Mobile operators have been employing policy control since they first set usage limits on prepay services. But they learned something in those early days that became the impetus for today’s rush to extend its capabilities to the entire customer relationship.
Operators learned that by being less dictatorial about setting limits and instead letting the customer decide when enough was enough – as long as it was within his or her credit limit – that customer would spend more. And their mindset changed.
“The bottom line is, if you involve the customer in the process, you can actually get more out of them,” said Karl Whitelock, senior consulting analyst of OSS/BSS Global Competitive Strategies at Stratecast.
Olivier Suard, marketing director at Comptel Corp., said that, indeed, prepay was a form of policy control, but that now the customer is making the decisions. “The biggest change since then is that policy control has gone from something that was a defensive measure for protecting the network to something that is a way to personalize services,” he said.
There are two types of policy control: policy enforcement and policy management. The policy enforcement function that shapes and throttles bandwidth is primarily a network function. However, the policy management function sets the rules for how services will be offered, delivered and charged for. Real-time charging is another change with a heritage in prepay and a much bigger life in the policy environment.
“Policy is inextricably linked to real-time rating and charging,” Whitelock said. He added that there are four parts to policy control: real-time rating and charging, policy definition, the policy enforcement role in the network and data collection (aka mediation).
It is the volumes of customer usage data and the advancements in data collection capabilities, including deep-packet inspection and deep-packet capture, along with real-time charging that are driving some of the more advanced elements of policy that enable differentiated services and targeted advertising.
Policy control also will play a big role in targeted advertising, a practice that in some cases with subsidize the cist of delivering a service or application. The security and privacy challenges are steep as is the sheer number of policies for delivery around age, location, personal preferences, number of devices and relevance. But, as Whitelock said, “Advertising in the right hands is useful and important. If it isn’t relevant, it’s meaningless. That’s the job of policy.”
Most of the drivers around policy from a bandwidth management perspective have no guarantee of driving new revenue. That is why the customer-centric side of policy control is so important.
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