Zero rating implentation strategies

Tue Sep 1 18:19:26 UTC 2015

The regulatory killing of that was probably unrelated to implementation.

The regulators probably objected to the mobile provider creating an advantage (no data charges) for their own service against competing video services that would incur data charges.

Perhaps that will help you understand what you need for a regulatory challenge.

Owen

> On Sep 1, 2015, at 09:36 , Christian Kuhtz <chkuhtz at microsoft.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Zero rating is not a new concept. It has existed in the mobile world since the days of the dumb phone.  Got a reference to why this was killed by the regulator in Canada?
> 
> Mobile networks typically use their packet core (and prior iterations of the same termination, rating, billing, management gear) to rate and bill specific to each subscriber.  It is done with voice minutes, text, data.  Whether or not you consider the solutions scalable is up to one's individual judgement. But this zero rating billing model has and is very widely deployed and at massive scale. In fact, there are specific interfaces defined for just these purposes in the applicable standards.  There are many many conceivable ways in which billing mediation and associated infrastructure for zero rating can and is implemented. This is not new and is very well understood in the mobile industry.  Not sure what you're after here.
> 
> Best regards,
> Christian
> 
> 
>> On Aug 31, 2015, at 6:01 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei <jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Last year, one large mobile operator in Canada started to zero-rate its
>> own mobile TV offering. It appears that routers kept counting all the
>> data, but that the company then subtracted usage generated by its video
>> servers to come up with billable Gigabytes for each user.
>> 
>> (This was quashed by the regulator in Canada)
>> 
>> In the last week, another mobile operator announced it was zero rating
>> approved music streaming services (Spotify, Google Play and a few others).
>> 
>> If you are dealing with "foreign" content that comes from servers you
>> don't control, what are the "best practices" to zero-rate content from
>> multiple outside sources ?
>> 
>> To make matters more interesting, the FAQ for that service indicates
>> that if you listen to a music stream that exceeds 128kbps, you MAY be
>> charged for the data, and that you will be charged to listen to videos
>> that could be offered by that service, and for non streaming data such
>> as album covers, list of songs etc.
>> 
>> Would this point to specific IPs (streaming servers for low quality
>> 128kbps sound) ? How scalable is this when you start to have a whole
>> bunch of source IPs whose traffic is to be zero rated ?
>> 
>> Or would another way of doing this to setup private routes into the
>> ISP's network for each approved service, so the data would enter through
>> a different interface and be counted separately ?
>> 
>> Or, and this is my most important question: Is it possible with current
>> networking software to zero rate any data flow that is less than a
>> certain value (eg: 128kbs) ?
>> 
>> Or would current software require network operator to get 5 minute usage
>> for each user and only bill if average data rate during last 5 minutes
>> exceeded 128kbps ? (which means that your music is billed if you also
>> listen to netflix at same time since total data flows are greater than
>> 128kbps)
>> 
>> 
>> Of note: not all customers get this treatment, only those with higher
>> end packages. Those with lower end packages are charged for usage by
>> those very same services.
>> 
>> And for the record, this isn't to setup a similar system, it is to
>> better understand the issue for a regulatory challenge.