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DATA OFFLOAD SURVIVAL GUIDE - PART 2

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Abstract
Mobile networks are now dominated by data. If we rewind back to a decade ago, smartphones and application stores were unheard of. Twitter and Facebook were not in existence and YouTube wasnt as popular. Culturally, consumers are valuing the need to be socially connected in the present day Internet. YouTube may seem like a trivial video platform, but do not undermine the amount of trafc it is capable of generating. There are over 3 billion hours of video that are watched each month on YouTube. The traditional cellular network cannot cope with the increase in data and signaling trafc that is generated and thus is driving carriers in the direction of ofoad. The Phase 1 approach was centered on immediately relieving congestion on the network by encouraging ofoad to any available Wi-Fi hotspot. In this second part of the ve part ofoad series, we draw attention to Direct Internet Ofoad. The concept of Direct Internet Ofoad is nothing new, but has taken a slight shift considering Wi-Fis popularity. The reality of data trafc being ofoaded to a lower-cost network is achievable. And the exibility to integrate them into mainstream network design offers transformative opportunities for carriers without losing sight of the commitment to make the user experience secure and controlled. Direct Internet Ofoad is another way of responding to the evolving smartphone data usage patterns. Most often, those sessions demonstrate frequent high burst throughput demanding low latency. Ofoad, when executed correctly, can enable better user experience. The classic confusion and misconceived idea of the ofoad environment should be corrected for the very reasons of innovation- changing the business models and driving it the right way to offer it to their customers.

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Contents
Overview 01

Direct Internet Offload Who are the Stakeholders? Harnessing the Power of Behavior

02

Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload Carrier Wi-Fi Build-out Partnering Wi-Fi Aggregators Experience Ofoad the Greenpacket Way Ofoad and Quality of Service

06

Carrier Wi-Fi and Open APIs Going Forward

12

Conclusion

13

Transform Your Network with Direct Internet Offload

14

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Overview - 01

Overview
Mobile broadband represents the fastest-growing revenue stream for carriers. The value of the mobile services market is forecast to expand to $976 billion by 2016, with the majority of growth stemming from mobile broadband services. But the numbers do not add up and far from exhibiting a linear relationship between data trafc growth and data revenues. From a recent report by Infonetics1, the forecasts for mobile broadband subscribers will grow from 15% of the total mobile subscriber base in 2011 to nearly 40% in 2016. And by that, it means there is a window of opportunity that carriers should tap into. The speed of video, data and applications appearing and bombarding the networks will eventually level out, but before carriers arrive at that inection point, it is critical to nd ways to satisfy their customers now. Services are becoming more varied and fragmented, that subscribers need not rely on traditionally guarded services that carriers used to provide. The emergence of over-the-top (OTT) gives subscriber other means to be socially inter-connected. On top of that, subscriber behavior is now more real-time and driven by content and content is quickly clogging up the pipelines without the boundaries of a xed location, but all over. As devices become smarter and more sophisticated, understanding exactly how consumers are using their smartphone is proving to be more challenging than previous generations of handsets. Carriers must now move faster and re-dene the meaning of experience, moving away from the conservative practices. The connected world presents its own set of challenges, ranging across issues of network management, experience management, privacy and security threats. Despite these challenges, access to mobiles and the Internet is truly beginning to unlock the power of wireless technology to unite 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and LTE networks. Carriers are aware that in order to offer sustainable network and differentiation they need to leverage on ofoad methods to enable service innovation and help reduce capital and operating expenses through the convergence of 3G-Wi-Fi wherever possible.
1Source : Infonetics Research,

2G,3G,4G(LTE) Services and Subscribers : Voice, SMS/MMS, and Broadband Report

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Direct Internet Offload - 02

Direct Internet Ofoad

Carriers have deliberated on Wi-Fi for many years and only in recent years have carriers warmed-up to Wi-Fi as a viable option to provide immediate relieve over issues of network congestion. Nevertheless, the success of any ofoad strategy with Wi-Fi very much depends on the ease of experience it brings to their subscribers. Wi-Fi ofoad can take several forms to realize. It can be a tightly coupled deployment, where the carriers exercise full policy control with granular visibility over the types of service the subscribers access and consider an integrated billing and charging architecture. In other instances, Wi-Fi ofoad can be less stringent, where it is loosely coupled to the carriers core architecture as termed by Direct Internet Ofoad which results in data trafc being passed direct to the Internet omitting visibility of the subscriber. This form of ofoad is intended for carriers to divert trafc away from the mobile network. Most often, the Internet bound trafc has little or zero-revenue value to some extent. Instead of paying to carry the trafc, it makes more sense to breakout as soon as possible. As a result, carriers can moderate the core network investments as trafc increases.

APPLICATION NOTE Who are the Stakeholders?

Today, users expect a little more from their service providers; they expect their network to be smart enough to recognize the type of device and the type of networks on which they are consuming content with the same level of personalized service and quality assurances regardless. Also, the issue of a value price plan is highly important for them to have added knowledge that their data costs will not go up the roof, as the all-you-can eat buffet plans are no longer offered. When is the right time for carriers to take cue in implementing Direct Internet Ofoad and the impact it causes? It is quite obvious the data ofoad movement is ready for market, suggestive that carriers are beginning to shift mindsets of seeing Wi-Fi as a threat to a complementary technology that can help build positive experiences. As such, the ofoad movement is taking ideas and integrating them into the mainstream mobile network technology as a service-led initiative which is characterized by experience. A carefully orchestrated strategy can work its best to delight the users and help carriers realize better cost control, expand reach and be competitive as illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1 : Strategic aims for a successful ofoad strategy

Direct Internet Offload - 03

End-user Experience Seamless Simple Secure High Bandwidth

Service Provider Objective Increase capacity and coverage Optimize core assets Improve customer experience Expand revenue opportunity

APPLICATION NOTE Harnessing the Power of Behavior

There are several angles that carrier should focus, when deciding to harness the power of the Direct Internet Ofoad. The rst step is to ensure Wi-Fi ofoad becomes a more controlled action on the carriers part giving assurance of high quality experience regardless of cellular or Wi-Fi network to the subscriber as part of an early Wi-Fi strategy. And thus, service providers need to be more agile and inventive to capture untapped customers, retain existing customers and upsell other relevant products and services. Given the average user on the street, they are unlikely to pause for a moment to decide which technology would best deliver the latest YouTube video of Justin Bieber. They are more concerned whether the quality of streaming and speed of downloads get to their device for sharing, viewing or whichever manner they want to use the content. Questions pertinent to carriers, when starting out with ofoad should be assessed practically from: Who are the heaviest smartphone users? How do consumers use Wi-Fi hotspots with their smartphone? What instances do consumers favor Wi-Fi over 3G cellular? How does usage behavior change when consumers roam internationally and which customers are captured and which ones are lost?
Smartphone users who do not use data (7%) Smartphone users with cellular data enabled (82%)

Direct Internet Offload - 04

Wi-Fi only (11%)

Smartphone users that use both cellular and Wi-Fi (64%)

Cellular only (18%)

Smartphone users with Wi-Fi enabled (75%)

All Smartphone users (100%)

Source : Analysis Mason and Arbitron Mobile, 2012* *n=1007; some respondents may have had cellular or Wi-Fi enabled but did not use the connectivity within the observation period. Figure 1 : Smartphone usage split for cellular and Wi-Fi

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Almost all smartphones today are Wi-Fi-capable. A study conducted by Analysis Mason in 2011 concluded, 75% of the smartphone sampled panel used Wi-Fi, with 82% of the panel used cellular data. It is observed, most panelists (64%) used both networks but a number of consumers (18%) did not use cellular data at all. The reasons are not entirely clear, perhaps some use smartphone mainly for the sake of having a sophisticated device, or some use it sparingly with a non-data contract or on a prepaid basis, relying on Wi-Fi (or in some cases nothing at all) for data connectivity. What does the study outcome indicate? From the gures gathered, it seems that users welcome the use of Wi-Fi whenever available. The slight difference of users using cellular data likely preferred the ease of use although slightly more costly or possibly due to the perceived lack of security. A recent Forrester2 survey found that 93% of companies consider customer experience a strategic priority with over 75% with plans in place to achieve that goal. Is your network ready to support and engage your customers; the hyper connected, on-the-go mobile users, or the occasional user? With the right knowledge, tools and conditions, carriers can now source key data, from multiple dimensions, in real time, to help them reach more informed conclusions.

Direct Internet Offload - 05

2Source : "The State Of Customer

Experience, 2012," April 24, 2012, Forrester Research, Inc.

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Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload - 06

Jumpstart Direct Internet Ofoad

The RAN ofoad and core network ofoad is not mutually exclusive but inter-linked in the sense of managing the incremental investment on both ends of the coin with Internet peering and transport costs getting more expensive. Also, the SGSN and GGSN traditionally were not built for such unexpected capacity growth. Incremental upgrades of the core network can be a very costly affair and may not be fully supported in some parts. Carriers have implemented in their cellular architecture by diverting trafc over to the Internet direct by bypassing the packet core gateway of the carrier network through a direct tunnel technique. Some carriers break-out trafc without retaining visibility of their subscribers. Carriers can now turn to Wi-Fi in the context of Direct Internet Ofoad and still keep tabs on their subscribers by providing a secured connection for the subscriber and at the same time allows ofoading of the core network. Rather than a complete network bypass, carriers can retain some level of visibility of the subscriber whilst they work on branding their own Wi-Fi service into their service mix and capturing market share for service expansion.

PDG SGSN GGSN AAA

IMS, Ringtones, Enterprise VPN

2G/3G RAN Wi-Fi Access Gateway

Wi-Fi

Figure 2 : Direct Internet Ofoad with Carrier Wi-Fi

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Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload - 07

Wi-Fi helps to mitigate trafc growth that would otherwise overload the cellular network in busy areas, leading to reduced quality of experience. However, if the Wi-Fi connection is not controlled by the operator, then there is a risk of disintermediation carriers have less of an incentive to carry non-revenue generating trafc destined for the Internet. Why subsidize it through expensive core network platform that is already operating at its maximum capacity - if the device is accessing content from external networks. Since carriers are interested to use Wi-Fi to help manage overcrowding, it makes sense to ofoad onto their own Wi-Fi hotspots wherever possible. Depending on the strategy and business needs of the carrier, carrier Wi-Fi deployment can take several phases and may require some investments to bring in additional Wi-Fi gateways and aggregators to manage the interfacing towards the carriers core network.

Carrier Wi-Fi Build-Out

For a start, carriers can build-out their own Wi-Fi hotspots in areas to serve critical capacity boost and expand further as the network grows to reach ubiquity. Directly having control over the quality of the network performance and accountability for the user experience. Some of the leading telcos such as Telefonica, AT&T and China Mobile ensure secure and trusted Wi-Fi connection through a standardized EAP802.1X authentication support. It is preferred for carriers to promote carrier Wi-Fi architecture for various reasons; added advantage of ease of common authentication without the need of external interface integration works. Additionally, carriers retain ownership of subscriber and help lay the foundations to successful Wi-Fi access revenues according to the degree of integration it achieves. And by full integration, it means charging, billing, service provisioning are all sorted and in order. By encouraging a more diverse pool of platform support, carriers can deliver more content-based services. Carriers realization that more willingness to open select Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can be a win-win situation for both the operators and OTT developers, as they seek wider distribution channels to these highly sought after consumer experiences. Combined with the attempts to bring down the barriers for inter-roaming, is indeed a lucrative proposition that carriers should not miss out on.

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Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload - 08

Depending on the business model of paid versus free Wi-Fi service to be offered to their subscribers, carriers can exercise due diligence to better understand when and where intermediary cross-over Wi-Fi will become real revenue potential. By then, carriers can recoup the investment by pricing Wi-Fi access in gradations. Of course, such initiatives require some experimentation, but some forward looking carriers like Verizon and AT&T are already taking the lead.

Partnering Wi-Fi Aggregators

If building-out carrier owned Wi-Fi hotspot is not within the carrier network plans for reasons beyond CAPEX investments, partnering Wi-Fi aggregators and providers would be another option. However, there are several drawbacks in this strategy; requiring inter-network mediation, inter-operability, integration and to some extent managed services like wholesale models which add to operational costs in the long run. Given the nature of partnering, it is of utmost importance to have a technically and commercially capable team to drive the simplication of network and anticipate the difculties encountered when dealing with disparate networks and risk of IPR conicts. On the ip side, partnering gives total freedom from regulatory restrictions on operating a hotspot, if any. Quick access to expanded coverage and familiarity with established hotspot can accelerate the roll-out of value-added service. Of course, this will come with getting the right business models, be it revenue sharing, leasing or through some form of advertising. Independent of which implementation, carriers stand to benet from a well planned ofoad strategy to consolidate their infrastructure to open up opportunities in value-added service like location-based service, mobile wallet and so forth. The degree of visibility and control that carriers want to enforce is highly dependent on the readiness of the network and business objectives.

APPLICATION NOTE Experience Ofoad the Greenpacket Way

Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload - 09

To benet from ofoad, carriers must have the right conditions to differentiate between a user-driven ofoad and carrier-driven ofoad. In Greenpackets device-client solution, it ensures subscriber is securely authenticated to the Wi-Fi network via EAP802.1x authentication methods to deliver a positive effect on the subscriber as the authentication is automatic, transparent, seamless and secure, without changing the way the subscribers interact with their device in the ofoad environment. Also, it works with any WPA or WPA2 enabled access point, making it a readily available solution. Whether building-out Wi-Fi completely on their own or partnering ISPs or Wi-Fi aggregators to share network resources, carriers are seeing it to pragmatic practice to have Wi-Fi in their mix of services. It makes sense to take a proactive approach, as they hold the key to the billing relationship to their customers. Table 2 below summarizes the Wi-Fi experience from a user interaction with their device.
Table 2 : Changing Expectations of Wi-Fi Experience

Wi-Fi Experience Previously User unaware of network conditions and changes Manual congurations that are confusing Static policy Interrupted experience when connecting and disconnecting Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi Experience Now Intuitive and informative notications with Wi-Fi directory Automated selection and easy to congure Dynamic policy Seamless experience during and after switching

Wi-Fi Experience Tomorrow Global Wi-Fi access Instant-on Advanced policy management and QoS aware Full mobility and roaming

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Jumpstart Direct Internet Offload - 10

Given that EAP802.1X authentication is supported and enabled in most native devices, it is good governance to maintain the subscriber relationship in the Wi-Fi environment, wherever possible. Its quite obvious for the reasons of data cost control and availability of higher bandwidth, becomes attractive to the subscribers. For the carriers, its motivation is largely to ease congestion and ensure ofoad execution is ideally over carrier-owned Wi-Fi so that the treatment of fundamental carrier core network integration is made easier to the Authorization, Authentication & Accounting (AAA) server which is primarily responsible for managing the subscriber relationship to the carrier network such as access rights, service provisioning, user prole and accounting interface. Other attributes that are important to user experience includes the automation of network selection and switching protocols and to a certain extent QoS control. Carriers wanting to take ofoad to another level can likely focus on the ability to promote carrier subscribed content and extend policy control. This discussion is beyond the breadth of this paper, but will be featured in the subsequent Phase 3 of this Ofoad series. More progressive carriers will attempt to make better use of technologies such as access network discovery and selection function (ANDSF) and policy control to better determine where and when to connect. Also, to integrate better the common provisioning of service, billing and roaming to be much easier between the carrier network and Wi-Fi. Further to 3GPP specications, more ambitious techniques like Selective IP Trafc Ofoad (SIPTO) and IP Flow Mobility (IFOM) are introduced and sees more of its role played out in future mobile broadband networks.

APPLICATION NOTE Ofoad and Quality of Service

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Carriers in search of added value proposition in Wi-Fi are increasingly aware of the necessity of quality of service (QoS) management. As carriers continue to seek ways to reduce OPEX, boost ARPU and improve the customer experience, on-device self-service problem resolution has the potential to allow carriers to differentiate their services from those of the competitors. Greenpackets device-client is more than just an enabler of ofoad and connectivity management. It builds on the user experience by supporting partially QoS measures such as crowd-sourcing feedback to provide a clearer view of the performance of the Wi-Fi access points (AP), prior to ofoad. Simply enforcing xed rules and device policies to aid ofoad may seem like a simple and effective method, but could it risk making the user experience worse than before? The approach that Greenpacket uses is more dynamic by periodically taking samples of the current connected access points and its related device information to be reported to a central Reporting Server that can be hosted in the carriers network and integrated with the Analytic Server. The information collected is further scrutinized and feedback to the core network for improved ofoad policy denition. By doing so, the device-client connects to the best Wi-Fi based on current environment, location, time of day and Wi-Fi AP status.

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Carrier Wi-Fi and Open APIs Going Forward - 12

Carrier Wi-Fi and Open APIs Going Forward

Having better control over congestion doesnt stop at effective ofoad strategies. It is not enough for carriers to stop at ofoad, but to continue with innovations. Unlocking the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is the way forward for managing multitude of partners with custom interfaces to their network. Despite falling behind the likes of Apple, Amazon and Google in capturing the heart of their customers, developers, content owners and carriers can respond to the changes by adopting API models. Telecommunication industry is no longer a stand-alone business model. The sources of applications and services are varied ranging from the carriers, application developers, third party content owners and service providers, customer, both consumer and enterprise; and complementary web-based service providers. By implementing some kind of service exposure platform, carriers have the advantage to greatly reduce their time to market and gain from a common distribution channel with vast mindshare assets. The key to a successful productized solution is one that operates seamlessly and delivers impartial services on a single platform; serves different types of devices being one of the key values. Some carriers argue that the business case with network APIs are difcult, and they risk commoditizing the core voice and messaging assets. But Tier 1 carriers like Telefonica and Telecom Italia opening their APIs is a signal of acceptance and willingness to enable open innovation and the future of networks is about understanding emerging ecosystems.

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Conclusion - 13

Conclusion
Carriers are restricted by the amount of spectrum resources and are challenged economically to deliver the high performance services. Undoubtedly, mobile data is clogging up networks globally; interesting statistics from Cisco predicts - global data trafc is projected to rise over 18 fold between 2011 and 2016, growing at a CAGR of 78% to reach 10.8 exabytes per month by 2016. But it cant be said of similar revenue growth. There are a number of innovative concepts in both RAN and core network ofoad. In this paper, we discussed how a simple device-client solution ts into Wi-Fi and its role through Direct Internet Ofoad can help address congestion. Interestingly enough, operators that have implemented data ofoading strategies generally do not suffer from negative implications, instead gain to benet from it. The associated stigma to ofoading is mainly exacerbated by the carriers themselves, who refuse to have anything to do with their networks perceived as congested by their customers. Congestion is real. To the consumers, it is not about how the service providers deliver those services, via the latest access technology but why the experience is better? LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi whichever works. Wi-Fi used to be individually installed, unmanaged and doesnt drive behavior. It was an un-inspiring proposition in sporadic coverage that brought in zero value. How can carriers turn around a technology in pursuit of results? Simply change the way in which it operates and inspire engagement. It is only logical that new services will require new approaches to network design. Innovation usually starts out only to be dismissed before it gets widespread, just as Wi-Fi exemplies this. Today, Wi-Fi is so pervasive, that it draws consumers in search of it. By combining the strengths of Wi-Fi and translating it into the carriers network design, the approach of Direct Internet Ofoad is capable of helping carriers pursuit of managing better experiences. The need for a broader view of ofoad is necessary to promote further formal standards development and best practices to emerge from actual deployments.

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Transform Your Network with Direct Internet Offload - 14

Transform Your Network with Direct Internet Ofoad

Make Carrier Wi-Fi a differentiator. The sense of ofoad is taking a renewed twist and is entering mainstream adoption and networks no longer work in silo. What is needed is the ability to respond with openness to take ideas and integrate them to transform mobile network design to reap in revenues. Turn your challenges into opportunities as we progressively approach the strategies for data ofoad to suit your needs. Embark on a journey with Greenpacket to discover the value-add of ofoading and start realizing the possibilities for growth. With Greenpacket, you bring value to your subscribers and become their partner of communication needs.

Free Consultation If you would like a free consultation on how you can leverage data ofoad solutions for enhanced network performance and user experience, feel free to contact us at marketing.gp@greenpacket.com. Kindly quote the reference code, SAP0812-P2 when you contact us.

For more information on Greenpackets products and solutions, please contact us at marketing.gp@greenpacket.com San Francisco

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