Policy management plays a very important role in balancing the demands on network resources, services and capacity among growing data consumers, applications and devices. As they become more reliant and applications continue to devour increasing amounts of bandwidth, policy management has become a critical component for operators. It optimises profitability, through rationalising capacity investment whilst growing revenues through better customer service experiences.

Volubill's Usage Policy Management solution is unique by being able to both manage and enforce policies at the consumer, service and traffic level. It enables operators to:

• Implement real-time service authorisation and session management
• Identify, shape and restrict applications and bandwidth usage on a user-level
• Ensures network resources are available to deliver customer service and service experience.
• Enforce fair usage policy and service caps both dynamically and in real-time
• Prioritise application, service or connection based services for QoS, subscriber preferences and on-demand requests
• Initiate in-line (pop-up/redirect), on-line (self-care) and off-line (messaging) advice-of-charge, advice-of-service and service status dialogue with customers
• Invoke real-time charging, credit control and payment management across pre-pay, post-pay and on-demand users
• Provide customer peace-of-mind through real-time management and view of service status and charges

Volubill's Usage Policy Management solution is designed to fulfil a number of common roles to support the evolving requirements for most operators:

• End-to-end network policy management, control and enforcement through both outsourced, distributed or provisioning based interfaces
• Policy and Charging Resource Function (PCRF) including integration to the Online Charging System (OCS) according to 3GPP standards
• AAA for Broadband/ISP service providers that enables more advanced, profitable and innovative data products, packages and delivery
• Full WiMAX CSN-level service management
• Internet, Radio Interface and Local Loop based Policy Enforcement and Bandwidth Shaping
• Backhaul capacity management and application aware bandwidth control

To ensure holistic management of data services, Volubill's Usage Policy Management solution provides both comprehensive policy management and enforcement in modular format to suit different network configurations, existing system investments and evolving business models:

• Network, Service and Consumer Awareness
  In-line network session management and bandwidth shaping form key components of policy enforcement while real-time subscriber authorisation based on service profile, history and personalisation form central components of policy management. Finally, in-line functions contain Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to provides application awareness and intelligence to form a complete ‘aware, decide and enforce' cycle (see Figure 1).
  
  With such dynamic and personal subscriber-level service delivery, operators are able to target and maximise the value of the relationship.
  
  
• Optional Integrated Real-time Charging
  When combined with Volubill's Real-time Charging solution, which enables accurate metering, granular data services and tiered real-time charging of convergent subscriber services, operator have a complete integrated charging and policy management solution – with a single set of management interfaces, customer data and service profiles. This improves productivity, removes integration tax and lowers OPEX/CAPEX.
  
  An integrated charging and policy management solution enables delivery of advanced, segmented and targeted data services, which ensures network operator profitability – through revenue to cash assurance, capacity investment maximisation and greater customer acquisition with optimal service experience and value delivery.
  
  
• Investment Adaptability
  A major strength in Volubill's Usage Policy Management solution is its ability to provide holistic subscriber, service and traffic control in tandem with exist operator network and system (B/OSS) investments.
  
  Through a modular product, adapter and standardisation approach, its Usage Policy Management solution can work in tandem with existing policy enforcement, policy management systems and real-time charging/OSS/BSS systems to ensure operators are able to reuse existing investments and lower the total cost of ownership.
  
  
  Figure 1 – Policy Management and Enforcement Ecosystem

Volubill's Usage Policy Management solution supports the following business models:

• Mobile Internet, Broadband and Wireless Connectivity Caps
• Application Termination, Throttling or Acceleration
• Flat-fee, event-based, session-based and value added services (e.g. VoIP) control
• Partner, promotional or advertising based subsidisation, prioritisation and delivery
• On-demand, turbo and spontaneous service requests
• Loyalty, points and history based control
• Real-time control over multi-session pre-paid, bundled and cross-product services
• Account hierarchy, white-labelling and enterprise-employee management

Volubill's Usage Policy Management solution provides operators the following benefits:

• A complete, comprehensive and end-to-end policy management system that transcends the boundaries between traditional network and IT system functions – to provide 360 control over subscribers, application and services.
• Is modular to support existing investments in network and B/OSS infrastructure while also enabling the lowest cost of ownership through meeting targeted requirements.
• Delivered in productised fashion with best-practise configurations for swift time-to-market requirements.
• Multi-network, multi-vendor and multi-service compliant to enable holistic and convergent subscriber service management.
• Enables service leadership, innovation and profitability.