Mobile Data Charging – Worldwide predictions on mobile data usage are hinting towards a demand which has got an only one-way ticket to North. Today demand for mobile device data is in many folds higher compared to PC or laptop demand. This clearly proves mobile broadband traffic is increasing exponentially. AI-driven mobile data monitoring and offerings are now escalating the usage. Point to make a note with clear understanding is “The change or technology shift that 5G and subsequent technologies will bring will not be the same as from 3G to 4G”. The shift from 4G to 5G will change the whole game and will bring major aftermath & complexity for almost every industry.

This article is focused on this subject along with other issues like voice revenue which is now being depleted from MNOs financial statements. It is not a tutorial, this post is a combination of experience and general observation. 

 

Neural Interconnected Networks – The Fusion of Mobile Data (Internet) & AI

In the next upcoming wireless generation (5G onward) the internet with the use of artificial intelligence will penetrate the internet of things on blockchain-based security. This fusion will also penetrate big data analytics with machine learning algorithms and going to transform the internet and its usage to a level that is difficult to predict today.

The companies which are still not open to welcome and adopt changes brought through new electricity called Artificial Intelligence will slowly die because of no power. Quantum computing will add more power to AI and the next generations’ wireless networks.

The Fusion of Mobile Data (Internet) & AI – The AI-based Internet or AI internet is emerging, this is also bringing clarity and connecting dots between virtual reality and the physical world. The way we lived 10 years back, today and 10 years after will never be the same even to a single-digit lifestyle. We are learning new things and will continue to do so at a much higher pace. AI has already made its place permanent in our lives.

Almost all the businesses have realised this and now adapting to survive be it banking, telecommunication, finance,, healthcare, agriculture, education, or even governmental departments. The biggest win will come from neural networks in the security domain.

It would not be wrong . to say the internet will become business as usual and essential commodity of human life like water, air, and food. 5G & 6G (still a concept) with a combination of AI will be able to make a real-time decision on where to serve data bandwidth more and where to cut down. 5G looks promising in terms of speeds which will be up to 100 times faster and a response time up to 20 times faster as compared to 4G. There is no reason for this to happen without devices starts sensing and thinking with AI as a backbone.

 

Mobile Data Traffic – New Method of Internet Access

Mobile network operators (MNOs) have to find new ways and means to lower the operating costs of their networks. Still needs to deliver innovative, faster & high revenue-generating services to their subscribers. The solution is simple yet unexplored though the answer is it would be via neural interconnected networks or AI Internet (This would be the foundation of 6G). 3G/4G cellular networks are adopting usage-based charging. Mobile data users are charged based on the traffic volume while accessing mobile data services.

Mobile Data - Driven By AI and Optimise by Data Science

Mobile data would be driven by artificial intelligence and leave behind big data which needs to be optimised with data science to find more reasons to increase usage. The powerful combination of mobile data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning algorithms will become the key driver for growth in data usage. Mobile Data – Who moved my cheese? this title would fit more for subscribers thereafter.

Normally mobile network operators charged subscribers in ways i.e metered accounting architecture or application-specific charging policies. As mentioned above the AI-based internet is emerging now and this will change almost everything i.e. the way we think, live or work. In all the user privacy and security will find itself in security loopholes for attacks and exploitations. The impact would be huge on economies, day to day life and business.

Possible solutions to these challenges are described in the main story part below. Integrate the applications needed to optimize and monetize a mobile network into the mobile gateway or provision each application on separate standalone servers. Mobile Data, Bundled packages, Mobile Money, Mobile Banking, Mobile Payments, OTT services like Facebook, Whatsapp and internet packages are the core business for many players with all other possible overlay services.

 

Solution Providers and Solutions

There are millions of solutions and solution providers around the globe for refining the issues of mobile data attributes like speed, cost, capping issues, what should be changed, what should be free rated and what should be blended with data bundles. Solutions to handle problems of revenue going down on almost all MNO service offerings through OTT players eating into voice revenue etc.

Time started for MNO to take charge and start innovating in order to survive. They also realise that they themselves are responsible for cannibalising their own voice revenue by encouraging revenue share-based VAS services from VAS service providers rather than affiliating with OTT players.

Learnings and new streams to be open for their future and retirement plans rather than just choking and getting extinct like dinosaurs. These days, everyone is talking about Greece and Puerto Rico who plainly pose danger to themselves. Their stories diverge in the danger they pose to others. This story can be easily put to the MNOs face where the MNO can be called the Greece of today and their whole problem can be compared to the current economic situation of Greece. The risk of contagion remains at the heart of the MNO crisis.

 

Convergence – Intelligent System, Mobile Data Charging and AI

We are moving towards a 5G network at a very high speed which will deliver astonishing results in regards to speed and quality of mobile data. 6G network around 2030 will change the whole game and might make the internet business, as usual, i.e. the internet will feel like disappearing then.

As on date, wireless access to mobile data services is getting increasingly popular, thanks to the deployment of 3G/4G cellular networks. with advancements, mobile network operators are facing two challenges: how to optimize and monetize their networks as voice revenue continues on a southbound journey. Voice revenue will be the concept of the past in less than the next 5-7 years.

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As per the Google research, mobile broadband traffic is projected to increase by up to 35 times from its 2011 size by 2015, the response to these two issues could mean the difference between significantly growing your business over the next five years or falling behind the competition. Once the concept of quantum computing will become reality then this whole game will a joke anyway as by then people will be able to download 3 hours of videos in about one second.

As mentioned before many of the MNOs have, in search of revenue actually cannibalised their own voice revenue by encouraging revenue share-based VAS services from VAS service providers as usage on the network remains the same at 1 to 10 USD on an average. Artificial intelligence and its bundled technologies like machine learning, neural networks, data science, and big data analytics are producing more and more new use cases for real-time offerings.

The sudden jump in a number of so-called smart devices bought high-speed mobile connections so the need for data. As per expectation, in the shortest possible time, mobile broadband networks will take up to 40 exabytes (1 billion gigabytes) annually, up from a total of 1.08 exabytes in all of 2009. So this also implies the greater need for IDS in order to catch data charging by-passers.

Policy-based Charging Control (PCRF) system, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and a simplified architecture are the baseline elements needed to monetise the mobile broadband network. This also reduces overall capital expenditures and operational expenses, yet increases performance.

 

Mobile Data – No longer a VAS Business

Bring VAS services in house or engage third-party vendors on the condition of delta ARPU which can be increased by VAS partners and not eat into your voice revenue and converting it to VAS. The PCRF interfaces with the main packet gateway and takes charging enforcement decisions on its behalf.

When it comes to optimizing performance and making Revenue Assurance (REVA) team happy, the most important uses of DPI today are around internally facing network optimization and control as a practice MNO has data bundles & social media bundles, which are very useful and high on demand at sales.

Solutions designed for security detection, mitigation, and QoS prioritization needs to be on the mind at all times but not at cost of revenue or by making REVA team unhappy for example Whatsapp bundles which are normally unlimited might cost 2 USD per month but now if DPI is not implemented to stop the revenue loss, subscribers will share audio, video, and pictures on the same bundle cost which will result in a huge loss to the MNO.

While MNOs may not readily be transparent to the subscriber base at all times, this enables operators to maximize revenue. The hype and real usage of social media have led to this sudden internet data traffic burst.

 

PCRF the Liberator for Mobile Data Charging

DPI in combination with applications that further optimize the network and monetization – such as content filtering, firewall, payload compression, application detection, content charging, and others – form a foundation for PCRF and other services that will address the business needs of mobile network operators now and into the future.

In a PCRF environment, the centralized device can act as a policy decision point (PDP) for the wireless operator and gets as granular as individual subscribers.  Policy and Charging Control has a key role and importance in this game and the purpose of the PCC rule is to detect a packet belonging to a service data flow. The service data flow filters within the PCC rule are used for the selection of downlink IP. CAN bearers and Service data flow filters within the PCC rule are used for the enforcement that uplink IP flows are transported in the correct IP CAN bearer

  • Identify the service data flow contributes to
  • Provide applicable charging parameters for a service data flow
  • Provide policy control for a service data flow

How DPI and PCRF help to ensure security & revenue leakage: attackers are usually looking for ways to obtain free mobile data services. Without a doubt, these worms do exist and always find loopholes in the charging policy. Operators allow free data service for certain data flow, but usually, forget or do-not enforce that the transmitted packets indeed belong to the designated free flow.

Even worse, no effective mechanism is implemented to limit the traffic volume going through this free ride. Consequently, these loopholes can be exploited to enable any form of mobile data services for free. The 3G standards offer the operators flexibility to define their own charging policies. Unfortunately, their policies and implementations may contain serious flaws.

 

Mobile Data Charging: New Attacks and Countermeasures

In a normal audit, we can easily find loopholes to implement this free-DNS policy in reality. First, there is almost no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the packets going through free DNS-reserved port are indeed DNS messages or call it as free fake DNS loophole. Second, there is no effective mechanism to limit the traffic volume going through the free rated port or no volume-check loophole.

Gx (An offline charging interface) reference point is located between the Policy Control and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) and the Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF). The Gx reference point is used for provisioning and removal of Policy and Charging Control (PCC) rules from the PCRF to the PCEF and the transmission of traffic plane events from the PCEF to the PCRF.

The Gx reference point can be used for charging control, policy control or both by applying AVPs relevant to the application. The PCEF (Policy and Charging Enforcement Function) select a PCC rule for each received packet by evaluating received packets against service data flow filters of PCC rules in the order of the precedence of the PCC rules. When a packet matches a service data flow filter, the packet matching process for that packet is completed, and the PCC rule for that filter shall be applied.

Policy Control and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) – Dedicated policy equipment standardize in 3GPP that enables the policy function for bandwidth and charging on multimedia networks. PCRF is a fairly new term, introduced in late 2007 (As per Internet findings from various web sites but I don’t take any responsibility in case it’s not true) so take it as perception when standards for the 3GPP Policy Charging Control (PCC) architecture was published. The PCRF function is part of the larger PCC architecture.

This also includes the Proxy Call Session Control Function (P-CSCF) and the Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF). Combined, the elements of the PCC provide access, resource, and quality-of-service (QoS) control.

 

PCRF Stipulates Network Controls

The functional element that comprises flow-based charging control and policy control decision functionalities. The PCRF stipulates network control regarding the service data flow detection, gating, QoS and flow-based charging (except credit management) towards the PCEF.

PCRF receives session and media related information from the Application Function and informs the Application Function for data traffic. The PCEF (Policy and Charging Enforcement Function) is the functional element that encompasses policy enforcement and follows based charging functionalities.

DPI, PCRF supporting Mobile data in a big way as the Internet is going wireless and mobile. Two driving forces for this trend have been the explosive growth of smartphones and the rapid deployment of 3G/4G infrastructure. Unlike the wired Internet, cellular networks have implemented usage-based charging, rather than the simpler flat charging.

The 3G/4G standards stipulate the accounting architecture, yet provide freedom for the MNO to define their own charging policy. In this work, if we conduct experiments on operational 3G networks to study the security implication of such architecture and practice. We will find and surely discover loopholes and simple attacks, which can be validated by experiments over operational networks.

Due to speed data may vanish in 15 days instead of 30 as package bought was on the total data amount not unlimited data under the time-bound package. When customers use 1GB data on a 2G network it may take 30 days (Just for argument sake) and on 3G it might vanish in 22 days and on 4G it might take just 10 days. The customer will say what !! Where is my data; will cry and blame the service provider for stealing the data/money.

 

Points to Note:

AI and ML are now making the most powerful tools in a marketer’s arsenal for improving return on investments. All credits if any remains on the original contributor only. We have covered all basics around mobile data models or the importance of mobile data. The next upcoming post will talk about implementation, usage and practice experience for markets.

 

Books + Other readings Referred

  • Research through open internet, news portals, white papers, notes made at knowledge sharing sessions and from live conferences & lectures.
  • Lab and hands-on experience of  @AILabPage (Self-taught learners group) members.

 

Feedback & Further Question

Do you have any questions about AI, Machine Learning, Data billing/charging, Data Science or Big Data Analytics? Leave a question in a comment section or ask via email. I will try best to answer it.

 

Sign-tConclusion:  To step up as one single team, exploit technology and leverage on existing MNO infrastructure to acquire customers, enrich use cases, lower costs and increase revenue especially in markets where regulators play a dominant role. Customers are funny enough and real quick to blame the service provider for overcharging. This does not happen and the same customer would never complain about undercharging or free usage. For instance, if any subscriber switch from 3G to 3G or 3G to 4G network; the data usage usually shoots up and which is correct behavior of the network. 5G is around the corner though 6G (as on date its purely a theoretical point) is also not very far maybe year 2030 may throw some light on it.

 

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Posted by V Sharma

A Technology Specialist boasting 22+ years of exposure to Fintech, Insuretech, and Investtech with proficiency in Data Science, Advanced Analytics, AI (Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Deep Learning), and Blockchain (Trust Assessment, Tokenization, Digital Assets). Demonstrated effectiveness in Mobile Financial Services (Cross Border Remittances, Mobile Money, Mobile Banking, Payments), IT Service Management, Software Engineering, and Mobile Telecom (Mobile Data, Billing, Prepaid Charging Services). Proven success in launching start-ups and new business units - domestically and internationally - with hands-on exposure to engineering and business strategy. "A fervent Physics enthusiast with a self-proclaimed avocation for photography" in my spare time.

One Comment

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