Next-Gen Wireless Handsets Driving Push For Seamless Hand-Offs

For a technology that wasn’t supposed to be available for years, announcements around dual-mode 3G/Wi-Fi handsets are creating quite a stir. With silicon that enables multiple antennae and radio components to be put onto a single chip the size of a dime, postage stamp-sized modules will replace PCI cards and offer powerful and lighter alternatives to traditional handsets that support both analog and digital networks. In the next year, phones will have cellular radio capabilities, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to enable access to wireless LANs (WLANs) and 3G and CDMA networks.

With recent announcements from Qualcomm, Sony/Ericsson, Nokia, Broadcom and Motorola around converged devices, nearly everybody who is anybody in the mobile world is participating in trials of 3G/cellular roaming.

NTT DoCoMo was the first to announce trials with these types of capabilities, and others are rumored to be following suit, including British Telecom, Telenor and Orange. Undoubtedly, those with strong Wi-Fi strategies, such as T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, will also look at convergent devices as an opportunity to gain market share.

Enabling customers to roam seamlessly from a WLAN to a cellular network—whether one to which that person subscribes or another—has business and technological implications not yet evoked by other technologies. In fact, some believe that business models created around dual-mode phones may completely change the face of competition between telecom and mobile operators.

Leveling the Playing Field

Many believe wireless and wireline providers have a lot to learn from one another with dual-mode services. Dual-mode capabilities will give cellular operators a chance to extend offerings where they lack spectrum or where wideband is cost-prohibitive. Wideband refers to a circuit that has a bandwidth greater than 4KHz and occupies a broad frequency spectrum. Conversely, Wi-Fi will give wireline carriers a means to compete with hotspots, thus offering an element of mobility with which to compete—albeit with limited coverage—with wireless operators.

Over time, user and device identifiers, signaling, events, roaming, and control plane technology have grown out of the mobile world. However, mobile operators’ strengths may be their ability to manage IP networks and service control planes (control of the end-to-end components from generation of content to consumption of content) in IP networks.

Whether Wi-Fi will ultimately pose a threat to 3G networks and cellular networks is yet to be seen, but most agree it will be complementary at its onset. “However, that does not mean that operators should be arrogant about their pricing and their roaming,” says Stefano Holguin, head of marketing for Birdstep, a Norwegian software company with mobile IP solutions deployed at major airports in the Netherlands and Australia, as well as with Norway’s Telenor and eWave in Austria. He notes that user sophistication is increasing to the point that VoIP software offerings are becoming prevalent in the enterprise and the home. In fact, user sophistication is at a point where the average subscriber has at least five digital devices, according to studies by Yankee Group.

As sophistication increases, users will look to Wi-Fi as a means to truly augment or supersede those services already offered by mobile operators. The ability to roam, without any change in the quality of their voice or data sessions, could revolutionize the user experience. Presumably, a New York business traveler with a Verizon Wireless cell phone could roam onto an SBC network in California, and then onto a Wi-Fi hotspot in his hotel without any change in the quality of the voice or in his ability to access content.

While the value to the user is evident, seamless roaming will make simple tasks like monitoring usage a potential nightmare if carriers don’t prepare. If someone roams onto a WLAN in their home, the provider must recognize the person is no longer utilizing their network, and minutes should no longer be ticked off his or her account. Similarly, the operator has to recognize if during that same call, the subscriber roams back onto its network, at which time there has to be a re-initiation of the minutes deduction from their minutes plan. “As phones become smart enough to weed out the best possible connection or to seek out preferred partners’ networks as users roam, dynamic provisioning for high-bandwidth services will be necessary to procure the surcharges for premium services and to achieve wholesale settlement with partners,” says Portal’s Liam Maxwell, director of product marketing. He notes that self-provisioning of services would allow people to be notified when they are nearing or crossing high-speed WLANs, at which time they know to download big files or partake in gaming or video sessions, or even engage in VoIP sessions. For enterprises, the self-provisioning aspects could potentially save them money, as workers possessing multiple personas could divide personal and company calls themselves, thereby simplifying the segmentation of usage. “We are investing a lot of R&D in lifestyle billing capabilities, so that enterprises can drive down costs, as personal calls can be deleted from corporate bills,” says Maxwell, noting that usage can be segmented according to dialing patterns or phone numbers.” A user dials a prefix so that call is tagged as personal or corporate; some companies already distinguish dial tones so that users know if the call is business or private,” he adds.

Waiting Rather than Acting

Unfortunately, the forgiving nature of IP may lure operators into a false sense of security that causes them to put off investment in next-generation OSS and BSS infrastructure. That may eventually cost them more than they saved initially in infrastructure for 3G/Wi-Fi roaming capabilities.

“With IP, you can throw a core IP network together and wing it for a while by throwing more and more IP routers and switches into the backbone,” says Andy Frailey, CTO of CoManage, whose software focuses on core and edge applications. Once carriers and operators have to differentiate their services based on QoS, they will need complete records of what resides in the network. “That’s when they are up the creek with ad hoc approaches that bought them time,” he adds. Frailey says he is seeing operators flounder once they start toying with usage-based billing. “Data integrity becomes a problem, because they have no accurate picture of what the IP backbone consists of.”

To procure revenue from premium services, OSSs must manage all pieces of the supply chain, including terminal equipment, fixed or wireless networks owned by access network providers, and equipment from metro service providers, nodes and elements from long-haul operators, not to mention the content owned by content providers.

That means every piece involved in the delivery of a service will need an identifier—the content, the services and the user—if carriers are to track when the networks are accessed. The user ID and service ID have to be linked by tags in the service control plane. “The service control plane, the provisioning and the configuring of services has to happen independent of the network and the customer,” says Mark Nicholson, vice president of product marketing for Syndesis. He notes that existing OSSs often lump them all together. “The service management piece no longer pertains just to the customer, but to the service, and the content/service node—whether off-net or on-net, needs to act transparent to the user,” says Nicholson.

Only by tracking network resources through these identifiers can carriers guarantee service levels. These identifiers could come in the form of Universal SIMs (USIM) and SIMs identifiers, which match records of the user to the subscription services listed in the authentication server. “That will be challenging for on-demand services, because carriers then need to track the usage as it takes place, and as it associates with the USIM identifier, and the identity of the reseller of the content, whether it’s the operator or a content provider like a Reuters or Disney or something like that,” says Nicholson, noting that content management systems will most likely come from companies with a stake in video servers, such as Hewlett-Packard.

Because of the huge numbers of terminal devices—laptops, phones, game boxes, etc.—and the USIMs used for identifying the mobile voice subscribers and consequent voice, video or Web site owners, it’s easy to see how a single OSS/BSS management system cannot handle all of the vertical aspects of managing nodes in the network (routers, DSLAMs, etc.) and connectivity networks (SONET, token ring, etc.), as well as the IP network.

“Mobile operators and carriers need to recognize that the network is no longer the service; rather, it’s just a means of providing connectivity for myriads of devices,” says Nicholson.

Rather than thinking of a conceptual framework based on PSTN voice, with mobility as an add-on, provisioning and billing strategies should be shaped around the fact that voice will become just another data stream in dual-mode services. “Forget the ‘V’ in VoIP,” says Nicholson. “Because OSSs were built for 2G, there are many modules added to support 2.5G.” However, this “bolt-on” approach will not work with 3G in the long run, where OSSs have to configure the IP transport network, which will involve connecting to softswitches, MMS servers and feature servers (used for follow-me services, for example).

If operators are to handle the complexity of IP protocols, they will need to rebuild their OSS and BSS infrastructure so that BSSs effectively manage agreements with digital content providers, and OSSs the management of content.

From Monolithic To Specialized OSS/BSS

OSSs will have to deliver configuration management that keeps up with the rate of change of technology. In just three years, 802.11 has evolved into its more secure and robust counterpart, 802.16, and now into WiMax (802.11-based wide area network technology), with Wi-Fi set-ups already commercially available and prevalent in retail outlets.

As they exist today, OSSs and BSSs are struggling to keep up with the service and network control planes, because suppliers do not accelerate their rate of innovation with that of the outside world. “Now it’s the OSS and BSS that have become the hindrance to service providers’ desires to change their business models,” says Nicholson.

Rebuilding OSSs and BSSs will require that both mobile and wireline companies think of their businesses in a very different light.

As evidenced by the TeleManagement Forum’s “lean manufacturing” focus, a business-focused standard for pushing the industry to think along these lines is in the making. Already, carriers like Telecom Italia have announced a move toward a manufacturing-like approach to their services.

“The bottom line is that operators will have to be able to quickly add or remove elements from the value chain, as customers’ demands dictate,” says Nicholson, adding that operators must have near-instant agreement phases with partners, and immediate integration into their network so that on-network and off-network resources are available for service networks to access. He expects that 3G/Wi-Fi services will have to be deployed in a matter of weeks rather than months once they pick up traction.

For systems to have the sophistication to enable “just-in-time” manufacturing of services that answer to sudden upswings in interest for one type of product or another, operators will need end-to-end service configuration across the IP networks. When a service platform is added, carriers have to configure the service node and integrate it into the network to assure it for connectivity, as well as know how many users it can support. Once it starts generating events that require nodes resources, carriers have to be able to bill for it and prepare to tear it down quickly when it is no longer needed.

Important in the process will be integration of service nodes into the AAA environment, which will enable users to be matched to services they are allowed to access.

Handsets have to be configured for secure access, so when users access content from inside their enterprise network, the connectivity to the VPN or IP transport from the content server is secure. “That means OSS/BSS vendors will focus on the service control plane, where AAA servers reside,” says Nicholson.

Carriers have to have modules that focus on configuration before a service is delivered all the way through the management of the service. “We put the provisioning and configuration of services in the same service control plane, and all the nodes have connectivity into the core, whether a VoIP softswitch, a PSTN gateway, or a content server for streaming video over IP,” says Nicholson.

Roaming, Billing & Transaction Management

The hotspot/3G story will come to an abrupt end if users are required to open numerous hotspot accounts and manage multiple passwords and logins. To enable roaming, there are a number of hand-offs necessary as usage goes from one network to another. Interestingly, the IEEE has recently developed a study group that is evaluating a standardized way to support fast roaming for converged services. “While the original application space of 802.11 encompassed some mobility for a wireless standard, enough emphasis wasn’t put on the rapid handoffs needed when subscribers get to the edge or extent of coverage of an access point,” says Brian Mathews, an 802.11 working group member with the IEEE.

Beyond the technological roaming challenge lies the greatest potential headache—billing. IPDR.org (Internet Protocol Detail Record Organization) has recognized this gap and continues to hone its WLANAS (WLAN Accounting and Settlement) working group. While that is one step in the right direction, billing and transaction management issues are far from resolved.

Transaction management and billing starts when the hybrid phone begins its network detection through software in the phone. “The telephone will look for who has the best signal and who is the preferred roaming partner and then make an attempt at AAA authorization,” says Michael Anderson, vice president of global marketing for ADC, which handles 3G billing and transaction management with such companies as 3 (Hutchinson) and Virgin Mobile. While he’s not sure how far things will go, he says if softswitches interconnect with public GSM/3G networks, which in turn connect via IP to Wi-Fi networks, “there will be a need for substantial synchronization and authentication to connect user profiles or pre- and postpaid customers with business applications.”

Because converged services will require a lot of authentication and flipping between different rate tables, carriers cannot assume their partners adhere to standards and that phones will be programmable to look at networks that meet certain conditions. “If QoS is to be met, partners have to be able to hang onto a signal, and roaming, clearing and authentication will have to measure that,” says Anderson.

Complexity of rate plans will boil down to the billing engine and whether functionality for AAA and switching dynamically from one plan to the next exists. “Once the phone detects and chooses the network that meets QoS conditions, it must authenticate and maintain the switch state of that user according to a rating and billing plan, after which time it must do settlement with its partners,” says Portal’s Maxwell.

Because billing and roaming will be complex, outsourcers like AirPath, Pronto Networks and NetNearU have emerged with billing and roaming solutions for mobile operators. “In many cases, these solutions can reduce up to 50 percent of management costs for network operators,” according to ON World’s “Wi-Fi Statistics and Projections” research report. ON World is a consulting firm that focuses on business intelligence on emerging wireless technology markets.

Additional innovators in the space include Kineto Wireless, BridgePort Networks and RadioFrame Networks.

Relieving Pressure on Billing

The sheer number of network elements and different technologies in packet networks can overwhelm billing and rating engines. “There are so many network elements providing usage information to drive pricing, that you want to relieve billing of the mediation responsibility with dual-mode services,” says Neil Philpott, marketing director at Amdocs. Amdocs acquired Xacct Technologies for that very reason. “Mediation extracts, correlates and massages usage information from an extended set of network elements, so while mediation at some level is optional, it will be important in relieving billing of the responsibility as next-gen services emerge,” says Philpott.

For the sake of scalability, he says carriers should free the billing system to concentrate on billing and transaction management. “You don’t want the network held up with routing and switching because of overloads in billing systems handling excessive mediation responsibilities.”

Mediation will have a dynamic provisioning role rather than a static role. “Right now, it’s a normal mediation gig,” says Rick Woods, vice president of product management at Intec Telecom Systems. He says that post-event mediation or active mediation in a charging platform will be determined as dual-mode services evolve. “When doing AAA for a content subscriber, you are dealing with equipment from Cisco, Proquent, P-Cube, Nortel, Bridgewater, and so on, so you are dealing with many elements that interface in a dynamic charging situation. It is up to the owner of the platform to determine the types of business processing we do to the data.”

Other than managing the handoffs, authenticating users for particular services and SLA agreements will require stringent wholesale agreements that ensure content providers, ISPs, hotspot providers, and ISPs are all adopting the latest technology and business models. “A lot of mobile operators will partner at first rather than bear the expense to roll dual-mode services that remain unproven,” says Philpott. He warns that CRM integration will ultimately be germane if QoS guarantees are not met. “People will want to deal with their service providers, so it is important that mobile operators understand that corporate and individual consumers want services that are simple and that work as they expect,” says Philpott, noting that integrating CRM, billing and settlement will enable carriers to analyze customer lifecycles to better determine pricing bundles. “With dual-mode services, the same customer could have many different profiles, according to whether at home, or work—whether using 3G capabilities, Wi-Fi, prepay or postpaid,” adds Philpott.

Regulatory and Legal Issues

Other than quality standards, considerations around E-911, fraud and CALEA over IP will mean that participating providers will have to sign up for certain standards in infrastructure for security, back-up power and so on if there are not to be legal implications. Regulatory issues will create technology challenges, but radio vectoring and triangulation technologies will help home in on physical locations of users, as long as there is a way to push the information to wireless access points. “The FCC will worry about universal service funds, which no one in the government wants to see reduced, so time will dictate whether VoIP will incur costs around law enforcement and regulatory requirements,” says Dave Farber, a member of NTT DoCoMo's U.S. advisory board and a professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He adds that enforcement of CALEA and legal requirements will be very difficult to enforce. “Passing laws is one thing, but doing it is another story.”

Issues around collecting universal service fund charges and taxes do not yet affect VoIP. “My guess is that if services take off because of dual-mode phones,the FCC will require these charges,”says Farber.

If operators are to avoid losing out on major revenues to hotspot providers, they should make serious efforts now to create VoWLAN technology to further bolster VoIP capabilities, as well as the rapid growth of Wi-Fi infrastructure. Combined with improvements around session initiation protocol (SIP), dual-mode handsets may make VoIP and VoWLAN mainstream technologies.