LTE: Context is King
The ubiquity and influence of LTE is intensifying by the day. According to the 2014 Ericsson Mobility report,65%of the world's populationwill be covered by LTE in 2019, with data trafficin theCentral Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region alonesetto increase 11-fold between2013 and 2019. But while service providersaren’t exactly shy to trumpetLTE’stransformational credentials,few are equipped to bestmonetise the technology and cope with both soaring data and complexity of consumer demand. One of the major issueshereis thatevery subscriber, application, and device is currently treated in the same way and, when the network getsclogged,servicequality takesan inelegant nosedive. Operators need to rethink their strategie to cope withthe data conundrum, continual demands for improved quality of service, as well as increasingly diverse device mixes, usage patterns and advanced policy-based services. In particular, an efficiencystep-changeis required whenit comes to managing unpredictable changes in traffic.This means collectingand analysingreal-time data on networkload and performance, as well as subscriber activity,andrelating it all backto policy. In other words, context is king. One of thebestways service providers can up their game is byadaptingto exponential increasesinsignalingtraffic using Diameter,which isthe protocol that enables network elements to communicate with each other to coordinate and optimize end-to-end transmissionfrom the internet to mobile devices.Thisis the foundation to establish context, implement charging, and leverage traffic and services management. Domain name system (DNS)protection is also going to bevital indeliveringabest-of-breed and reliableservice.For example,to protect the network againstdistributed denial-of-service (DDoS)attacks and other sudden surges in DNS traffic, operatorsmust be able torapidlydetermine and mitigatethreatsto minimise network disruption.In order to tackle theemerging challengesassociatedwith traffic growth and malicious activity configuredto hobblemobile infrastructures, operatorsare likely to turn totools like IP-client rate limiting. These cancontrol traffic surges, and DNS caching can reduce the load on the DNS server.Furthermore,DNS processing complements Diameter functionality to optimize message routing to provide scalability. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)smarts are another up and comingmust-have,making it easierfor operators toaggregateinformation from multiple sources andachieve aplatform withthe right level of scalabilitytobest leveragecontext-aware data. Operatorssimplycannotafford toremain aloof, complacent and disconnected from the user-experience any more. While they might be catering to consumers in the same area, their needswill alwaysvary wildly.Clunky and presumptuousone-size-fits all approaches aredefinitivelyon the way out,and things like intricately tailored, geolocation-driven serviceswill become the norm. Encouragingly for all concerned,we arenow entering an era of service provision that has the potential to becomefarricher personalisedand differentiatedthanever before, allwhile utilising network resources withutmost efficiencyand delivering sound ROI. (Originally published in CommsMEA)