From Gatekeeper to Gold: Leveraging Policy 2.0

Policy 1.0 was simply not designed with this kind of flexibility in mind, as CSPs were more concerned with enforcing limits than rapidly rolling out, measuring, and evolving new data services, billing options, and loyalty plans. Now, however, rapid deployment of new services is seen as critical. Joanne Steinberg revealed that a top trend Tekelec has seen among their 55 customers is, “how they use policy to give them time-to-market advantages.”

Policy Analytics

Simply gathering and enforcing policy data isn't enough. CSPs should be able to analyze the effects of new policies in real-time as well. In this way, they can measure the uptake of new services and correlate it with other system and subscriber data. An essential component of Policy 2.0, as Joanne Stienberg puts it, is, “functionality in the policy server that allows the carrier to analyze the effectiveness of a new policy.” This tool allows marketing and innovation teams to evolve their services in short order. Armed with this data, carriers can quickly launch new policies, measure the uptake, and see how subscriber behavior has changed.


Kishen Mangat identified the importance of integrating policy and big data solutions as well, but emphasized a platform approach. “Operators are looking for quick wins when it comes to out-of-the-box analytics capabilities,” he said. “Concurrently, data sources are being harmonized into larger scale 'big data' implementations. With a platform approach to policy management, both the vertical (pre-configured) and horizontal (data integration) approaches can be enabled to achieve short-, medium- and long-term analytics objectives.”

New Policy Management Use-Cases 

With a dynamic, sophisticated rules engine and analytics capabilities, there are numerous innovative applications for Policy 2.0. Policy can be proactive, and leveraged as a tool for monetizing everything from OTT traffic to loyalty programs to app-based charging plans. Kishen Mangat noted that, “In the past two years, operators and vendors have become more innovative, introducing application and subscriber awareness to enable 'Policy 2.0' self-service, application and location aware use cases.” In an Infonetics Whitepaper, analyst Shira Levine wrote of the, “growing interest in using policy to enable value-added capabilities such as advanced subscriber control or variable charging based on time of day or subscriber profile.”