Openwave Mobility, a software innovator enabling operators to manage and monetize encrypted mobile data, has today launched IP Traffic Manager (IP-TM) for carriers to effectively manage diverse data flows and implement key use cases. A variety of data-hungry devices and apps – coupled with a steep rise in encrypted traffic - have caused network congestion and impacted subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE).

Mobile internet usage is intensifying and diversifying. Over 40% of YouTube and 23% of Netflix access is on mobile. The European Union’s Eurostat found that 1 in 4 used cloud storage services such as Dropbox and accessed files on mobile devices. Skype’s mobile app has been downloaded 750 million times. To handle this assortment of data, mobile operators need a robust solution for real-time packet, flow and session inspection and enforcement for the next generation of virtualized data.

Use cases enabled by IP-TM include ad-blocking, content filtering, real time QoE monitoring and control, fair usage management and integrated DNS analysis to set Quality of Service policies for different categories of content. Importantly IP-TM delivers these key Value Added Service use cases in a virtualized environment using Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware and can manage both encrypted and unencrypted streams.

“IPTM is rebooting Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)” said Matt Halligan, CTO, Openwave Mobility. “To meet today’s cocktail of data, DPI has to evolve significantly from high cost equipment that inspects just the first few bytes of a flow, into continuous flow and session analysis using COTS hardware. That enables operators to deliver a consistent QoE to their subscribers – whether that’s a WhatsApp call or a music track on Spotify. Our solution adds value to the operator’s network and is both virtualized for scalability and is cost effective to meet data demands.”

IPTM builds on the core orchestration and service chaining capabilities of Openwave Mobility’s SDN/NFV-enabled Integra framework. This delivers best in class traffic flow classification with session, policy and value awareness. It combines the UDP, TCP, and IP signaling paths with the data path to provide carriers with insight on both personal and network traffic consumption.

Joe Hoffman, Vice President Strategic Technology at ABI Research adds: “Regardless of what the Net Neutrality crowd advocates, subscribers attach different value to different services. Not all bytes have the same value. Operators seeking to improve their financial performance should consider Openwave Mobility’s IP-TM solution as they migrate and scale into the networks of tomorrow. IP-TM brings many innovations to the operator”.