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Radical Simplicity: Moving Mountains for Personalized Services

Monday, January 16th, 2012 by Cam Cullen

Steve Jobs once said, “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

There are three pillars to Intelligent Policy Enforcement: Awareness, Analysis, and Control. Solutions that lack any of these capabilities will limit the ability of an operator to deliver personalized services to their customers. The more they lack, the more limitations that will be imposed on the operator – whether those limits are scalability, performance, granularity, or even operational in nature.

Let’s be upfront about something: Personalized services are HARD.

Think of all the pieces that have to fall into place to deliver a personalized service.

1) A subscriber activates their device, and attempts to access the network. The network authenticates the subscriber and/or device to ensure that they are allowed access to the network.

2) Subscriber “service” must be determined and provisioned to the network. The service “attributes” may include bandwidth allowed, volume of data (either bulk or per service), priorities, security filters, value-added services, or even multi-device correlations. Depending on how the network is configured, this provisioning could be a single transaction to a single system, or many transactions to many systems (policy, charging, access, etc.). The subscriber and their data traffic must be associated with whatever “attributes” that are necessary to deliver their purchased service to their devices.

3) The systems that have been provisioned with the service “attributes” must enforce those attributes without causing instability of the systems or requiring additional CAPEX due to “unexpected” scalability issues.

4) The systems must perform network and business intelligence gathering on all traffic to feed the analytics systems for future service development. The more information that can be collected, the more valuable the data is for the operator. This data has to be collected with as small of an interval as possible, as the longer the interval the more you lose granularity (for example spikes in bandwidth and latency can be smoothed out over long intervals)

5) If volume/event-based charging or CDR/UDR generation is required, every charging event can result in a transaction with the charging infrastructure, and especially at session closing time.

6) In a network where phones go into an “idle” mode or where subscriber movement between locations is tracked, every time this happens can result in more transactions.

And the more services you offer, the harder it gets…

With the announcement of our PL20000 today, we believe that we have delivered the final piece of the puzzle for an ecosystem that will enable the largest network operators in the world to compete on an even keel with smaller, more agile network operators. The limitations faced by large operators are focused on scalability and complexity. Scalability is now a moot point, as the PL20000 can meet the needs of even the most stressful network deployments with the massive performance increase and the port density/support for 100GE interfaces.

The “Simplicity” part is harder (hence the title of the blog). We have been adding capabilities for the last few years to make service creation simpler for operators. Report Studio is a perfect example of this – operators can now ask questions of the network staff and the network team can use Report Studio to answer them based on the massive statistics repository available in the PacketLogic Intelligence Center (which handles an order of magnitude more statistics than other solutions). Our Virtual Services Capability enables operators to define their own services based on application properties (URLs, http referrers, content-type, device-types, file-type, etc.) without intervention by Procera or our signature development team. We have unmatched capability with our PacketLogic Subscriber Management system – in terms of performance (over 100,000 transactions per second), capacity (up to 20,000,000 subscribers in a single system), and ease-of-use (customizable service dictionaries, easy to use interface, interfaces to multiple policy and charging systems simultaneously).

We believe that we are driving solutions towards the nirvana of ‘Radical Simplicity” where carrier-grade IPE solutions do not have to be managed by acolytes of technology that speak arcane languages (ok, maybe program arcane languages). The combination of performance, scalability, and ease-of-use will take Intelligent Policy Enforcement to mass-market deployments for operators of all sizes. Operators that are forced to wait 9 months for a service launch to capitalize on a new trend will find that the trend is no longer hot. Operators that must plan for a performance or scalability reduction for every new service that they launch will very quickly find their solutions very capital intensive and inefficient.

Simplicity is hard. We want to help you move mountains, so we are working smarter (as well as harder!).

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The End of the Internet as we know it: Streaming Live – the Super Bowl!

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 by Cam Cullen

Yesterday, the NFL announced that it would be streaming the Super Bowl live to iPads, Verizon mobile phones and the NBC/NFL websites. In my mind, this marks a significant moment in the annals of streaming video as the potential turning point in the transition from traditional delayed broadcast video to live streaming. Sure, there have been plenty of live streams across the Internet (and not just pirated streams of sports events!). In fact, the NFL streams games every week and the past two Olympics have been streamed online. The NFL claims that 20,000-30,000 viewers watch their regular Sunday night streams, compared to 21,000,000 viewers of the broadcast version. However, the Super Bowl was watched by 111,000,000 viewers last year. NBC has upped the ante by promising excusive content and analysis for the streaming version, which is likely to result in people having both the streaming and broadcast versions active in their household at the same time – the big consumer most likely will be the iPad version.

 Why is this significant for the Internet? 

1)   The NFL and NBC have confidence in their ability to stream content to millions of simultaneous consumers around the world. Although the NFL is not a worldwide sport like soccer (football to the rest of the world!), people watch the Super Bowl worldwide. If this goes well, expect the World Cup final to get the same treatment in 2014.

2)   Broadband networks are expected to be able to handle the streaming load (To Be Determined!) across millions of subscribers. I expect broadband operators to be scrambling to ensure that their peering links with the CDN for this event is up to the task.

3)   The CDN delivering the live streaming is confident that it is up to the task for a live event. This is not a case where you can pre-position content to meet the expected demand.

4)   Latency issues between the live telecast and the streaming event are expected to be minimal. This one is interesting to me as I have seen many cases where a score is reported via Twitter before it happens on my TV screen – for many sports.

If this event succeeds and the NFL is able to claim that they are the first to stream such a significant event live, it will start a rush towards content owners for live events to monetize their properties. It will also potentially signal an aggravation of the problem for broadband operators, as it will give new meaning to “peak” hours.  Peak will now be whenever the event occurs – and not during the standard peak hour times. Some broadband networks will struggle with network congestion in this scenario, so it will be interesting to see which operators can deliver high-quality streams during this event.

Here at Procera, we have been seeing stress building on the Intelligent Policy Enforcement infrastructure; live video streaming will add a new dimension to it. In addition to the bandwidth stress, I would expect to see services pop up in this area – like zero-rated streaming, priority streaming (for a fee) – all of which will not only stress the infrastructure, but also the management and OSS layer for policy management and charging. With live events, this will be an even more acute problem for PCRF/PCEF/OCS/OFCS systems, as the sessions will start within a very short time, creating almost a “network outage”-type flood on the network.

We will be watching this event very closely. Stay tuned for our report after the event.

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“Do you want Facebook with that?”: The Challenges of Personalized Charging

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

The challenges of personalized charging or charging based on applications have generated a lot of discussion lately.  The key challenge in any type of service like this is the proper setting of expectations with the customer. There have been a few examples to date of mobile operators attempting to offer prioritized services (mainly gaming) or “enablement” services (i.e., Pay $5 and we will let you use Skype on our mobile broadband.), but application or even site-based charging will require even more techniques. Many GGSNs in the past have offered limited zero-rating capabilities for ringtone downloads, system updates, etc., based on IP addresses or a small number of URLs. There are many cases of IPE systems being used for charging today; however, many of them are volume- or time-based charging to offload existing charging systems, or were installed for future application-based charging use cases.

On the other hand, “application-based” charging or even “site-based” charging in today’s Internet environment brings all new challenges to the table. The biggest challenge is that the user experience on a site is very different than it used to be. Facebook, for example, is now also a container for YouTube videos, ads, games, and chat. YouTube can serve up videos in formats other than flash video for Apple devices.  To determine this the operator needs to understand the user experience, and will need to use tools from an IPE to ensure that the user experience is matched through the proper application of signatures, policies, and charging models.

Operators looking to offer new charging models need tools to ensure that the service that they offer matches the user expectations for a site. Operators need the ability to look at a customer’s connectivity in real-time to troubleshoot billing discrepancies, much less to test service ideas in their labs. They need systems that can use properties of applications or sites – for example, the ability to key off the referrer field in http. They need to be able to log user connections to specific sites to have forensic details for value-based or zero-rated charging. They need quickly updated signatures when new versions of applications come out, and the ability to retroactively zero-rate traffic (unknown or incorrectly identified) if a signature changes and is identified as incorrect.

Beyond the features required, another huge challenge for personalized charging looms – signaling load. This is potentially the biggest scaling challenge, and needs to be architected carefully from the beginning. When a user initially accesses the network, the network must be provisioned with the correct service plan for that user, which can require interaction between multiple systems for each service that the customer has purchased. If architected correctly, signaling load can be minimized, and only refreshed as necessary; but, this can also operate on an on-demand basis, which would cause transactions every time a new piece of content is accessed. The IPE, PCRF, and OCS/OFCS systems need to support tens of thousands of sessions per second in a mobile network of any size, and support for less than that will result in severe limitations for any operator that wants to offer mass market personalized charging plans. On the PCRF/OCS side, a new class of product (diameter routers) is designed to allow network signaling to scale. But, on the IPE front, the IPE solutions will need to scale independently, since they are doing both the heavy lifting for charging as well as the reporting.

Personalized charging is one of the most intriguing new services for broadband operators, but will require a system that can adapt rapidly to service changes and can be adjusted in real-time by the operator. It will need to scale on multiple fronts without losing performance or functionality, and certainly without losing accuracy – both for billing and for application identification.

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PacketLogic Report Studio: Information is Cheap, Lack of Knowledge is Expensive

Monday, November 14th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

I was reading an interview with George Dyson, and during the interview, he made a comment that really caught my attention. He was speaking of the volumes of data that many people have to deal with, and his comment was “Information is cheap, meaning is expensive”. The comment resonated for me, as it encapsulated the headline of a new product from Procera called PacketLogicTM Report Studio.

Two of the biggest challenges that network operators face is 1) information overload, and 2) lack of relevant information. There are plenty of Internet trends reports that can tell you what is happening on networks around the world, but NONE of them tell you what is really happening on your network. Most Intelligent Policy Enforcement solutions can generate many canned reports, and even place them on pretty web pages, but they are all statically configured templates and reports. Most network operators can tell you down to the byte how much traffic is on their network, but that information does not allow you to plan new service offerings. It can also mislead you into thinking that you need to add more capacity to your network, but it may be that the excess bandwidth is being taken up by applications that you should not spend money to enable.

A perfect example of this is the recent push for “Facebook for Free” plans. This is a great marketing plan, as it resonates with the “hyper-connected” crowd. However, in studies that we have done in North America, operators considering Facebook for Free plans should know that Facebook sites have 5x the number of connections AND incoming traffic and users spend as much as 10x active time on Facebook in a day than the next most popular site. For a fixed line operator, this is probably not a big issue. For a mobile operator, it means that the subscriber will be connected for a far longer time to their network (dramatically increasing the attach percentage for the subscriber), and using almost as much bandwidth as streaming video sites. Although this still may be a great service offering, the operator needs to be able to evaluate the business and technical issues with this service specific to their business model – based on the ACTUAL devices, locations, and service plans that they have in use in their network (not a canned report based on industry averages).

PacketLogic Report Studio is a leap forward in that it allows operators to easily create these reports with the fine-grained information that is available to them with the PacketLogic Solution. I recently contributed an article to Wireless Week at http://www.wirelessweek.com/Articles/2011/11/Technology-Darwinism-Goes-Mobile-Wireless-Networks/, and the concluding line for the report sums up nicely what I think the issue for network operators is going forward.

“Mobile operators that lack this knowledge will struggle to launch new services. They will become followers, not industry leaders. In a market where only the strong survive and the rest of the players are consumed, not using business-ready network intelligence will put a mobile operator at risk of being the modern day equivalent of the dodo.”

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Steve Job’s Far Reaching Impact

Thursday, October 6th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

The tech industry suffered a great loss yesterday with the passing of Steve Jobs. There have been many articles written on the topic, all of which do a much better job than I can, but his contribution to the technology industry cannot be underestimated. He changed the game in so many industries, and the current boom in mobile devices and tablets can be credited to the work he led at Apple.

It is a fitting tribute that over the past 24 hours, a survey that Procera did on one of our North America broadband customers revealed that approximately 1% of the overall traffic on these networks were to URLs with “Steve Jobs” in the title. Although this is not a comprehensive capture of all Steve Jobs traffic (as it only captures URLs with Steve Jobs in the title), it is still a testament to the man and his influence in US culture today.

One customer graph is shown below for ~200k subscribers with a peak traffic of 20Gbps during this same time period:

Of the above traffic, the main CDNs and content sites were:

CDN/Site Traffic Total Notes:
Akamaihd.net 9.6 GB Obviously hosting HD videos for many content sites
Turner.com 4.2 GB CNN had a very nice video that was delivered from turner.com’s CDN
NY Times.com .6 GB
Cnet.com .6 GB
Facebook CDN.net .3 GB An interesting addition to the list, as this means that the URLS from facebook incorporated Steve Jobs in the URL

Steve Jobs, thank you for your contribution to the tech industry and we will miss you.

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Chasing the Dog’s Tail – The Challenge of Keeping up with Mobile Applications

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

Mobile operators are constantly asking Procera how we keep up with application signatures. The rapidly evolving mobile application landscape is making signature updates even more critical, as new applications are launched at what seems like a mile a minute. Our R&D team sometimes feels like the proverbial dog chasing its tail, as every week there are tons of new mobile applications launched in the App Stores for the major mobile operating systems.

Mobile applications are the driving force in the new mobile data economy. Consumers do not have smartphones just for email anymore. Rather, they utilize them for social networking, video streaming, photo sharing and real-time search/navigation. A mobile operator looking to capitalize on the latest and greatest application craze wants to market its service to capitalize on these new “hip” applications. Early adopters in particular, present an opportunity for operators who take the lead on creatively marketing new services at zero cost or who offer reduced rates as part of a promotion.  A growing number of mobile operators are looking at how they can jump on this opportunity.  To do this successfully, they need to be quick off the mark with new applications.

The good news is that not all applications are created equal, and many are simply web front ends for a smartphone (sometimes just to get around the restrictions on in-app purchases by some App Stores). In these cases, a simple Virtual Service (which is a capability that we have for a customer to create their own signature) created to capture a specific type of traffic to a specific site will allow the mobile operator to create new services or zero-rate/exempt traffic from usage quotas in a matter of hours—not months as was the case in the past. The challenge is that many systems just classify these applications as HTTP, which does not allow for service differentiation, and an operator cannot create services based on these applications.

More complicated applications (messaging, VOIP and sometimes streaming video/audio), are another matter completely. Skype, Viber and Spotify are all examples of applications that can change the way they operate depending on the network bandwidth, attempts to limit their bandwidth or even the device on which they are running. These applications require a fast-moving development schedule, and sometimes cooperation between the operator and the vendor to ensure that traffic is properly classified. If you are charging (or NOT charging) based on a specific application, you better get it right!

For applications like this, we use a number of methods to keep our signatures up-to-date (some of which I won’t go into here in order to keep our secret sauces secret), but one of the critical capabilities that any mobile operator should be demanding of their vendor is keeping signatures up-to-date. A follow-up question is “How often do you update them?” An answer that has the word “month” or “with new firmware” should set off alarm bells. The mobile application landscape is moving way too fast for operators to be hobbled by slow signature updating. If you cannot get a new signature or launch a new service in a matter of weeks, you are not being served well.

Mobile operators that have the ability to innovate with new services and roll them into production quickly will win the battle for consumer hearts, as well as consumer wallets. A new service that allows a customer to sample a streaming service for a few weeks as it launches is a great way to let consumers decide if they like the service without heavy financial penalties (especially with unlimited data plans going away), but also for an operator to market its service to specific demographics that will use the service in the future. It also enables the mobile operator to give its consumers services that they WANT, and turn that into customer loyalty and stickiness.

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Capping the Cloud…bad for consumers, or the only sane way forward?

Sunday, July 31st, 2011 by Cam Cullen

Usage caps are coming. Like it or not, broadband providers, mobile or fixed, cannot continue to expand their networks and invest in doubling capacity every 12-18 months. With service plans ranging from $20-100 per month across fixed and mobile networks, the runaway train needs to be slowed at least enough to allow the network backhaul and core to catch up to access network advances from the last five years.

From a consumer point of view, this feels like a very bad thing. Just as consumers are moving more and more data into the cloud as access to the cloud has dramatically increased, their ability to leverage that data is threatened by limits that many of them do not understand. What exactly is 5GB? What is 100GB? Many consumer devices like the iPod, refer to their capacity by the number of songs or movies that they can hold. However, there is no such guidance on how much bandwidth your email takes up or what usage will occur when you stream the latest Netflix video, or even access Spotify or iTunes Cloud from your phone/PC/iPad. And if you watch two movies on Netflix, how many Windows Updates or iTunes store downloads does that equal?

Although I believe usage caps are coming and that the business models of many service providers will suffer greatly without them, I also think they can be managed in a way that makes them easier for consumers to understand and manage their usage to ensure a high Quality of Experience. Who wants to have their critically important email, Skype call or even Foursquare check-in fail or be rejected by the network due to overuse? How can they be managed?

  1. Allow consumers to see what kinds of application traffic are using up their bandwidth through a easy to use portal or regular report: A normal household with children may have many devices accessing the Internet (just see my example of my household in the blog on hyper-connectivity ), and often the parents are not aware of exactly how much bandwidth is being used and what the children are doing. Both of my children have iPod Touch systems and are huge consumers of YouTube and online gaming with consoles. My family watches a lot of Netflix, and I don’t want to have to keep track of how many hours are watched in my home. A portal that I could log into would train me to be aware of the amount of bandwidth consumed by different application types in my broadband home. It would also make me want…
  2. The ability to reserve or limit bandwidth usage for certain applications: If I knew what applications were eating up my bandwidth, I could ensure that my caps would not be exceeded “accidentally” when one member of the family or unintentional high usage by all members resulted in exceeding the cap. A simple selection of reserving 10% of my cap for email, for example, would ensure that I never failed to get my email when I needed it. Allowing parents to limit video or audio streaming ensures that when your son turns the volume down on his streaming device and forgets that it is still connected to the internet, you do not have to fork over overage charges.
  3. Offer plans that are optimized for different usage patterns: If a provider wants to ride the popularity of Netflix or other streaming video, create a plan that may cost more per month but allows for a much higher usage allowance for streaming video. This allows those users to enjoy their service, but they are paying for the privilege to do so, and the broadband provider can dimension their network by how many users have subscribed to the different service tiers. Although it will be more options to choose from for consumers, the users that consume more bandwidth will be able to use the network as they choose and pay the appropriate amount based on their consumption.
  4. Proactively provide feedback to consumers on their usage, and suggest optimal plans: Many mobile operators do this today to their customers based on the number of minutes they consume, and many have started to do the same for data consumption. Trends in user behavior tend to evolve over time, (except when spiked by new applications like Netflix or Spotify), and operators can more easily understand what plans are best for their customers and offer new ones that meet their needs.

Broadband operators provide an invaluable—if not essential—service to consumers, and have an opportunity to turn a difficult transition from all-you-can-eat into measured portions. Providing “labeling” of data for users will help them understand what they are consuming and how to control their portions.

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Procera Network’s World IPv6 Day Report

Friday, June 10th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

Procera participated with a number of our customers in the World IPv6 day, which occurred on 8 June 2011. World IPv6 Day was a global-scale test flight of IPv6 sponsored by the Internet Society. The primary goal of the event was to motivate organizations across the industry — Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies — to prepare their networks and associated IP services for IPv6 connectivity and to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 address space runs out. Many web companies and other industry players enabled IPv6 on their main websites for a 24 hour period (and many will maintain their IPv6 presence going forward.

Procera has been monitoring IPv6 deployments for some of our customers for months, and have been watching the trends on IPv6 networks in anticipation of this event. There has been a steady (although low volume) amount of IPv6 traffic on most consumer broadband networks for quite a long time, namely driven by the ability of applications like uTorrent to utilize IPv6 over Teredo (if the OS supports IPv6) to improve the ability of the application to hide from detection and complicate tracking.

We have put together a report on the happenings and some conclusions on what we witnessed on World IPv6 Day, and as a peek at the report, here are the highlights:

World IPv6 Day Highlights:

  • World IPv6 day did not spike the total volume of IPv6 traffic overall, but more native IPv6 traffic was active on consumer broadband networks
  • Native IPv6 users were most likely to browse the web or consume streaming video
  • Google properties experienced the most traffic on consumer broadband networks, driven mainly by streaming video traffic.
  • Netflix over IPv6 also made appearances across North America
  • Teredo traffic still overwhelms native IPv6 on consumer broadband networks
  • Peer-to-Peer File sharing is still the most common application running on IPv6 (using Teredo tunnelling)

Although World IPv6 Day can be considered a success in that it demonstrated that IPv6 content is available and present, the infrastructure and consumer push to IPv6 still has a long way to go. Until IPv6 becomes the default mode of operation, and something that consumers do not have to seek out on their own initiative, it is likely that IPv6 will remain a niche protocol in consumer broadband networks. However, service providers and content providers that participated have shown that IPv6 is viable, and a massive, world-wide concerted effort went into priming these networks to operate using IPv6 for the first time, and once the consumer, device, and network side of the problem is addressed, the content providers appear to be ready to deliver.

The World IPv6 Day Report can be found here:
World IPv6 Day Report – A Look at IPv6 Trends

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Taking PacketLogic to School…

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

Over the past twelve months, Procera has experienced great successes in the Higher Education market across the globe. Although there are a number of contributing factors to this achievement, a few reasons have really begun to stand out in our minds as to why we have been so successful in this space.

Higher Education institutions around the world have quickly realized that their networks are a critical component in their success, ensuring that the bandwidth is managed properly and that the students have access to the resources that they need to succeed in the classroom is critical. The cost of this bandwidth can quickly spiral out of control, as students will use every bit of available bandwidth – “Just because it is there”. Since all applications do not have the same performance or latency requirements from the network, it makes sense to ensure that real-time applications (VOIP, conferencing, video, etc.) have the necessary bandwidth needed to operate effectively, and congestion on the Internet link is very common. The available bandwidth to universities has dramatically increased over the past few years, to the point where many require not just 1Gbps of network performance, but even up to 10Gbps of capacity of traffic management, and they have outgrown their existing traffic management solutions.

In the United States, there is even a mandate called the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) that instructs Higher Education institutions to take action to help control illegal file sharing. Procera has helped many higher education institutions comply with the HEOA by helping them effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials by allowing them to control the use of file sharing technologies on their network – typically a huge contributor to network congestion and bandwidth usage. It has also saved many University CIOs from receiving letters from the MPAA and RIAA about the copyright violations occurring on their network, not to mention helped pare back their overhead by reducing the number of DMCA take-down notices they receive

From our perspective, Higher Education institutions are the breeding ground for new and exciting applications. Being installed in as many of these networks as possible keeps us at the forefront of application trends, as we have seen the use of streaming video, social networking applications, and VOIP/IM applications from around the world skyrocket in these environments, and they continue to keep our signature database ahead of competitors that do not have the same exposure and responsiveness to the Higher Education customer base. We have also benefited from these customers’ deployments as they are often more sophisticated in their use of policies to control bandwidth than even some service providers, so they give PacketLogic a good workout and ensure that our solutions maintain performance and visibility under even heavy loads. We have also experienced good feedback on our implementations of IPv6, which are becoming more and more critical to research universities and international consortiums, as IPv6 has become more prevalent on Internet2 links. We strongly believe that IPv6 will become more critical to networks around the world, and are working to provide the leading IPv6-aware traffic management solution on the market.

Besides, how can you have an “Intelligent” enforcement solution without going to school every once in awhile? We learn something new every day at Procera, and it is often our education customers that teach us that lesson.

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Cloudy with a Chance of Internet Showers

Monday, March 14th, 2011 by Cam Cullen

The Cloud” has been a hot topic in the technology space for some time now, with the term becoming so mainline that many companies are using it as a tagline in mainstream advertising (ala Microsoft with their “To the cloud!” campaign). With “The Cloud”, the thinking goes; I can just have my data readily available for access, regardless of my device, location, or access technology. I can always access my pictures (everyone certainly wants to see my pictures of my family vacation!), my documents or spreadsheets, check my balance in my checking account, and my contact database.

Great idea! But what if the cloud is not accessible? Or your access to the cloud is so bad that it might as well be offline?

The concept of the cloud is a great security blanket. It’s like never having to worry about leaving your keys locked in your car or forgetting your wallet when you need it the most. Information is always available, and you can call it up on a moment’s notice. I had a personal experience with the beauty of the cloud this weekend, when I was in New York City that kind of drove home how expectations have changed with respect to access to the Internet. I took the train to NYC, using the on-board Wi-Fi to do work during the ride. I was, you see, trying to access the cloud so that I could have access to salesforce.com, as welI as participate in an online chat conference with some colleagues. I decided on the train as my mode of transport due to the availability of Internet Access and planned to get work done on the train ride. However, the connection was so bad and overloaded, that getting any online work done became impossible. However, the cloud did not fail me completely, as I also have an Android phone, and I can use that phone as a mobile hotspot, which since it supports an HSPA connection, is highly effective in emergency cases, and I was able to complete what I needed to get done (although just barely in a few cases, as occasionally I would drop into 3G or even EDGE areas where access slowed to a crawl.

I have seen and heard of many cases of consumers behaving in a business role (think travelers or telecommuters) that have suffered due to their connectivity and as a result, their companies and businesses have suffered. I know that many companies would be willing (even eager) if they could pay HIGHER amounts for broadband access for some of their employees to ensure that the latest sales forecasts, material orders, or even POs could be placed. Or in the case that I described above, to use more data in emergency cases and pay a bundled daily usage charge (or a reduced rate data package). If I am tethering my phone to my PC, some of the mobile data packages available today are woefully inadequate for even a single day’s work and email (It feels as if I get 1G of data in just email alone some days, much less add web browsing where some pages are 1MB alone – I am looking at you Yahoo with your front page), and a 250MB per month allowance is not sufficient.

Even in the US, where a lot of attention is being paid to tiered services and usage-based pricing models, allowances are made for “managed” services. More options should exist for data plans targeted towards mobile business professionals, as since the bills for these services are subsidized by corporations, the user is not acting as a consumer when they purchase the plan. I have always believed that even flat rate access can be tiered, and I know that if my company could pay to make sure that I had better access for my business traffic as part of my service plan they would be willing to. For example:

  • Prioritize my VPN traffic (even if it requires IP address destination-based rules)
  • Prioritize traffic to SF.com
  • Prioritize IM (which is critical for me to communicate quickly, succinctly, and cheaply with colleagues around the world)
  • Prioritize email access to my corporate server
  • Prioritize access to my file drop-box service (which I sometimes need to use to transfer large presentations, documents, or software versions).
  • And maybe most importantly – GIVE ME A BETTER RATE FOR ROAMING DATA!

Although I would use more bandwidth in the above case, this is offset by a willingness to pay more for this access on an ongoing basis (or as the last point makes, on a per usage basis for roaming). Roaming access to the cloud is completely unacceptable (especially overseas), as often just opening up email exceeds the $50 limit that is set in most countries for user notification.

As broadband providers are consistently looking for ways to generate more revenue, I suggest looking to the business user and offering us plans that would enhance our Quality of Experience – not just with quality access to the internet, but also quality of billing experience. Many users are very willing to pay more for access, and the opportunity is there for you to take advantage of that by offering plans that deliver.

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