Service providers are facing growing challenges from consumers as well as competing service providers. Empowered consumers demand more flexibility, mobility of services, personalization, and value in their subscriptions. Content-oriented providers have built strong brands and consumer relationships in a very short time without large investments in facilities, by simply using Web-based ("over-the-top") methods. In light of these new challenges, service providers can no longer define themselves by their access technology. Instead, they need to provide service mobility and flexibility, speedy delivery, and expanded areas of service coverage. They also need to meet new consumer expectations, such as the ability to self-select from a range of services, customize those services, and access them wherever and whenever they want. The providers' networks are the fundamental enablers of this business transformation.
The Cisco® Service Exchange Framework - the service layer of the Cisco IP Next-Generation Network (IP NGN), shown in Figure 1 - is the vehicle by which service providers can transform themselves from being access providers to "experience providers." Experience providers differentiate themselves competitively by how well they provide and brand a consistent quality experience across network layers, applications, and different end devices - and to do this requires a clear understanding of who subscribers are, what services they are using, and what policies govern each account.
The Cisco Service Exchange Framework includes the architecture, technologies, and products necessary for heightened subscriber, application, and network awareness. Cisco calls its subscriber-related intelligence solution "Personalized Subscriber Management."
This solution enables you to offer your subscribers a broader array of services on demand and tailored to their unique needs. With these new features, you can achieve new levels of brand awareness and loyalty.
At the same time, the Cisco Service Exchange Framework simplifies your operational responsibilities with subscriber self-selection and other automated features to decrease costs. With the Cisco Service Exchange Framework and its integrated policy management capabilities, you can individually coordinate personalized service-level needs - or experiences - versus simply providing generic or commoditized access services.
This paper presents the Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management solution, and elaborates on the technologies and platforms that enable innovative yet pragmatic subscription and operational services that support this personalization of the user experience.
Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management Overview
Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management enables numerous subscription and operational services that facilitate the creation of this personalized experience. Very practical and proven, these services can enable you to bring your subscribers new levels of freedom to personalize their online experiences while adding new revenue-generating opportunities and reducing customer turnover. Some examples include services that provide:
• Parents with the ability to, within minutes, create an "allowance" of bandwidth or online time that serves as an easy-to-use but highly effective incentive tool for their children; these types of parental controls can also restrict the content that their children are permitted to access
• Gamers or video-on-demand (VoD) users with a Web portal from which they can instantly request additional bandwidth on demand, or a turbo button to enable a burst in bandwidth for the highest-quality gaming or viewing experience
• Telecommuters with a portal so they can self-select new priorities for applications in the home to help ensure their voice-over-IP (VoIP) or video conferencing session receives the highest throughput by prioritizing it over e-mail downloads or Web browsing
The Personalized Subscriber Management solution provides a set of functional capabilities to deliver services to subscribers. Table 1 lists services supported by Personalized Subscriber Management.
Subscribers are allowed to visit a Web portal and select or modify different broadband packages as their needs dictate.
Parental Controls and Content Filtering
Adults can access a Web portal and set Internet controls for children, including blocking access to certain types of Websites and imposing time limits on online access.
Allowance-Based Subscription Services
This feature allows subscribers to select various tiered service models that implement quota allowances (time or volume usage), for a set period such as on a monthly basis. These quota allowances enable service providers to offer lower-cost service to users with applications requiring limited bandwidth, while delivering premium service offerings to users with applications (such as file-sharing applications) that have much higher bandwidth demands.
Bandwidth-on-Demand (Turbo Button)
Bandwidth on demand is a temporary or permanent change to the rate of an existing service. For instance, subscribers who may have a standard lower-speed Internet service may visit a Web portal on the provider's site and click on a Turbo Button to boost their bandwidth for a set period or to leave the button engaged until they return and deselect it. The subscriber only pays for the extra bandwidth when it is needed. This service could prove popular with gamers, telecommuters transferring large files, and parties making a video call.
Pay-as-You-Go Subscription Service
Pay-as-you-go service permits subscribers to pay for temporary access, limited by either time or volume usage. This option is ideal for subscribers who use the Internet intermittently and only want to buy time or bandwidth as needed. When users launch their browsers, they are redirected to a Web portal where they select the 2-hour "pay-as-you-go" option, for example. After 2 hours, either the session can be terminated or the user can purchase more access time.
Prioritized Application Service
In this use case, the user logs on the subscriber self-service Web portal and requests a service that prioritizes specific applications, such as VoIP and video applications.
Peer-to-Peer Management and Network Optimization
The ability to better manage bandwidth-intensive applications, such as peer-to-peer downloads and uploads, helps providers to maintain fairness and ensure that they deliver the quality of service that subscribers expect. Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management enables service providers to implement Fair Use Policies (FUPs) to manage congestion. These policies can significantly increase the performance of interactive applications (VoIP, gaming, etc.) thereby benefiting the majority of users, while keeping network upgrades in accord with revenue growth.
Cisco Products and Technologies Supporting Personalized Subscriber Management
The Cisco Service Exchange Framework incorporates the architecture, technologies, and products necessary for heightened subscriber, application, and network awareness and for an enhanced user experience. As service providers transform themselves into experience providers, they must control network access sufficiently to identify subscribers and the services they use in real time. The IMS/TISPAN standards, supported by Cisco, identify subscribers and manage traffic that is based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). IMS/TISPAN, however, does not support traffic that is not SIP-based, including many implementations of VoD, VoIP, and IPTV. The Service Exchange Framework of the Cisco IP NGN is compliant with IMS/TISPAN, but goes beyond TISPAN to provide support for non-SIP applications and services as well.
There are primarily four classes of products that anchor the Personalized Subscriber Management solution to generate subscriber and service awareness, as shown in Figure 2.
These products can be integrated to support a myriad of subscription and operational services to enable greater customer intimacy and personalization, and to optimize operations. Moreover, these products deliver real value to many provider networks today in support of their service offerings.
• Cisco Broadband Remote Access Server with Cisco Intelligent Services Gateway (ISG): With functions such as the Cisco ISG, the network can automatically detect when users are accessing the network and determine both the type of service each user wishes to access and the type of device that is being used. Independent of the access type and protocols in use, the Cisco ISG supports subscriber aggregation and management functions including authorization and authentication, policy enforcement, and distributed policy management.
• Broadhop Service Management Engine (SME) and other third-party policy management solutions: The Broadhop SME is a policy server that is used to implement centralized policy-management function for the Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management solution. The SME receives policy events or triggers from network elements or applications, makes policy decisions governing each subscriber's service, and dynamically applies these policies to policy enforcement points in the network (such as the Cisco ISG or SCE). The Personalized Subscriber Management solution integrates Broadhop SME, however, the solution may be implemented with other third-party policy servers.
• Cisco Service Control Engine (SCE): The policy server can communicate with the Cisco SCE to enable deep packet inspection for peer-to-peer management and network optimization to meet subscription service-level agreements (SLAs) and efficiently manage network bandwidth utilization for off-net or "over-the-top" applications.
• Authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA): One of the characteristics of established broadband environments is that the AAA solution has often been in place for many years, is highly customized, and supports a very large number of users. Therefore, it is necessary to implement the policy-controlled environment with minimal disruption to this component of the network. The Cisco Service Exchange Framework for wireline can be integrated with existing AAA systems with minimal impact or for Greenfield implementations and can use AAA products such as Cisco Network Registrar and Cisco Access Registrar.
As discussed earlier, subscription services allow residential or business customers to customize and personalize their own services. This new level of freedom to personalize online experiences gives service providers new revenue-generating opportunities. With an application- and service-aware network, the subscriber selects an application or set of applications and the network can automatically prioritize resources to provide the highest-quality experience.
The following are several examples of subscription services and how they work.
Self-Service Selection
The history of the online world has shown that users rapidly embrace the ability to self-select features without having to wait in queues for call center agents. Wireline providers can benefit from providing this same level of independence and control to their subscribers by allowing them to self-select features of their Internet service. Telecommuters may elect to prioritize business applications over other Internet applications used by children in the home who may be trying to download music videos or play games from the same home connection. Home users may also be able to visit a Web portal and select or modify different broadband packages with different speeds as their needs dictate. This self-service approach offers clear advantages, including:
• Providers may decrease the time to deliver new services to subscribers by using these techniques, while decreasing the cost to provision these subscriber services.
• Providers may offer self-service as a competitive feature. By helping customers gain personal control over their service, providers can improve customer satisfaction and increase customer loyalty.
How Self-Service Selection Works
Subscribers log into a Web portal where they are presented with various options, which may be dependent on the broadband package they purchased and the underlying access technology deployed (Figure 3). They may see buttons organized according to application priority. For example, the subscriber might see buttons labelled "peer-to-peer," "gaming," or "VPN." By selecting or deselecting these options, subscribers can indicate which applications they want given priority during the day or at night. Or buttons may be featured on the Web portal that allow subscribers to select different broadband package options, with distinct speeds - such as 512 Kbps, 2 Mbps, or 10 Mbps - and appropriate pricing.
Figure 3. Portal-Based Self-Service Selection Use Case
When an option is selected, the choice is relayed to the policy server. The policy server then pushes the respective QoS policy to the Cisco ISG and/or SCE and the policy is then applied to the user session. The policy server can also at this point generate any required billing updates. From that point forward, each time the subscriber begins an Internet session, the Cisco ISG or SCE automatically recognizes the subscriber and then relays the information to the policy server, which then pushes the respective QoS policy to the Cisco ISG and SCE for application to the user session.
Parental Control Service
Parents can access a Web portal and set controls to govern their children's use of the Internet. These controls can enforce time limits (for example, allowing only 2-hour access Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) or they can help ensure that certain Websites and video content are not accessible at all to minors using the home computer.
How Parental Control Service Works
To enable parental controls requires the use of the Cisco SCE, which performs deep packet inspection (DPI). The Cisco SCE examines the packets coming from the home computer. In Figure 4, a parent logs into the self-service Web portal and subscribes to the parental control service. After the service change request is submitted, the Web portal passes this request to the policy-management server. The server consequently pushes a subscriber package to the Cisco SCE, which then applies URL filtering to all transit traffic from that subscriber.
Figure 4. Parental Control Use Case
Bandwidth-on-Demand (Turbo Button) Service
Bandwidth-on-demand allows subscribers who may have a standard lower-speed Internet service to visit a Web portal on the provider's Website and click on a turbo button to ramp up bandwidth speeds for as long as the button is on. Subscribers can either choose to boost the bandwidth for a set period or opt to leave the button engaged until they return and deselect it. The value of this option is that the subscriber only pays for the turbo service when it is needed. Bandwidth on demand is useful when using video or audio streaming applications that require superior performance in order to deliver the optimum quality of experience. Serious gamers who want the extra bandwidth for an evening's enjoyment can use the turbo button. Telecommuters can use it when transferring large files. Families conducting a video call may also select a turbo button to give them the extra high-quality visuals only available at higher bandwidth rates.
How Turbo Button Service Works
As shown in Figure 5, subscribers log in to a Web portal and request upgraded service for a specified number of minutes. The policy server confirms the request, and then pushes the respective QoS policy to either the Cisco ISG or Cisco SCE and this is applied to the subscriber's connection. The policy server tracks the time allotment. When the time expires, the policy server pushes the previous QoS policy to the Cisco ISG and Cisco SCE and the policy is applied to the user session.
Figure 5. Turbo Button Use Case
Allowance-Based Subscription Service
This offering allows subscribers to choose volume quota-based or time quota-based services. A usage volume quota or time allowance is generally applied to the account over a monthly billing cycle much like minutes are allotted to mobile phone services. Here are some options:
• A volume quota-based limit enables high-speed music or video downloads to be managed. When the volume usage quota for the month is reached, for instance, users may be blocked from further Internet access and redirected to the service Web portal where they may increase the initial quota, if desired.
• Time-based limits may be applied to subscriber usage of various services as well. For example, the subscriber may want to set up a prepaid service account and restrict use to a specific number of minutes or hours per month. Alternatively, the subscriber may want to restrict use to only particular daily windows for music or video downloads.
How Allowance-Based Subscription Service Works
The subscriber logs in to a Web portal and selects the volume-based or time-based service desired. Figure 6 represents a prepaid service offering as an example. In the case of a volume-based limit, the policy server stores the requested settings. The policy server tracks the volume and usage quota based on accounting record updates received from the Cisco ISG or SCE. In the case of a time-based limit, the policy server tracks the time usage for the subscriber. When the quota is used up, the policy server pushes a predetermined policy to the Cisco ISG or SCE to limit or block further access. The Cisco ISG or SCE may also be configured to redirect the session to a portal for the user to request additional quotas of volume or time.
Figure 6. Prepaid Service Use Case
Prioritized Application Service
Through application awareness, the Personalized Subscriber Management solution can dynamically manage network resources to help ensure that the service qualities required by the application or service-level agreements are met. With this type of service, subscribers are empowered to improve the quality of service applied to specific applications that they select, such as VoIP and video applications. Prioritized Application Services allow users to prioritize applications over other Internet applications or on-net services to improve their quality of experience.
How Prioritized Application Service Works
Through the service Web portal, users request a service option to prioritize their VoIP application and/or their video streaming application. The Web portal passes this change request to the policy management server. As a result, the policy server confirms the change to the service and applies the respective service policy to the Cisco SCE and possibly the ISG. Consequently, the policy is applied to these user application sessions. The policy server can update any required billing events. If the priority applications require deep packet inspection (DPI) to be classified, the SCE is required to implement this service. If the applications require priority scheduling, this service requires the Broadband Remote Access Server or the Cisco ISG (see Figure 7).
Figure 7. Prioritized Application Service Use Case
Operational services made possible by Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management features give you peer-to-peer application management for better network optimization so that a fair-use policy may be implemented guaranteeing the quality of experience for all subscribers. Optimizing network traffic is vital to helping ensure adequate availability of network resources. Broadband-aware applications, such as peer-to-peer file-sharing applications, are complicating the load, performance, and capacity equation. The dramatic increase in upstream network traffic with peer-to-peer traffic has forced operators to either add capacity or determine alternative ways to identify and manage this traffic.
Providers frequently rely upon guesswork or inaccurate sampling techniques as they struggle to better understand usage patterns. The Cisco SCE lets you keep track of all IP traffic flows through stateful packet flow reporting. By collecting statistics on the applications and services used by subscribers, the Cisco SCE takes the guesswork out of capacity planning. Detailed information about subscriber demographics helps you recognize how to better serve your subscribers.
Various operational features let you limit maximum bandwidth usage of specific applications and subscribers and prioritize delay-sensitive, mission-critical, and premium applications and services (Figure 8). These features help ensure that subscribers receive a fair share of network resources and eliminate bandwidth over-consumption caused by peer-to-peer applications. Subscriber usage is tracked and policies are implemented based on consumption, peak versus off-peak periods, and type of traffic.
Figure 8. Operational Services Examples
By evaluating the application usage of each individual subscriber, operators can, for example, identify normal e-mail patterns, compare results, and identify abnormalities across the user community that can highlight e-mail spammers or other abnormalities in the network traffic. More importantly, this information can be used as the foundation for service enhancement or creation.
With Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management, you can create variations in services such as specialized services for business users whose traffic patterns dictate the need for quality-assured VPNs for e-mail and Web browsing. For residential or business users, always-on broadband-aware applications can be decreased during peak daytime hours or accelerated during off-peak evening hours. Heavy users of broadband-aware applications can be offered acceleration packages for limited times or by designated applications such as VoD, interactive gaming, or music downloads.
Ongoing analysis of traffic with Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management features permit you to test, modify, and improve service applications over time without affecting the overall subscriber experience. Revenue can be accurately modelled and measured, and the cost basis of individual services can be more closely managed. Such an advantage can be achieved only if application and subscriber awareness exist in the network.
Migration Path to Personalized Services
Implementing Personalized Subscriber Management capabilities is an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary change to a service provider's service-delivery infrastructure. Typically, providers begin their migration to personalizing services in three focused areas:
• Traffic analysis: Implement application and subscriber network intelligence to enable traffic monitoring, analysis, and reporting. This fundamental building block enables you to understand subscriber and application-usage patterns, to determine the impact of various applications and services on the network, and to extrapolate communities of interest and potential differentiated service offerings as a result. Cisco ISGs and Cisco SCEs provide the instrumentation necessary to enable this network intelligence.
• Fair-use policy: Implement fair-use policies for subscribers based on the observations from traffic analysis. With the Cisco ISG and SCE, you can incrementally implement fair-use policies governing the use of bandwidth-intensive applications over the network. You may throttle application usage through rate limiting and packet-flow optimization techniques.
• Personalized subscription self-services: Implement complementary tiered and differentiated services, customized to meet the requirements of various communities of interest (such as gamers and telecommuters) and individual subscribers. Through the implementation of policy-management capabilities integrated with policy-enforcement elements (using Cisco ISGs and SCEs), you can implement a myriad of customized services for your subscribers.
IMS/TISPAN Context for Personalized Services
The previous sections outlined a number of innovative, personalized services that you can immediately roll out with a Cisco IP NGN, including the rich Service Exchange Framework solutions. It is crucial to realize that as is, IMS/TISPAN is not ready to fully deliver the personalized wireline services described earlier. While SIP is widely deployed in support of IP telephony implementations, non-SIP applications dominate most service portfolios.
With the Service Exchange Framework, Cisco seeks to protect your investments in your current wireline and wireless infrastructures and allows you to generate additional revenue with next-generation services as you gradually and smoothly migrate your infrastructures to full IMS/TISPAN compliance. The Cisco Service Exchange Framework delivers personalized applications for existing wireline infrastructures and will keep adding support for additional SIP-enabled IMS applications.
Figure 9 represents the TISPAN architecture. It once more illustrates the clean conceptual alignment of the Cisco Service Exchange Framework and the architectural goals of TISPAN. The components involved in the delivery of the personalized services outlined in previous sections include the Cisco ISG, Cisco SCE, and Broadhop SME (or other third-party policy server solutions) together with Business Support System (BSS) functions - such as AAA and billing - that service providers already have deployed.
Figure 9. TISPAN and IP NGN Architecture
The Cisco ISG and SCE implement the TISPAN Resource Control Enforcement Function (RCEF) and Access Management Function (AMF). As such, these devices perform session management functions for broadband and have the ability to mediate between subscriber requests, policies, services, and network element resources. The Cisco ISG and SCE use a variety of standards-based interfaces to communicate with the policy server, which supports TISPAN's Resource and Admission Control Subsystem (RACS), and with AAA elements such as the Cisco Network Registrar and Access Registrar (which support TISPAN's Network Attachment Subsystem [NASS]).
Conclusion
To meet changing customer expectations and differentiate service offerings to compete effectively, service providers must transform themselves from access suppliers into experience providers. Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management solutions let you personalize subscriber services, offer self-service, and apply intelligence and policy management to applications on converged IP networks. The Cisco Service Exchange Framework within the Cisco IP NGN gives context to how the disparate control-plane platforms, technologies, and functions can be orchestrated to achieve optimized use of network resources, customer personalization, and increased average revenue per user.
Cisco Personalized Subscriber Management lets you reclaim customer intimacy that a new breed of Web-based content providers has forged with users. In addition to services such as parental control and turbo buttons, new push features allow subscribers to select an application or set of applications for automatic prioritization based on individual needs and preferences. By integrating policy-management capabilities with products and technologies on the network edge and gateways that carefully manage and optimize traffic, you can deliver customized services that your subscribers can enjoy, value, and afford.
