mobile operators: from packet delivery to content logistics

Faster Networks Faster to the Abyss?

From “packet delivery” to “content logistics”

Maximilian OttCTO, Incoming Media

max@incoming-media.com

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Objective

• Carriers need to provide a different service• From “packet/bit delivery” to “content logistics”

• Outline• Why nobody likes Carriers• The Standoff between Carrier & Service Providers• Incoming: Solving Mobile Video with Data Science• A Proposal for a new Carrier Service

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Nobody likes Carriers

Voice

SMS

http://bit.ly/1bOmlVl

Not too long ago they actually provided a service customers wanted

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Nobody likes Carriers

Voice

SMS

http://bit.ly/1bOmlVl

YouTube

Carrier

Facebook

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… Even the Financial Markets

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… Even the Financial Markets

• Carriers look more & more like utilities• Valuation (P/E Multiple) will drop accordingly

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Mexican Standoff

ServiceProvider

Carrier

Advertiser

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But it is a Symbiotic Dependency

• Increased User Experience, increased Income• Great User Experience requires great network

• Service Providers need to incentivize Carriers to help maximizing User Engagement

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How to Share?

ServiceProvider

Carrier

Advertiser ???

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How to Share – Shapley Values?

• Model as a cooperative game which derives a distribution among the players of the total surplus generated by their coalition.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapley_value• Ma, et al, Internet Economics: The use of Shapley value for ISP

settlement, CoNeXT ‘07

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More pragmatic – Let’s look at Cost

• What is the REAL cost of delivering a Movie?• Infrastructure (CapEx) & Operation (OpEx)

• Dominated by Capex• Capex driven by PEAK demand• Leads to Congestion Pricing

• Cost varies greatly based on congestion – Orders of Magnitude!• Same for service providers (servers, connectivity)

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More pragmatic – Let’s look at Cost

Real delivery cost of a Bit can vary by

Orders of Magnitude!

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Lower the Peaks, Filling the Valleys

Time-shifting

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Lower the Peaks, Filling the Valleys

Time-shifting

But Data Services cannot do that!

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What is the traffic mix?

VideoWeb Games

Voice M2M

Live

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Anything special about Video?

t

“Created”

Hours – days - months

Consumed

FedEx – Packet delivery?

FedEx – Logistics Company!

FedEx – Logistics Company!

The ideal place for zero-latency delivery

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Content Logistics

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Content Logistics – Control Peaks

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Lowering Cost by Increasing Traffic!

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Incoming Media

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The Phone IS part of the network!

• Lots of storage• Lots of processing• Big screen• Lots of sensors• ONE, very loyal user• The FIRST screen

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Incoming Media

• Smart on-device content pre-positioning• Create great mobile video experiences• Increase engagement and satisfaction• Save money doing this

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Incoming’s Solution

• Pre-fetching content on the mobile utilizing spare network capacity when available.

• Decision what and when to pre-fetch is based on our ability to learn (and predict):• user behavior• user’s social network behavior• mobile’s context and network environment• operator’s preferences

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Incoming’s Architecture

Incoming TV App

• Proves value proposition of Smart Caching to user

• Over 1.3M installs

• 80% cache-hit ratio

• Top 20% users watching 10 to 20+ mins per day

• Zero mobile data cost

• Instant start, zero stalling, zero buffering, HD video

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What should Carriers do?

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Content Logistics Service

• New content-centric network API• This is a bit different to CCN proposals

• Smart distributed storage • This includes mobile device (terminals)• Opportunistic pre-positioning of content

• Less-than-best-effort traffic class• Only forward when there is nothing else to

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Content-centric network API

• Declaring of intent• Probabilistic intent of future use

• Declaring meta-data• Prediction algorithms rely on discovering

correlations• Providing feedback

• What was the final utility of retrieved content

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Smart distributed storage

• Storage before bottleneck• Using meta-data and past behavior to predict:

• what to store• when to move between storage

• Building on IEEE 2200 (HQME)?

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New Traffic Class

• Less-than-best-effort traffic class• Focus on keeping pipes full

• Using IP Header DiffServ Code Points (DSCP)?• Technology is there• May require new Traffic Management insights• Various large carriers are thinking about it• Interest in exploiting LTE Broadcast

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Conclusion

• Carriers need to provide a different service• From “packet/bit delivery” to “content logistics”

• Video is THE dominating traffic source• Need new technical approach & business

model to tackle it• Move from ‘dumb pipes’ to ‘smart logistics’

Faster Networks Faster to the Abyss?

From “packet delivery” to “content logistics”

Maximilian OttCTO, Incoming Media

max@incoming-media.com