Depth survey: How Telecom operators Manage traffic

Since entering the 3G era, on the communication network, with the explosion of 3G growth and the popularity of smartphones, mobile Internet development rapid, traffic surges greatly ahead of the operator's expectations, but a lot of traffic has produced little economic benefits, and limited mobile spectrum resources are heavily occupied, which is like "gold is sold the price of coal."　　On the other hand, whether in the mobile or fixed network, the voice communication market has become saturated, voice communication based on SMS, color ring and other value-added services have been declining trend, and the development of Internet services to the telecommunications operators to bring a huge increase in data traffic, traffic becomes the operator's most valuable growth point. For operators, traffic is the source of future revenue, traffic is the cornerstone of future success. Do a good job of flow management, operators will not become a conduit.　　From the traffic volume management to the flow management, is the operator's choice, focus on traffic management, mining data flow implication of the value, also became the operator's only choice. However, operators in this transition process, exposed a lot of problems, from the network, fees, terminals to business delivery, there are bottlenecks.　　This is a need for operators to accelerate the integration of innovation in the era, the transformation of the pain has begun, operators are collectively transformed, traffic management will change the traditional business model and competition mode, requiring operators to further enhance the industry chain control capabilities.　　How to speed up the integration of innovation, grasp the opportunity of traffic times, restore the real value of data flow, operators are vital issues. Traffic management: Breaking through the internet, "traffic management" is becoming the Chinese operators of new transformation focus, as involved in all aspects of the communications industry chain of a major project, to the flow of business transformation has begun to start, but the flow of operation in the end how to do, operators operating flow can not be successful, for the vast majority of communications people　　is still an unresolved problem. "Traffic management" is increasingly becoming the focus of new transformation of Chinese operators. In the second half of last year, China Telecom chairman Wang made clear that in the future a period of time will focus on traffic management, "further highlight the concept of Internet mobile phones, focus on traffic management, open intelligent pipeline and platform", mobile chairman Wang Wang also in a recent internal forum put forward the concept of traffic management,　　He stressed that data flow is not a scourge, but a new engine of revenue growth.　　However, although the "big guy" has repeatedly stressed that, but the flow of operation in the end how to do, what needs to be prepared, and even operators operating flow can not be successful, for the vast majority of the communications people, still shrouded in a fog.　　The impact of traffic shock wave data traffic on communication network is the root of the problem of traffic management. With the 3G terminal, most users feel that the wireless internet time is far more than the time for voice calls, text messages.　　Now they are most concerned about the monthly flow cost problem. And for operators, with the popularity of smartphones, the biggest problem is the explosive growth of data services, according to Wang JianThis growth is not 20% or 30% growth, but 300%, 500% and 600% growth, he explained.　　and wireless network spectrum resources are limited, no matter how the existing network expansion, can not meet the data business explosive growth needs. According to statistics, 2007 to 2009, the global mobile voice traffic increased twice times, mobile data traffic growth of 18 times times.　　According to Informa, a consultancy, the revenue from 2008 to 2013 is expected to grow steadily by 180%, but data traffic will grow 17 times times. The result of the linear growth of revenue and the geometric growth of traffic is that the marginal income of the emerging business is rapidly decreasing. There are institutional estimates, the average revenue generated per gigabyte by global operators has fallen from $5600 trillion to just $11 trillion, with only 0.01 dollars per megabyte of revenue, and China's situation is even tougher as China's 3G start-up is late, and even the early days of the construction network have been hit by smartphone challenges.　　Lu Nue-je, an expert in the Institute of Telecommunications Planning, told reporters that research data show that 2010 mobile data traffic in China is higher than mobile voice traffic, but mobile data flow revenue is less than mobile voice revenue of One-tenth.　　To walk in the mobile internet era doorway of China's communications industry, do a good job of "traffic management", so that flow into revenue, is a must do a good job. Flow Management is not the operating flow fee in fact, from the operating voice business mainly to business data business, the slogan operators have been shouting for several years, but in specific operations, operators have encountered their own bottlenecks-the traditional telecom operators of the entire business model is based on voice traffic management,　　Unable to manage data traffic well.　　If from the point of view of the volume, the Chinese operators in recent years from the data flow in the income has been greatly improved, to China Mobile, for example, the flow fee income accounted for the share of non-dialect income has risen from the 2006 3% to 2010 years of 20%.　　But from a qualitative point of view, the current Chinese operators have a lot of worries. In the current network application, whether the wireless network or fixed network, all face the same problem, that is, "large bandwidth" occupies too much network bandwidth and capacity, resulting in network congestion and network quality decline, but did not bring corresponding income growth.　　According to Shen Shaohai, deputy director of China Telecom Mobile construction, in China Telecom's CDMA network, 30% of the users in some big cities generated 80% of the traffic, of which the traffic of data card users is 25 times times the traffic of smartphone users. The basis of traffic volume management is oriented to communication connection, while data service is required to be online. The power of the development of traffic volume, on the one hand from the "demographic dividend", on the other hand from the increase in traffic, while the growth of data traffic is more complex, higher flow does not necessarily bring higher income. The allocation of traffic volume resources is forecast + redundancy, while data traffic is the resource of "doing its best". Traffic volume management carrying industryThere is only one voice call, and the data traffic management is carrying thousands of businesses. In fact, there are many disputes between operators and users or Internet companies in the data business, such as "excessive consumption of resources", "Traffic theft", "network rate commitment not to cash" and so on, all come from the basic starting point of these two ideas of conflict. In the current trend, the voice business is dying, the Internet only represents the future, can only be operators to data business model closer, rather than the opposite.　　Therefore, do a good job of "flow Management", first of all to reconcile the contradictions between the two. Shanghai Mobile Deputy chief engineer da that, under such circumstances, the rational allocation of resources and the maximization of pipeline resources is the first problem to be put forward by traffic management. First, it needs to be reasonably distributed; second, it should get through to the source of mobile internet users and the source of information; Third, in the network to do a flow control system; Four, there is also a distribution system, it will know what kind of page you like, push the page to the end of the terminal, so that resources more efficient,　　The channel is more reasonable.　　Flow Management is not equal to the operating flow fee, it needs a more sophisticated operation, which involves the entire communication industry chain of all aspects of the system engineering.　　The need to change from "concept" to product operator transformation Flow Management is so complex that the concept has been questioned. Telecom expert Wang Yuquan that "traffic management" is likely to be like the operators previously proposed "transformational information Services" concept, although it sounds very correct, but in the implementation, but can not find a clear path to achieve the desired effect. He told reporters: "When the telecommunications operators in the mobile internet age to find themselves at risk of marginalization, nature from their own, tap the potential impact of their own resources, put forward a new concept, ' traffic management ' is one of them." But this is still the product of ' Party a ' thinking ', in fact the user needs new things, not new concepts. Apple iphone is the user wants new things, so now Apple is party A, operators are not ' Party a ', but also according to ' Party thought ' out of hand, difficult!　　Yang Xiaochun, the manager of China Unicom Market integration operations, told reporters at present, the operator of the so-called "flow Management" discussion is still only stuck in the "technology mouth", occasionally some SP or big customers will request, but how to turn the flow into products sold out, "market mouth" still no movement.　　The data flow will become the next performance growth point of telecom operators, or become the consumer of communications business profits, the destroyer of Word-of-mouth, or telecom operators from the beginning of the decline, depending on the efforts of the communications people.　　Think of a diversion, a limited flow or a drainage?　　In the face of the network, such as flood of huge data flow, operators are looking for countermeasures, summed up there are mainly the following three kinds: shunt, limited flow and drainage. Shunt is currently the main means used by international operators, that is, the use of WiFi network streaming 3g/4g network flow, the current global Apple IPhone more than 60% of the traffic has been shared by the WiFi network, the essence of this method is to use cheaper and richer optical network resources to alleviate the limited wireless spectrum resources, but the implementation of this strategy is increasingly difficult for operators to obtain income from the provision of network resources, are also increasingly marginalized by terminals and application vendors.