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1. Strategies to Differentiate Services,
Target New Customers
& Grow Customer Base
Peter Thompson
Chief Scientist
GoS Networks Limited
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2. Industry Trends
• 2015: nearly 3.5 billion mobile broadband subscriptions,
– Largely smartphone-based
• Rise of over-the-top (OTT) services and applications
• Increased availability and user appetite for OTT services on
mobile devices
– shift to cloud-based services and applications
• Extract the maximum value from the connectivity
• Broadband is almost a commodity
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3. Operator Challenges
• Environment for • Customer retention
successful services – Brand loyalty
– Launch • Customer acquisition
– Operation – Brand differentiation
– Management • New sources of
• Consistent user revenue
experience • Avoiding
– Mobile context commoditisation
– With multiple parallel
applications
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4. New Strategies
• Yankee Group:
– Most service providers believe that improving the quality of the user
experience increases ARPU (see it as a key competitive differentiator)
• Ericsson:
– Best user experience in terms of service choice, availability, speed and
quality will gain brand loyalty
So, focus on:
• Optimising the user experience
– Must be based on the customer view – not the network view
– Requires knowledge of the user activity
• Introducing value-added services (increase ARPU)
– But differentiate from competitors (avoid need to discount for customer
acquisition)
• Exploiting existing infrastructure
– Get the most out of what you have
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5. Optimising the User Experience
• Customers don‟t really want „bandwidth‟, they want a
broadband service!
• So to charge a premium, rather than offer more bandwidth,
operators should offer a better broadband service
How?
Improve the Quality of Experience of a user of the service:
• Consistency and reliability
• Customer service and fast problem resolution
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6. Implementing the Strategy
• Maintain service performance and user experience
– With growth of bandwidth demands and offload decisions
• See exactly what is happening on the device
– From the user‟s perspective
• Aggregate and integrate existing “point” solutions
– Offload, signalling, radio connection, customer messages
• Maximise existing resources
– Requires integration with network infrastructure and systems
• Manage signalling overhead
• Real-time congestion management
– Multiple triggers (cell status, location, throughput etc.)
– Give priority to what‟s important (to the customer)
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7. Prioritising Applications
• Users don‟t understand QoS
– Any more than they understand megabytes!
• They do understand „applications‟
– So, need to manage traffic based on the application it is from/to
– Can only do this on the client device
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8. Prioritising Critical Traffic
• Mobile broadband is easily saturated
– Laptops
– Smart(er) phones
• Failure to discriminate critical traffic will degrade QoE
– Losing DNS requests
– Multiple TCP drops
– Delaying VoIP packets
– Etc.
• Have to do this starting at the client device to implement
service plans that prioritize:
– VPN traffic
– IM
– e-mail access to corporate server
– Real-time apps
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9. Prioritising Critical Traffic
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10. Local Congestion Management
• When an Operators wants and needs to:
• Influence customer activity and traffic management
– At point of congestion
– For individuals or groups of users
– For specific traffic types
– For specific customer service plans
• Identify and promote sales propositions to customers
– Open applications and display messages
• Offload based on specific “triggers”
– Location, TOD, traffic, throughput thresholds
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11. Enhanced Customer Service
• Customer issues demand rapid resolution
– Reduce costs
– Increase customer satisfaction
• Easy to see the customer from the network
– But the network may not have a problem
• Harder to see the network from the customer!
– But the customer may have a problem with the network
– This is crucial to properly understand the customer‟s issue
• Need to see the network as the user sees it
– Visibility out to the client device
– Including when roaming/offloaded
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12. Enhanced Customer Service
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13. Optimising Bandwidth
Bandwidth ≈ Spectrum x Spectral efficiency x Spatial re-use
New equipment More sectors
Licensed
E.g. LTE and masts
• Mobile bandwidth is expensive!
• So it‟s vital to use it efficiently
• Trade-off between bandwidth utilisation and effectiveness
of QoS differentiation
– Depends on queuing/scheduling algorithm used
• Possible to provide reliable QoS up to 90% of total
bandwidth
– And still use the rest for best effort
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14. GoS 360°
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15. Visibility out to Client Device
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16. Value of GoS 360°
• Seamless extension of Policy Control on to Client device
• Integration with existing network solution
– Agent:
– Manager:
– Resolves concerns about integration with existing OSS / BSS
• Solution across customer base or user groups – not individuals
• Manage user experience whilst delivering benefit to Operator
• Manage signalling overhead before it reaches the network
• Enforce dynamic offload based on specific rules
• Enhances value of PCRF
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17. Who We Are
• GoS Networks develops and supplies embeddable software
solutions
– Key focus is visibility and improvement of user experience & QoS
• Private company with HQ in Cork, Ireland
– UK & Global offices
• Backed by International Investment and Underwriting
– Dermot Desmond
– Padraig Harrington
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18. Summary
To avoid commoditisation, provide a better
mobile broadband service:
• See the service as the user sees it
– At the client device (UE/MT)
• Prioritise critical traffic, based on application
– Not just on traffic type
• Optimise the bandwidth you have
– While providing differentiated QoS
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19. Thank you!
Peter Thompson
Peter.Thompson@gosnetworks.com
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