Broadening horizons with MBB Open Interconnect
New opportunities with ICT convergence
Over the last decade, there has been a continual value shift towards Internet IT services in the communications market. Yet despite the explosive growth in mobile data traffic, operators have not seen a proportional rise in revenue. In response, they’ve sought to internetize their operations and form ICT businesses that converge CT and IT. In recent years, the growth of mobile Internet, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) has significantly boosted the development of converged ICT services.
Mobile internet
Due to the rise of mobile Internet, traditional industries are incorporating Internet tech into their operations, creating new ecosystems for banking, transportation, medicine, and education. According to Ralph Haupter, Microsoft CEO for Greater China, "In the future, all companies will be software companies." Enterprises will increasingly use APIs to integrate with and provide services for each other. In e-commerce, for example, businesses might use China UnionPay's online payment API to make payments. Or a loan company might invoke a telco's payment records API to find out a user’s credit score. Service diversification means that operators will have many opportunities to leverage their telecom capabilities to tap into this enterprise services market.
Cloud computing
Cloud computing technology, in particular Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN), is driving telecoms networks to be software based. Network functions have been decoupled from customized hardware, and are now operated in cloud data centers (DC), greatly speeding up version iteration and innovation, creating agile networks, and facilitating new business.
IoT
The growth of IoT technology has increased different types of connectivity requirements. Different types of services have led to varied requirements on connectivity, from real-time capabilities for the Internet of Vehicles to a low-power requirement for smart meters. This will make it increasingly difficult to strip away network connectivity capabilities from IT services.
With increasing ICT service convergence, mobile broadband (MBB) operators can act as a key pipeline for mobile Internet by transmitting data from services to terminals, providing ubiquitous connectivity, and collecting big data on network information. By opening up these connectivity capabilities and network information, operators will drive service growth, introduce new business models, and create new revenue streams. This is known as MBB Open Interconnect.
In recent years, numerous operators and enterprises have trialed MBB Open-Interconnect models. Successful cases include opening up a billing API to allow OTT providers to issue free data offers through backward charging, which quickly attracted many new users and drove service growth. 51 Credit Card Manager is an example of a financial service that checks users' payment records by invoking operator billing information API and issues small loans based on users' credit scores.
Putting telecom capabilities to use
Today, ICT products and services are becoming more diverse, with an increasing number of different types of businesses moving into the ICT industry. Operators have a chance to take advantage of this and leverage telecom network capabilities and pipeline big data, thus playing an important role in the ICT industry ecosystem in the future.
There are currently five types of network capabilities that can be opened:
QoS-class APIs
QoS-class APIs deliver network acceleration and QoS guarantees. For example, mobile games that involve real-time multiplayer battles require very low latency. If latency increases due to network congestion or in places where coverage is weak, users can invoke network acceleration functions to quickly lower latency and maintain user experience.
The network acceleration function can be packaged as an in-game tool and sold to players. Network acceleration can also be used in other application scenarios to improve the chance of success, for example, purchasing tickets for popular events, opening WeChat red packets, or trading mobile stocks.
Billing APIs
Billing APIs enable sponsored data functionality. Enterprise users can invoke a billing API to add, modify or delete sponsored data plans that give users free traffic packages as part of a promotion.
Location APIs
Location APIs encompass real-time location APIs and location history analysis APIs. Application scenarios for real-time location API include indoor positioning, navigation, and parking cars. Indoor real-time positioning technology such as Apple's iBeacon has received widespread attention in areas like guided shopping and electronic fence advertising for shopping malls. Compared to iBeacon, using mobile networks for indoor positioning is low cost and easy to set up.
The application scenarios of location history analysis APIs include managing crowd congestion, analyzing population movements, assessing outdoor billboard value, and selecting retail shop locations. Another important application is big data. Governments and commercial organizations have wide-ranging requirements for location-based big data applications, and operators can provide the most reliable sources of data.
User/network context information APIs
User/network context information encompasses information such as user account type, billing status, device model, available bandwidth, mobile and session status, and cell congestion status. Google's Congested Cells API, for example, obtains cell congestion information from operators to optimize services, including video bit rate selection. The online payment company Danal partnered with AT&T on anti-fraud user authentication, making use of information such as user ID, account information, real-time location, and device model.
Third-party app integration
Operator pipelines are not the only source of pipeline capabilities. Third-party partners are also able to provide pipeline capabilities, such as TCP optimization, video optimization, URL filtering, and firewalls. This can help operators increase pipelines’ capabilities and extract more value. In a win-win situation for both parties, cloudified multi-service integrated platforms allow third-party software vendors to easily access operator pipelines and quickly create value-producing services.
Huawei's solutions light the MBB Open Interconnect fire
Huawei's CloudMSE (Multi-Service Engine) for third-party app integration and CloudUIC (Unified Intelligence Center) can open network capabilities to help operators develop the MBB Open Interconnect industry. Huawei has partnered with numerous operators and third parties around the world in successful commercial trials of these solutions.
Sky plc's integrated video optimization service
With video optimization technology, operators can perform real-time video transcoding to provide low bit-rate video to users affected by insufficient network bandwidth, guaranteeing the video playback experience.
Sky used Huawei's CloudMSE solution to integrate Opera's dynamic transcoding software, and can now flexibly provide video optimization services for users, increasing user satisfaction.
Guangdong Mobile joins forces with Tencent in mobile game acceleration trial
For online games, network speed is critical. Even 50-ms latency can be a disadvantage in certain types of games. Mobile game acceleration enables mobile gamers to maintain low latency even in low-signal or congested spots.
Leveraging Huawei's CloudUIC platform, Guangdong Mobile and Tencent Gaming carried out a joint commercial trial of game acceleration for WE FIRE, giving users who purchased the tool an advantage.
Operator "Z" tests fraud prevention methods
If a hacker attempts to use a stolen account to carry out a mobile payment, the back-end payment system calls the operator API to discover the real-time location of the user's mobile phone. If this differs from the payment location, a payment confirmation message is sent to the user, preventing the unauthorized payment from proceeding. Credit card payments can also be protected in a similar way.
Operator "Z" has run commercial trials of this service using Huawei's CloudUIC.
A bright future for Open Interconnect
Huawei predicts that by 2025 there will be 100 billion connections worldwide, 8 billion of which will be smart terminals. At this time, average daily data usage will be 1.7 GB per user. This will create a huge number of opportunities for mobile operators ─ they’ll be the platform for this data and a vast range of industry applications. If operators can organize and open up their pipeline capabilities and data to third parties, they will attract thousands of industry partners with whom they can team up to provide better services for enterprise and individual users.
The MBB Open Interconnect industry must be rooted in CT and rely on IT to open up. The development of the industry must be shaped by the current development status of MBB networks and continually seek new opportunities in enterprise application requirements and industry trends. To drive the development of the MBB Open Interconnect industry, Huawei has developed short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals.
In the short-term, Huawei will focus on mobile network QoS experience guarantees and billing for OTT applications. The medium-term goal is to research how MBB networks and OTT applications can be leveraged to enhance applications' network usage efficiency.
Long-term research will be shaped by evolutionary trends in networking. It will explore how to incorporate innovative Internet services based on future network architecture.
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