“Convergence and Consistency Across Fixed and Mobile Access will Become Important for Operators”

With more and more operators delivering multiple set of access technologies such as 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi – delivering the right customer experience is becoming extremely important and quite often decides the big winner in the telecom space. Authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) is fast becoming a key component in an operator’s strategy to manage next generation ready user policies.

It is used as a platform to manage user policies and Alepo is regarded as one of the leaders in this segment. Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com interacts with Vani Manian, Director of Technical Sales, Alepo Technologies about some of the key trends in this space and how Alepo is targeting this segment for the near future.

Authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) is typically used as a framework to intelligently manage user policies as well as auditing usage of the customer. How is this technology piece getting evolved at the operator level – in order to deliver seamless experience to the end user today?

Carrier-grade AAA infrastructure is a cornerstone of wireless and fixed broadband networks. AAA functions as an important service and policy control framework, enabling service providers to control how their subscribers access and consume data services over Wi-Fi, ADSL, and other IP-based broadband networks. In this area, AAA touches a number of areas within the core network and back office, from security to provisioning to billing and – very importantly – the customer experience.

While the core functions of AAA have remained, for the most part, unchanged since its inception in dialup and, later in DSL internet networks over a decade ago, today’s rapid growth in subscriber numbers and data usage, not to mention new customer expectations, has placed new demands on the AAA infrastructure, not only in terms of network capacity and performance, but also in the creation and delivery of innovative, differentiated services that heighten the customer experience.

Today, carrier-grade AAA infrastructure is helping operators to deliver a more holistic customer experience by enabling such use cases as multi-play services, prepaid data plans, fixed-mobile convergence, Wi-Fi offload, real-time notifications, and more. In short, the recent advancements in AAA give operators much more flexibility and functionality to innovate their data offerings and experiences.

How can your AAA solution drive better customer experience management for the operators today?

Alepo’s carrier-grade AAA infrastructure offers greater performance, reliability, and endless scalability as the demand for data continues to surge upward. Alepo’s AAA solution does not sacrifice flexibility or feature-richness either. Rather, it allows service providers to readily create new business plans and to bring innovative products to market sooner, keeping them competitive and profitable. What's more, its open, flexible architecture allows for a rapid and cost-efficient deployment, including robust integration with third-party legacy systems.

Here are some the ways in which Alepo’s AAA infrastructure enables operators to better manage the customer experience today –

Data Services Innovation

Alepo’s AAA ecosystem unlocks a wealth of emerging and in-demand business use cases by both operators and end customers. Whether an operator wants to launch a new prepaid data business, offer bandwidth on demand, or a convergent network of monetized Wi-Fi hotpots, Alepo makes it possible, with the utmost granularity and feature-richness. As experts in “All Things Data,” Alepo continues to evolve its AAA infrastructure to support new use cases and revenue opportunities, and to enable operators to bring new data offers to market faster and competitively.

Faster Performance, Better Experience

Alepo’s carrier-grade AAA infrastructure offers greater performance, reliability, and endless scalability. Alepo’s AAA takes performance to another level by intelligently handling and reducing signaling “noise” on a network that is created by endless loops of authentication requests by CPEs and Modems. This noise burdens the network without productive results. In addition, Alepo’s AAA solution employs a robust event messaging framework to more intelligently process requests. Many other advancements lend to the overall industry-leading performance offered by Alepo’s AAA.

Real-Time Customer Notifications

Alepo’s Notification Portal allows for simple, real-time communication to customers when issues with their accounts arise. If a customer experiences issues or errors, he may be automatically directed to a captive portal page with further instructions. Similarly, customers may receive automatic, real-time notifications regarding upcoming or overdue payments.

Remote Device Management

In addition, Alepo’s AAA can be readily delivered with remote device management (TR-069 Auto-Configuration Server [ACS]) on a single, pre-integrated platform. The combination of AAA + ACS amplifies thebenefits for the operator and the end customer. The combined platform creates a single provisioning target from external IT systems, which simplifies integration with third-party or legacy CRM systems and ensures an end-to-end customer experience, across device, network access, and the customer account. With the auto-discovery and auto-registration features of Alepo’s ACS, new devices that are discovered on the network may have a profile or account automatically provisioned in the Alepo AAA.

A pre-integrated solution also lends itself to the customer care experience by merging all account, customer, and device information onto a single, seamless customer profile. Whether a customer accesses Alepo’s Web Self Care portal or contacts a customer care representative, all relevant information is available in a complete 360°customer profile. Integrated remote device management also means that customers and customer care agents can troubleshoot devices quickly and without a scheduled visit from a field technicians.

Please share some of the cases where your AAA solution / product is being used?

Please find below few examples of our AAA deployment worldwide.

Saudi Telecom-Saudi Arabia

http://www.alepo.com/case-study/saudi-telecom-yielding-network-transformation/

Digicel Modernizes Its Mobile Data Networks With Alepo AAA Solution

https://www.alepo.com/digicel-modernizes-its-mobile-data-networks-with-alepo-aaa-solution-2/

Emcali Selects Alepo’s High-Performance AAA and Policy Control to Modernize Its Fixed and Mobile Broadband Networks

https://www.alepo.com/emcali-selects-alepos-high-performance-aaa-and-policy-control-to-modernize-its-fixed-and-mobile-broadband-networks/

ETB Colombia Modernizes Its Fixed Broadband Networks with Alepo

https://www.alepo.com/etb-colombia-modernizes-its-fixed-broadband-networks-with-alepo/

What does the future hold for this segment? How will it evolve ahead – once we start looking at robust 4G / 3G and 2G scenarios from operators on one side and users opting to select multiple service experience for different use cases, on the other side?

The customer experience is quickly moving towards in which multiple access technologies, whether 3G, LTE, Wi-Fi etc., may be considered for the subscriber to consume data services. Convergence and consistency across fixed and mobile access technologies will become increasingly important.

Wi-Fi will continue to play a leading role in fixed and mobile operators’ business strategies. The ability to offer Wi-Fi services to subscribers and non-subscribers, and to offload mobile subscribers should be a core component of any carrier-grade AAA solution.

By 2019, IHS estimates that fixed broadband subscribers will exceed one billion worldwide. As the potential to bring more and more people into the digital, connected world, operators must continue to pioneer new ways and price points to deliver these IP-based digital services. AAA is a central pillar to enabling this innovation, making it an important technical and business function within an operator’s network.

A truly best-of-breeds, carrier-grade AAA infrastructure from an established vendor like Alepo, offers both the technical and business competencies to help operators to accelerate their success on fixed broadband networks.