Bridgewater Extends Policy Market Leadership with 3GPP Release 9 Standards Compliance

Enables mobile operators to deliver innovative usage and application-based services

OTTAWA, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Bridgewater Systems (TSX: BWC), the mobile personalization company, today announced the availability of enhancements to the Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) compliant Bridgewater(R) Policy Controller for HSPA and LTE networks. As the market leading policy management product globally, Bridgewater is again leading the industry as the first PCRF to support new requirements defined in Release 9 of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

News

    -  The new Bridgewater Policy Controller, which supports 3GPP PCRF
       Release 7, 8 and 9 standards on the same platform, provides real-time
       network, application, and subscriber policies that allow operators to
       manage mobile data growth and deliver personalized services. The 3GPP
       Release 9 standard expands the policy enforcement functions of the Gx
       interface to include subscriber usage information for volume-based
       service metering. The Policy Controller moves beyond current standards
       to support real-time, multi-service metering based on application
       usage and is fully interoperable with leading network equipment
       providers.

    -  These new advanced features of the Bridgewater Policy Controller
       allows operators to:

       -  Deliver innovative usage and application-based services such as
          policies and pricing based on bandwidth usage, specific types of
          applications, and casual usage. For example, a heavy mobile video
          user can be provided with guaranteed quality of service for a
          monthly fee. Casual users can be offered applications on-demand,
          notified by SMS when they are near their limit, and receive a
          service boost offer. Users can choose how much bandwidth to
          allocate to different applications and monitor application usage in
          real time to prevent bill shock.

       -  Manage network congestion by applying Smart Caps(TM) and metering
          to adjust usage levels based on real-time factors such as level of
          congestion and time of day, or a subscriber's data consumption or
          roaming status.

       -  Significantly reduce costs by adopting a more efficient way of
          enforcing policies and metering subscriber usage that does not
          require expensive Online Charging Systems or upgrades to existing
          charging systems.

    -  A recent Yankee Group survey(1) of executives from 61 GSM/HSPA
       operators in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East revealed
       that the majority preferred a PCRF standards based policy solution.
       The ability to charge subscribers based on their volume of usage for
       individual applications such as video, peer-to-peer, and voice over IP
       was ranked high in importance. The same survey concluded that allowing
       subscribers to individually set and modify their own service
       preferences and plans including managing usage, and setting limits per
       application or while roaming was a strong value proposition.

Quotes

Ari Banerjee, Vice President, Yankee Group

"When going to market with new services or service models, operators should first look at policy control tools that safeguard the customer experience. Chief among these ought to be subscriber-controlled capabilities to view real-time usage data, monitor usage against their bill plan, and have the ability to dynamically alter or enhance subscription plans based on bandwidth and application usage."

David Sharpley, Senior Vice President, Bridgewater Systems

"Standards-based policy control is critical for the new usage and application-based service models operators are asking for to profit from mobile data growth. As the first to comply with new PCRF Release 9 standards, Bridgewater is extending its policy market leadership and helping our customers deliver innovative services."

Tags / Keywords

Bridgewater Systems, PCRF, Policy Controller, myPolicy, 3GPP Release 9, LTE, 3G

Links

http://www.bridgewatersystems.com/Policy-Controller.aspx

http://www.bridgewatersystems.com/Policy/

http://4gworld.com/?p=4033

http://www.yankeegroup.com/home.do

About Bridgewater Systems

Bridgewater Systems, the mobile personalization company, enables service providers to efficiently manage and profit from mobile data services, content and commerce. The company's market leading mobile personalization suite provides a real-time, unified view of subscribers including entitlements, devices, networks, billing profiles, preferences and context. Anchored by Bridgewater's Subscriber Data Broker(TM), the portfolio of carrier-grade and standards-based products includes the Bridgewater(R) Service Controller (AAA), the Bridgewater(R) Policy Controller (PCRF) and the Bridgewater(R) Home Subscriber Server (HSS). More than 140 leading service providers including America Movil, Bell Canada, Clearwire, Cox, Hutchison Telecom, Iusacell, Scartel, SmarTone-Vodafone, Sprint, Tata Teleservices, Tatung, Telmex, Telstra, and Verizon Wireless use Bridgewater's solutions to rapidly deliver innovative mobile services to over 150 million subscribers. For more information, visit us at www.bridgewatersystems.com.

Bridgewater, Bridgewater Systems, the Bridgewater Systems logo, WideSpan, Smart Caps, myPolicy, and Subscriber Data Broker are trademarks or registered trademarks of Bridgewater Systems Corporation. All other company, product names and any registered and unregistered trademarks mentioned are used for identification purposes only and remain the exclusive property of their respective owners.

(1) A commissioned work conducted by Yankee Group on behalf of Bridgewater Systems, June, 2009.

SOURCE Bridgewater Systems