The underlying problem is the way that connections are policed, by only a very broad usage measure such as the volume of bits per subscriber.

No account is taken of the applications and the context of the subscriber during this process. When such awareness is brought into the process, mobile and wireless service providers are able to:

• Segment data connections into application/service families and enforce different bandwidth, QoS, prioritisation, volume quota, filtering and throttling rules for each application and service. This gives service providers control over allocating network resources to specific subscriber usage, in line with overall strategic and tactical business plans, whilst enabling the delivery of value-based charging models to consumers.
• Minimise capacity costs, where such investments lead to little additional revenue or non-positive ROI.
• Marry policy with real-time charging, for example, providing consumers with best-effort browsing and messaging for a fixed subscription with additional cost options for QoS enforced VoIP or usage of P2P services. When implemented with systematic payment control per subscriber type, such as post-pay, pre-pay or now-pay, via in-line and off-line dialogue and self-care, this can lead to substantially increased profits.

CHARGE-IT™ from Volubill offers subscriber and service/application centric bandwidth shaping and quota management to network service providers – it is an intelligent usage policy management solution.