, and starts to have more conversations internally, about the issues of security, privacy and integrity.

We looked at several issues – telco network security, fraud and spam protection, as well as the overall theme of operator “integrity” in a post-Snowden world, but also in a world where consumers are much more aware of the value of their “own” data to companies such as Facebook, Google and Uber.

One of the points we made was that operators, currently seen as trusted custodians of consumer data and privacy, really needed to do all they could to

30 TMNQUARTERLY

maintain that position. And one of the key tests would be the way operators responded to consumer concerns about how their data is protected.

Two stories towards the end of 2014 have illustrated that in a way that reflects not so much on the operators themselves, but on the environment operators now find themselves in. The first was the revelation of a “malicious platform” called Regin that appeared to be an exploit that allows its proponent to attack and monitor GSM networks. One company that highlighted the presence of Regin, Kapersky Lab, said that it had been tracking the malware for almost three years. Here’s how it described Regin: “Regin is not just a single malicious program, but a platform – a software package, consisting of multiple modules, capable of infecting the entire networks of

targeted organisations to seize full remote control at all possible levels. Regin is aimed at gathering confidential data from attacked networks and performing several other types of attacks.”

“According to an activity log on a GSM Base Station Controller obtained by Kaspersky Lab researchers during the investigation, attackers were able to obtain credentials that would allow them to control GSM cells in the network of a large cellular operator. This means that they could have had access to information about which calls are processed by a particular cell, redirect these calls to other cells, activate neighbour cells and perform other offensive activities.”

Symantec, which has also been tracking the malware, said that around 28% of Regin’s known attacks were on telecoms infrastructure, with the rest spread around other industries and private businesses.

There were guesses that Regin may have been introduced by a security agency – and that it may even have been the key used by the UK’s GCHQ to open up

FEATURE: SECURITY REDUX

Belgacom’s network, a known target of the agency.

Then shortly after that news came new details from the Snowden cache which appeared to show that the NSA had been making active attempts to monitor the activities of the GSMA. These documents seemed to show proof that what the agency wanted to do was keep ahead of what technologies mobile operators were using, so that it could exploit any vulnerabilities and even, it said, inject vulnerabilities.

That included keeping up to speed with encryption used in networks, as well as with network technology and architecture in general.

One of the mechanisms it said it was targeting was gaining visibility into

IR.21 documents – essentially technical documentation that mobile operators swap between themselves for roaming and interconnect purposes.

The GSMA responded that in its view, its processes and documentation were secure and that it could see no evidence “of active targeting or compromise of GSMA systems, communications and stored documentation.” Further, it didn’t think IR.21s were the source of the data published by The Intercept – the site publishing documents from the Snowden cache.

The GSMA, though, did nod to the most important aspect of this story for mobile operators – that of public trust.

“Although we see no evidence of a breach of GSMA-held assets, we are very concerned at any attempt to access or interfere with our member’ data. We will continue to stringently monitor access to GSMA systems, communications and stored documentation, and will work with all stakeholders to put in place further

measures to ensure that our collective data management and security protections remain robust.”

That was an important point to make given the fact that operators have been accused of being too willing to give up customer data to security agencies – especially those operators based in democracies rather than more repressive states where such collusion might be more expected or even understandable. So in fact the NSA revelations, if indeed that’s what they were, actually worked quite well for operators from that point of view – proving that the NSA were being forced to go to greater lengths to access data than submitting intercept notices and making a friendly phone call.

Yet both stories go to show that how operators protect and defend the integrity of their customer data – and most threats are of course commercial or criminal in nature rather than government-led - is now a strategic priority for operators.

CATCHING UP ON GREY ROUTES

A

nother topic we highlighted last year was the threat to operator business models of grey routes. Grey routes are those often complex routes that enable a messaging aggregator, originating operator or service provider to “terminate” messages for free onto a network. Well, this is certainly one issue that does not seem to have gone away.

Alex Duncan, CEO of messaging platform provider Openmind Networks, says that the continued growth in A2P messaging (where a brand of business sends a notification of other SMS to

a customer or potential customer) has led to a rise in the appearance of grey routes. His company is protecting many operators from the loss of revenue grey routes bring, by routing all messages into its Traffic Control platform with an anti-spam module called Protect, so that it can identify all messages and block or respond to the originator of messages it is not happy with. That could mean negotiating commercial terms directly with the enterprise sending the messages.

At a recent conference James Lasbrey, Head of Wholesale Messaging, Telefónica, confirmed that the industry will witness a huge surge over the next three years

in A2P SMS traffic volumes and revenues, particularly in core markets, including Latin America and Europe. On the same panel discussion, Dialogue Group’s Perry Offer urged operators to move away from encouraging SIM farms and tackle disorderly markets and fraudulent activity head on.

“As long as these fraudulent routes are available then there will always be a price point pressure so we need to work together to put the market in order.

Operators should work more closely alongside aggregators in order to bring down price points and by moving to 100% on-net delivery the true value of SMS can be reached,” Offer said.

TMNQUARTERLY 31

A I V S S N K D C E A T TH T A

MOBILE OPERATORS ARE CURRENTLY LEAVING THEMSELVES OPEN TO ATTACKS VIA THEIR DNS INFRASTRUCTURE, AND HAVE NO MEANS TO DETECT FRAUDULENT ABUSE OF THE DNS INFRASTRUCTURE, ACCORDING TO ONE SECURITY SPECIALIST.

T

he DNS is the “plumbing” of the internet – performing translation from domain names to IP addresses – and is often the target of denial of service attacks, as hackers flood DNS servers rendering them unable to process legitimate requests.

But a new breed of attacks via the DNS is leaving operators exposed to revenue loss, and to the requirement to invest in additional DNS infrastructure.

Neil Cook, CTO, Cloudmark, told TMN, “DNS is completely critical to internet infrastructure, yet really from a security perspective it has been neglected and we are starting to see in the last year or so an increasing number of attacks on the DNS.” According to Cloudmark, a good number of outages in recent years have been as a result of DNS attacks, even if they have not been publicly names as such.

Although there are some understood threats, such as cache poisoning, that have been addressed with DNS Sec, a security feature for DNS that has been rolled out over the last couple of years, Cook said that “all the other ways that the DNS can be abused are, from a security perspective, almost completely unprotected”.

32 TMNQUARTERLY

WHY IS THIS? “Nobody is looking at DNS traffic for two reasons. First, they don’t have solutions to do that so nobody is looking at DNS traffic to see if it is malicious, and second even with DNS Sec the volume of traffic means you can hide in the noise, especially if nobody is looking at that traffic. That’s where we come in with a solution that looks at the application layer to understand what’s happening in the DNS stream, at content and behaviour of IP addresses and domains, how they are being used, so that operators can detect threats against infrastructure itself and attacks that try subvert the infrastructure.”

One active threat that Cloudmark has detected on one customer’s network is the use of something called DNS Tunelling to avoid charges for roaming interconnect. DNS Tunelling is an exploit that uses the DNS itself to transport data, creating a generic tunnel that can be used to exfiltrate data from a company, say, in event of a data breach. Cloudmark says that it has detected mobile devices belonging to inbound roamers that are equipped with a DNS Tunnelling client

that sends user data via the DNS protocol.

As DNS traffic is nearly always labelled free of charge, this data traffic bypasses charging and interconnect systems, so the “home” operator avoids having to pay the visited operator for its customers’ roaming usage. Cook said that this practice is not uncommon in operators from “less regulated” countries that have a large expat population living in another country.

A further issue is that DNS Tunnelling is “incredibly impactful” on the infrastructure, being much more capacity intensive than legitimate look up requests.

“We’ve had operators ask why they are having to increase DNS capacity by 3-4x – and it’s because even a small amount of DNS tunnelling leads to a massive increase on capex in terms of infrastructure.”

Cook said that traditional approaches to spotting threats have involved offline processing of data that often only identifies a threat once the event is over.

An active, in-line approach can, in the case of the roaming fraud, actually stop the behaviour at the time, and also block any further users associated with the domain being abused.

The mobile communications revolution is driving the world's major technology breakthroughs. From wearable devices to connected cars and homes, mobile technology is at the heart of worldwide innovation. As an industry, we are connecting billions of men and women to the transformative power of the Internet and mobilising every device that we use in our daily lives. The 2015 GSMA Mobile World Congress will convene industry leaders, visionaries and innovators to explore the trends that will shape mobile in the years ahead. We’ll see you in Barcelona at The Edge of Innovation.

WWW.MOBILEWORLDCONGRESS.COM

AN EVENT OF

FEATURE: IRELAND

SUCCESS STARTS WITH AN A...

34 TMNQUARTERLY

FEATURE: IRELAND

Ireland has much to be proud of in its contribution to mobile network technology, and not only about companies that begin with an A.

L 39% VODAFONE

SHARE

2.1M

SUBSCRIBERS

THREE (INCLUDES 02)

2+M

37% SHARE

SUBSCRIBERS

METEOR (EIRCOM)

1+M

19% SHARE

SUBSCRIBERS

MVNOS:

4.5%

2.1%

TESCO

LYCAMOBILE

SHARE

SHARE

ook at the list of companies following this introduction. It is pretty impressive for a country of just a few million people that sits on the edge of a continent that is facing increasingly tough competition from west and east in wireless innovation.

Like Finland, perhaps also like Israel, perhaps the secret is that the country is of a certain size and location. It is easier to get your academic institutions, government support agencies and sources of funding lined up and pointing in the same direction in a smaller country.

To that end, Ireland has a good track record of encouraging inward investment – it consistently ranks top or near the top of “best places to invest” rankings – and leveraging that into home-grown success.

It did this by investing in ICT education at school and university level, providing a supply of educated graduates with role models to follow. And it’s not all just about providing tax breaks for foreign companies, either, despite what others in Europe might have you believe. Although Ireland’s taxes on corporate profits are lower as a headline rate, they are in line with companies actually pay in many other countries.

So what of Ireland’s homegrown success – well check out the list below, well over a dozen active companies in this area – and these are just those companies with something to supply in the areas of mobile network and services infrastructure. We haven’t included the app developers, enterprise software companies and so on and so on. Well, if you want to take a look at the trajectory

of Irish mobile then you could do worse than to start with the introduction in the 1990s of Aldiscon, which under that name and then as Logica, following a £50 million sale in 1997, pushed forward as one of the main providers of messaging infrastructure into mobile operators’ networks. The names associated with Aldiscon and Logica now sit at the top of the investment tree, through the funding vehicle Atlantic Bridge Ventures.

For instance Larry Quinn, who led a subsequent buyout of the messaging business (renamed Acision) from Logica in 2007 and re-joined the company as chair at the time, also sits as chair on Accuris Networks. Other companies to have been founded, and often sold on again, by Aldiscon founders include Apion (phone. com), Aepona (Intel), Ammeon and Altion (look for the “A”).

Other Irish companies to have come and gone in recent years include Altobridge, which tried to implement an edge and remote location data optimisation technology, and saw assets recently bought out by iDirect following insolvency. Arantech, which was in some ways ahead of the market in its vision of using customer and network data to fuel CEM strategies, was bought by Tektronix Communications. And The Now Factory, another Irish start-up focussed on telco “big” data, was taken under the wing of IBM. Some others are still out there, still doing their thing after over ten years – for example the two messaging companies Anam Technologies – another company formed by ex-Aldiscon folk - and Openmind.

So what to make of this track record of innovation and successful exit? One lesson often cited by those in the Irish scene is that the success of the past gives confidence. There is a culture that has developed expectations of success.

There’s certainly reasons for Ireland to look with pride upon its contributions to the mobile networks of today.

TMNQUARTERLY 35

FEATURE: IRELAND

IRISH MOBILE COMPANIES: Accuris Networks Accuris’ AccuRoam platform provides connectivity management for mobile operators, many of whom use it for Wi-Fi Offload and Wi-Fi Roaming solutions, with others deploying the platform for CDMA to GSM roaming, multi-IMSI roaming and Over-TheAir device management. www.accuris-networks.com Acision Grand old man of the mobile messaging business, with a strong background in SMSC business, the company has been pushing a new vision around IP communications and messaging. Now owned by the original founders of messaging company Aldiscon. www.acision.com Adaptive Mobile Provider of mobile network security solutions via its AdaptiveMobile Network Protection Platform. Says it has nine out of the world’s top ten group operators as customers. www.adaptivemobile.com Alpha Wireless Provider of antennas for base stations, the company has produced sector and omni antennas for small cell applications through 2014. Founded in 2008, the company announced in 2014 a multi-million antenna supply deal with Samsung to supply its 2.5GHz, beam forming antenna. www.alphaantennas.com Amartus Founded in 2003, the company works in the very happening area of service and network orchestration – giving it SDN and NFVcompatible capabilities. Core product is its Chameleon SDS platform. www.amartus.com Anam Technologies Another SMSC/MMSC messaging company with a long history in providing messaging services such as messaging revenue assurance, spam protection and value added solutions through SMS Router and Gateways. www.anam.com Asavie Technologies Ltd Developer and provider of clouddelivered secure connectivity services to operators. Key product the Passbridge On-Demand service platform focused on productivity, machine-to-machine (M2M) and instant WAN services. www.asavie.com Aspire Technology Aspire Technology provides products and services to mobile network operators and network infrastructure vendors, enabling the delivery of superior network performance.

A consultancy focussed on RAN optimisation, software solutions include RAN Event Analyser for customer care and optimisation teams. www.aspiretechnology.com 36 TMNQUARTERLY

OPERATORS NOT ALWAYS LEADING INNOVATION

F

or a country with such an eye-catching record in terms of producing companies operating globally in the mobile network, Ireland’s home market has not always been the testbed of innovation that you might expect. For this, of course, there is the explanation of Ireland’s wider economic circumstances. Recently, however, with the advent of Three Ireland’s €780m acquisition of rival network O2 Ireland, more than a year after the deal was first announced, and the associated expectation of a boost to network investment, Ireland has fitted in more snuggly in the list of those companies with shared network infrastructure providing expanding LTE grids.

There may also be some increased competition at the MVNO level, as next year both UPC and Carphone Warehouse will launch mobile services on the Three network, which was one of the conditions of Commission’s approval. That, requirement, of course, was a sort of soft corrective measure to the reduction in the number of wholesale operators present in the country, and in fact regulator ComReg has said that competition issues “will not be fully addressed” by the measures agreed, and that “negative consequences for Irish consumer welfare may result” from the deal.

FEATURE: IRELAND

REASONS FOR MERGER - ALL ABOUT THE NETWORK EXPERIENCE?

W

as the Three and O2 merger led by something other than financial considerations? Of interest to TMN readers should be this note on Three’s website.

Note the emphasis this statement gives to the network.

“Great News. We’re delighted to announce that Three and O2 are combining to create an even better network.

A network that can be enjoyed by more people than ever before.What we will be doing is combining the scale of O2 and Three’s passion for innovation to create a major force in the mobile market. We’ll be bringing you industry-leading value, along with an even better network performance. All this to make sure that you get the best possible network experience.”

Benetel Benetel delivers RF Modules and Baseband Processor Modules that can be deployed directly as the full hardware solution for eNodeB LTE Base Stations.

The company has been in business since 2001. www.benetel.com Danu Danu’s SayMetrix measures the customer and mobile handset views of network quality, correlating these with the network performance as measured by probes and OSS systems. Its Helios software integrates with the Home Location Register (HLR), Home Subscriber Server (HSS) and Authentication Centre (AuC) to provide a web-based subscriber provisioning and management interface. www.danutech.com Equiendo Equiendo enables operators to dimension, manage and grow Radio Access Networks delivering network management remotely, ranging from an on demand menu of services to fully managed network solutions. www.equiendo.com Klas Telecom Company has a backpack-sized mobile network product designed for disaster response, ships and oil-rigs, public safety etc www.klastelecom.com

Openet Company that has forged a niche in carrier BSS – including charging and in policy management. Its use cases include offering management of WiFi offload, shared data plance, tiered service contracts and the like. www.openet.com Openmind Networks Another SMSC vendor that has been branching out into enabling advanced messaging use cases from its core Traffic Control platform – including RCS, and APIs to enable developers to create apps leveraging the platform. www.openmindnetworks.com OptiWiFi OptiWi-fi provides performance quality management tools to enable operators to assure carrier quality Wi-Fi, by enabling them to identify and address issues on their Wi-Fi networks, and manage the performance of a router in real time in response to the changing network load in a hotspot location. www.optiwifi.com SocoWave Developer of high tech base station antenna technology, often by licensing the output of Ireland’s University departments.

In 2014 SocoWave completed a Vertical Sectorisation trial that it said demonstrated a near doubling of data throughput using dual sector beams. www.socowave.com Tango Telecom Another player in the policy, real time charging and messaging sphere, Tango’s solutions are aimed at enabling mobile operators to monetise their data network investments. Products range from “next generation” SMSCs, to PCRF (policy and charging) elements. www.tangotelecom.com TMNQUARTERLY 37

Opened:December 2014.

Server Room: Nokia Security Centre, Berlin.