Know Your Content

What Does It Mean To Be Content Aware? What is running over the top of telecom networks these days anyway? The predominant answer is video, and plenty of it, along

with loads of other high-bandwidth content. Netflix alone accounted for a staggering 32.7% of peak-hour network traffic in the United States this fall, according to a report from DPI vendor Sandvine. Video from Netflix and others will soon be overrunning mobile data networks as well, with mobile data traffic expected to increase 26-fold by 2015, driven largely by mobile video streaming, according to Cisco’s Visual Network Index. Different sorts of OTT content have different impacts on

carrier networks—and different expectations from end users. Smartphone users have installed billions of mobile apps, illustrating the vastness of potential network impacts and ever- changing user preferences. From a bandwidth perspective, most of the content

delivered to those apps is relatively low-impact, though constant notifications and session start-ups offer additional challenges. The streaming of movies and TV shows, so popular today, places a heavier load on the network, as users are coming to expect near-flawless performance of those audio and video streams. Two-way video—programs like Skype or Apple FaceTime

video calling—presents an even steeper challenge. And with over-the-top HD streams becoming a reality, the network impact of OTT traffic will only continue to grow. It is critical that telecom service providers understand

those trends and become more aware of the content running over the top of their networks. When it comes to content awareness, 2 issues stand out: ensuring operator profitability and enhancing the user experience. For operator profitability,

content awareness enables operators to understand the specific types of traffic on their network, which enables them to make decisions about that traffic. That is critically important in today’s world, where average revenue per unit (ARPU) remains flat while bandwidth demands continue to grow, challenging long-term profitability. So if an operator can

determine that a small number of users of OTT services account for the

Netflix alone accounted for a staggering

32.7%

of peak-hour network traffic in the United States this fall

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majority of their traffic, they can deal with that reality. They can develop partnerships with those content providers in order to share the network costs or service revenues as a tradeoff for enabling a better user experience for those services. Alternatively, they can identify extremely high-volume

users and enforce stricter usage policies, within reason, on those customers. Or they can opt to up-sell larger data packages to those users, perhaps ensuring “premium level” service guarantees to these heaviest—and potentially most valuable—of users. “In any and all cases, service providers cannot intelligently

act on what they cannot see. Content awareness enables that visibility and control, which is paramount to long-term service provider success,” says Dave Morfas, Tellabs senior product marketing manager. Indeed, content awareness enables visibility into the

network and its performance. It enables visibility into customer behavior and likes and dislikes. And, ultimately it enables service providers to build new service and business models based on rationalizing the relationship between that network supply and demand. And what happens if operator networks are not content

aware? Well, you’ve heard it before—when operator networks are

not content aware, the network and the operator become marginalized as “dumb pipe” providers. Such providers, says Tellabs’ Morfas, “are the conduit, but they are not capitalizing on the hot new app nor are they proactively participating in the user experience or revenue growth. They also are not conscious of user trends, which could enable service providers to better understand what personalized services users want, what their ordering and buying patterns are, and thus how they can better serve those users.”