[183385] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Zero rating implentation strategies
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christian Kuhtz)
Tue Sep 1 12:36:18 2015
X-Original-To: Nanog@nanog.org
From: Christian Kuhtz <chkuhtz@microsoft.com>
To: Jean-Francois Mezei <jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2015 16:36:13 +0000
In-Reply-To: <55E4F8A4.5090802@vaxination.ca>
Cc: "Nanog@nanog.org" <Nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
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 th=
e same termination, rating, billing, management gear) to rate and bill spec=
ific to each subscriber. It is done with voice minutes, text, data. Wheth=
er or not you consider the solutions scalable is up to one's individual jud=
gement. But this zero rating billing model has and is very widely deployed =
and at massive scale. In fact, there are specific interfaces defined for ju=
st these purposes in the applicable standards. There are many many conceiv=
able 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@vaxinatio=
n.ca> wrote:
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> 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.
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> (This was quashed by the regulator in Canada)
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> In the last week, another mobile operator announced it was zero rating
> approved music streaming services (Spotify, Google Play and a few others)=
.
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> 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 ?
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> 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.
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> 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 ?
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> 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 ?
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> 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) ?
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> 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)
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>=20
> 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.
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> And for the record, this isn't to setup a similar system, it is to
> better understand the issue for a regulatory challenge.
