Research on new OTT cooperation and management mode in mobile internet era

Author: Ericsson (China) Communications Co., Ltd. Li Peng, Pan

All the major operators in the world are exploring how to cooperate with OTT service providers from different angles, from the paid object to the paid content, from the traffic load to the business intelligence, the optional cooperation mode becomes more and more flexible, and the operator's participation in the OTT service is more and more deep.

Explore one: The payment subject of data flow from individual to enterprise. In the area of voice communication, when a consumer dials a 800 (or 400) number, the cost of the call is paid by the calling enterprise. In the field of data business, there is no similar payment method, no matter which end user uses which OTT business website or application, consumes the data flow of the consumer's own communication package, meanwhile the Internet OTT business operator also has no channel to help the user to bear the part cost of the data traffic. If it is a normal web browsing, it may not affect the impact, but for such as navigation, streaming media class OTT business, the consumption of data traffic may affect the consumer's willingness to use. In the current fierce competitive environment, some Internet OTT service providers are also willing to help users pay the traffic costs directed OTT business, thereby enhancing the business user stickiness. Landersteffensen, CEO of At&t, said at an investor meeting last July that OTT providers were willing to pay for access to end users and hinted that the "Toll free" package was expected to be available in the third quarter of 2013. And At&t's old rivals, Verizon and T, are also considering introducing a data package similar to those paid by internet companies to help users.

Explore the second: deepen the content based paid products. Imagine now is the July 13, 2014 Brazil World Cup final night, the game has just begun, a die-hard fans are coming home on the subway, the subway car is full of people, all the micro-blog, chatting with micro-letter. He clenched his cell phone, visited the night of the final live site, repeated interruptions, and again and again the buffer, let him worried. When the final live site timely pop-up recommended "video speed package 20M bps/2 hours, just 5 yuan", he naturally did not hesitate to click to buy, immediately enjoy the smooth streaming video service. This scene, the final live site to perceive the user side of the video streaming speed is not enough, through the cooperation with operators, to provide users with the purchase of speed package channels, the user's purchase speed package, the operator through dynamic strategy to control the allocation of mobile bandwidth resources, to protect the user has to buy speed Then return a certain percentage of the cost to the live website. This would obviously be a "triple win" business model.

Explore Three: Business intelligence information Mining and sharing mode. In the long run, the mobile operators accumulate a lot of user behavior information through the log used by users on the mobile communication network, and use the appropriate data mining technology to establish the accurate portrait of the consumer user. When consumers use the Internet OTT business through mobile broadband, business providers are interested in the consumer habits and purpose of visiting users. For example, a consumer in the first visit to Taobao, Taobao very want to know what the consumer is interested in, if the user is a sports fan, Taobao can be targeted to display sports products to promote, if the user is a 3C fan, you can display 3C products discount information. Mobile operators can be anonymously to overlay these portrait information to the OTT application of the data flow to the business provider, not only to strengthen OTT business to provide product marketing targeted, but also to make OTT content more user-friendly, improve the user experience. Because portrait information does not involve specific user data and does not cause privacy problems for users, it is another business model for mobile operators to win.

Explore the four: to help enhance the service of OTT business to VIP users. The VIP user is the important income source of the OTT business, such as Tencent's QQ member, Sina's microblog member and so on. Targeted to these VIP users of the flow, mobile operators can provide different network capabilities, such as the micro-blog members do not count the flow, the security of VIP users to provide the highest QoS low delay protection, billing model can be selected forward to the monthly, or from the OTT provider fees and other ways. In the back-mode, the mobile operator provides this network capability to the OTT service provider, such as Sina Weibo, so that the Sina Weibo VIP users can be free flow fees to visit Sina Weibo, Sina Weibo can be packaged as a VIP user optional privileged items, and included in the corresponding VIP member monthly fee. This kind of better service VIP user's ability also will become the OTT provider in the competition the difference bright spot. At the same time, OTT business of many VIP members also indirectly become the carrier network products of high-quality consumer groups.

New ways of cooperation and business need new business support capability

The new cooperation and mode of operation of mobile operators also put forward new requirements, 3GPP corresponding to the evolution of the core network proposed, add the definition of TDF (traffic detection function) nodes, mainly provide traffic recognition, flow interaction, flow redirection and other functions, As shown in the following illustration:

OTT Business recognition capabilities: in high-speed data flow, to distinguish between the different OTT traffic, the first is to identify the flow of these different services, which users, what terminals, when, the use of what OTT business, these OTT business have visited what the purpose of the Web site, In the absence of user perception, the fast identification of these traffic, and the allocation of different QoS after recognition, also put forward a very high real-time recognition requirements.

Ability to interact with the OTT business: After identifying the OTT business, the mobile operator needs a gateway with the Internet OTT business interaction (the function of hosting TDF nodes), according to the different OTT business scenarios and OTT business operators to negotiate. According to the hosting protocol of different OTT services, Internet service gateway mainly interacts with 5 kinds of information: the willingness to pay, the QoS requirement, the corresponding product information, the user privileged information and the portrait information of the non-privacy user.

The ability of policy control and real-time billing: through the handshake negotiation with the OTT business operator and obtaining the necessary information, the mobile operator's system implements the network QoS control and real-time billing for the wireless network according to the negotiation result. If the user buys "10 yuan Packs 2 hours 1Mbps" The wireless speeds up the package, mobile operators real-time billing system for consumers to trigger the real-time billing package, while users in the mobile data network to allocate 1Mbps wireless channel and core network resources, so that consumers can enjoy the smooth OTT business services.

These capacity building involves a number of solution areas, within the operator organization will also be across a number of departments, so the need for the whole network from the perspective of unified planning to achieve the best landing. With the rich experience in the fields of mobile broadband billing, Internet service integrated gateway and so on, Ericsson is actively working with the operators to promote the OTT business cooperation system pilot and commercial construction, and to achieve the desired results in the initial verification. In the light of industry trends, in early February this year, Google had agreed to pay extra for traffic to the French telecoms sector, and Orange's revenue from Google would be used to maintain the network and ensure that users were able to quickly access Google's content. Under the background of OTT cooperation, Ericsson will strive to contribute more program innovation for mobile operators, help realize the new mode of cooperation between operators and OTT business, and create a new business pattern of "user-service provider-network operator".