Uploaded - recent free white papers on mobile data policy management

A month or so ago, I announced that I'd written and published three detailed white papers, plus an introductory document, covering new use cases and concepts for what Disruptive Analysis referes to as "holistic" mobile data policy management. These look beyond the simplistic early 'silo' approaches to DPI, policy, optimisation and offload, many of which have been arbitrary and often user-unfriendly.

These are now available by download via Scribd.

The introduction is available here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/45784870/Mobile-Policy-Management-White-Paper-Series-Intro

• Device-aware: not just what brand and model, but over time much more granular detail about OS version, firmware, connection managers, security, power management and the ability to communicate about network status and policy with the user. Increasingly, network vendors and operators will need to link network infrastructure boxes to on-device clients. This also ties in with application awareness - particularly around dealing with mashups, VPNs and so forth. See & download from here
• Bearer-aware: the policy infrastructure will need to be much more informed about the status of the radio connections(s) - what technology, femto vs. macro cells, whether Wifi is available and suitable, what is happening with signalling load, whether congestion is actually occurring at a given time/cell and so on. See & download from here
• Offload-aware: whether data is being (or should be) routed via WiFi, femtocells, RAN offload and so on - and whether this should be managed or unmanaged. There are many variables here, and many use cases, such as the ability to use multiple networks simultaneously, "selective offload" (SIPTO / LIPA) and so on. See & download from here

Given that regulators such as the FCC and Ofcom seem to be moving towards policies on traffic management & Net Neutrality along the lines of "minimum necessary" or "reasonable" control of traffic by operators. This means that any policy enforcement will need to be reasonable, proportionate and context-specific. Arguably, there is no justification for unnecessary throttling or compression at quiet times / cells, unless you live on a Pacific island and IP transit is expensive. There is certainly not likely to be justification for much arbitrary discrimination between websites or applications, especially if this is not done with full transparency.

Each of these issues is covered in a separate white paper, plus there is an overview introduction.

This is an area I cover in a lot of depth. If you are interested in an internal workshop, advisory consulting project, or need an external speaker for an event, please get in touch at information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

(Note: The papers have been kindly sponsored by the folks at Continuous Computing, who have given me a completely free rein to write about topics that are interesting, and which hopefully push forward the industry thinking about how better to control & monetise mobile data).