By
John Aalbers
Today, network monitoring can mean many things: billing, charging, policy control, bandwidth management, traffic shaping, deep packet inspection, net neutrality, these are all issues that can be considered aspects of network monitoring.
The practice itself is nothing new. Various forms of network monitoring solutions have been around for years. What is new is how a number of loosely connected issues are converging to solve the growing problem of effectively charging people according to their bandwidth usage. As a result, network monitoring has become perhaps the biggest cog in the customer experience machine, working to reduce churn and boost revenues.
But, on its own, network monitoring is perhaps best described as “power without control,” which is why today it is almost always mentioned in the same breath as policy control and bandwidth management. Such a combination is fast becoming communications service providers’ (CSPs) best chance to achieve that ever-elusive goal of strengthening the connection between network operations and business strategy, open new revenue streams, and offer a superior quality of experience for customers.
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Network monitoring has become perhaps the biggest cog in the customer experience machine. |
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Bandwidth Boom
The economy has had little to no effect on slowing the consumption of high-bandwidth services like app-stores, mobile TV, and peer-to-peer networking. Apple’s iPhone 3GS, which sold more than 1 million units in the first three days of its release, proves that consumers are as hungry as ever for devices capable of accessing bandwidth-intensive applications and media-rich services. In late June, YouTube reported on its blog that in the previous six months they had experienced
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But recent economic and technological changes have meant most providers are drastically changing how they prioritize network monitoring processes, and what they are used for. As next-generation devices grant access to more bandwidth-intensive content, and flat-rate billing plans become more ubiquitous, network monitoring is increasingly conducted for the purposes of providing more bandwidth-reactive, personalized offerings to customers. Done correctly in the face of new market conditions, network monitoring can keep providers profitable and customers happy. |
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a 1700% increase in the amount of video uploads from mobile phones. Such a massive increase indicates that users are becoming more sophisticated in the ways that they consume bandwidth. It is no longer simply a one-way, download game. Customers are now more able to create content on their own that can be uploaded or widely distributed through social networks, causing an exponential jump in the impact that each individual user’s activity has on overall bandwidth usage.
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