Policy—An All Purpose Tool?

By: Elisabeth Rainge, Research Vice President, NGN Operations, IDC

Television, the Internet and phone calls used to be very different experiences. In particular, there was a gap in the experience of fixed line networks—which happened via PCs and cable television—and the experience of mobile networks—which happened via handsets. The gap was in the applications: voice or messaging on the mobile phone versus browsing, rich content and video on the PC or TV. Smartphones blur the customer experience of fixed and mobile, but subscribers rarely understand how the network challenges and capacity of mobile networks differ from fixed line networks. This puts a lot of pressure on mobile operators to improve customer experience. Colleagues and friends often ask me why a Skype call on a PC is better quality than a mobile phone connection. This is not about the application; it is about exposing the need to build network integrity, reliability and availability into mobile networks. To do this, it requires optimization and management techniques.

The communications service providers (CSPs) that I talk to are, like everyone, looking for ways to do more with less: budget challenges, staffing challenges, shifting priorities … the list goes on. In the more than 15 years that I’ve been at IDC and working with networking professionals, the focus of conversations has always been dominated by technology. Now, in 2011, it’s different. Business goals, including customer satisfaction improvements, have emerged in the past few years as the top context for almost all of the conversations. Having a successful business means having and keeping paying customers.

One way that these two themes—customer service usage and business goals—come together is policy control. Optimizing the services and networks to address customer expectations is the key way to apply policy control technology. At the same time, policy control technology can deliver a greater return on investment because it is generally a lower price point than the kinds of network hardware that can deliver roughly equal performance improvements (in a more general way).

The key to policy control though, is that it is about imposing business rules and business logic from the network infrastructure context. It is a tool for CSPs’ networking professionals and for business people. It’s also a tool suited to many types of services and many types of networks. As subscribers look for a consistent connectivity experience across multiple devices, policy control is an increasingly useful tool in the CSP’s toolbox.

Elisabeth Rainge manages IDC’s research into telecom industry operational practices and contributes to IDC’s broad portfolio of network infrastructure market research. Currently, she is leading IDC’s research of telecom software, focusing on business value. Specific areas of coverage include OSS/BSS, SDP, NGN, IMS, mobile, and the transition to IP networks.