Thursday, April 28, 2011

Greenpacket Offers Enhanced Wi-Fi Offload Solution

Greenpacket has enhanced its Intouch Connection Management Platform (ICMP) to enable mobile operators to dynamically offload subscribers from congested cellular networks to Wi-Fi networks using intelligent switching rules based on operator's network management policies and controls.



The new capabilities comply with the 3GPP-defined standard for networking connectivity function, namely the Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF).



Greenpacket said it has fully tested its ICMP with leading Policy Charging and Rules Function (PCRF) systems and that it will work universally with any 3GPP compliant PCRF node on mobile operator's networks.



Kelvin Lee, Senior General Manager of Greenpacket said "As the ANDSF-ICMP is embedded into the subscriber's devices, mobile operators can now collect real-time information about the subscriber's network conditions, including WiFi networks. Without ANDSF, mobile operators would have lost visibility of their subscriber's activity once they switch to Wi-Fi."



Lee added "Operators are riding on the rapid growth of mobile data market and are increasingly aware that enforcing policy control is crucial in managing and optimizing network bandwidth and usage. It is fundamental for Greenpacket to integrate the ANDSF into the ICMP to meet mobile operator's WiFi data offload strategy."



Technical notes:



ANDSF is a module within an Evolved Packet Core of the System Architecture Evolution for 3GPP mobile networks. ANDSF enables consumer-level devices such as notebooks, modems and mobile phones to discover and communicate with non-3GPP networks such as WiFi or WiMAX and enforce network policy controls. Greenpacket's ANDSF in ICM is compliant to the 3GPP TS 24.312, TS 22.278 and TS 23.402 standards.



PCRF, a node that operates at the network core, plays a central role to enforce policies in next-generation networks. In the context of data offloading, the PCRF data offload module functions to provide configurable discoveries and mobility policy to the UE, this dictates the trigger of when offload should happen.http://www.greenpacket.com