Bridgewater Systems - Application Authorization

Opportunity
Enable rapid time-to-market with new applications and services to increase revenue opportunities and grow a loyal subscriber base.

Situation

Consumer demand is driving widespread development and deployment of new music, streaming video, gaming, and social networking services.
Each new application requires different levels of integration. Additionally some of these applications, such as video streaming, may have bandwidth sensitivity issues.
Time-to-market and quality of service (QoS) are essential for staying on top of the latest trends in applications and services.
Users demand high-quality, reliable delivery of paid services.
Service providers need to balance their network resources between new high-margin services and existing services and applications.

Challenges

Deploying new applications rapidly.
Providing users with appropriate devices and applications.
Providing on-demand access to the services and applications users want.
Helping ensure QoS for these applications.

Potential Impact

Increased operating expenses due to longer deployment times.
Lost revenue opportunities.
Increased customer churn.

Solution: Application Policy Control & Related QoS

Service providers that deploy the Bridgewater® Policy Controller (PCRF) enable users to access new applications and content from their mobile devices and manage their access to that content.

The Policy Controller provides a common application authorization platform for third-party application providers to integrate. Subscriber information remains secure within the Bridgewater Subscriber Data Broker™ while the Policy Controller provides authorization for the application to run on the network.

If a user wants to access a service that requires a higher bandwidth, the service provider can develop a web portal that can instruct the Policy Controller to enable a bandwidth boost for a specified period of time. This boost could be provided automatically or by redirecting a subscriber to a portal that provides temporary or permanent service upgrade options. All new policies are then pushed to the appropriate enforcement points.

Solution Benefits

Reliable and responsive application performance ensures a high quality of experience and customer satisfaction.

Increase revenue	Monetize new applications and ensure continued usage of new applications and services
Reduce Operating expenses	Reduce deployment time of new applications using standard APIs

The Bridgewater Systems Advantage

Subscriber redirection capability for lower service costs and better usability.
On-demand access via subscription portal.
Subscriber data management and subscriber context information enabling service providers to deliver targeted, just-in-time services.
Interoperability with network enforcement points.

Solution Components
The Bridgewater® Service Controller
The Bridgewater® Policy Controller (PCRF)
Deep Packet Inspector (Integration Support: Cisco SCE 1000, 2020, 8000, Arbor Ellacoya e30)