Bridgewater Systems – myPolicy Solution

The proliferation of smartphones and mobile data applications for personal and business use is bringing about new challenges for mobile operators including managing the growing data traffic on their networks, introducing third party applications, finding ways to generate revenue from new sources such as mobile advertising, as well as putting in place measures to prevent mobile bill shock.

Preventing Mobile Bill Shock
Mobile bill shock refers to the unexpectedly high bill that a customer receives because of high roaming charges or exceeding voice or data service limits. Mobile bill shock is a global challenge. It’s fueling customer dissatisfaction and churn. Some jurisdictions, such as the European Union (EU), are putting legislative controls in place to prevent mobile bill shock.

Forward-thinking operators need to take a leadership role in developing a trusted, personalized customer experience that provides full transparency around mobile data usage. This includes extending control where it belongs – in the hands of the consumer and corporate customers – to prevent bill shock.

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Bridgewater’s myPolicy Solution: The Smart Solution for Today’s Operators

Bridgewater’s award-winning myPolicy™ solution is an innovative smartphone application and policy control solution that helps operators prevent mobile bill shock by providing their iPhone and BlackBerry® smartphone customers with a transparent dynamic view of their mobile data usage including:

My Usage: Tracking real-time data, SMS and applications usage, as well as voice and roaming charges anytime, anywhere.
My Limits: Setting personalized limits, notifications, and roaming controls to manage mobile usage and prevent bill shock.
My Offers: Receiving special offers in real time such as day passes for new applications, roaming passes for subscribers who are traveling, bandwidth boosts, or free SMS with mobile advertising.

The myPolicy solution features the following components:

myPolicy client application for the Apple® iPhone and Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry®.
Software development kits for operator-specific client customizations and extensions.
myPolicy Broker, a key component that brokers requests from the myPolicy application as well as other applications and portals, and communicates with the Bridgewater® Policy Controller to retrieve the appropriate information and present it back to the subscriber according to their preferences.
The Bridgewater Policy Controller, a PCRF-compliant policy control function that applies real-time network, application and subscriber rules such as updating usage information and enforcing limits. The Policy Controller sends requests and receives information from the relevant IT, billing, on-line charging or other systems.

myPolicy is the smart solution for operators who want to solve today’s mobile bill shock challenges, including compliance with recent European Union (EU) legislation on mobile data roaming, as well as gain competitive advantage by providing personalized controls to customers. Customers can prevent mobile bill shock and enjoy an increasing variety of applications that come with their smartphones.

Why Choose myPolicy?

Unlike simple byte- or minute-counter usage applications, myPolicy enables operators to deliver a personalized mobile experience to customers. It allows operators to leverage their unique tariff knowledge and subscriber data assets to offer a convenient client application that features usage based on currency.

myPolicy enables mobile operators to:

Improve customer loyalty by empowering consumers and enterprises to set their own policies including mobile usage at home, in the office, and while roaming, personal limits and notifications, prioritizing applications, or assigning different usage thresholds by employee function.
Drive incremental revenues with personalized services such as roaming or application day passes, bandwidth boosts, and special event offers based on usage or location. Custom myPolicy solutions can be provided to enterprise IT departments to manage mobile usage.
Reduce customer service costs by giving subscribers the freedom to set their own policies and monitor usage in real time on their mobile devices.
Complement web self-service portals with a convenient mobile client application option that can be downloaded from application stores and offers quick and easy access to personalized subscriber usage controls and service options. Operators can customize the myPolicy application with other functions available on portals such as modifying plans, and access to account features.

myPolicy Smartphone Client Application: Overview

The myPolicy smartphone application supports iPhone and Blackberry® devices. It provides a dynamic and transparent view of customer usage versus their monthly plan. Views are available by application type, roaming usage, or home network usage. Full transparency encourages customers to try new applications without fear of running up a high monthly bill.

The myPolicy smartphone application provides customers with three main screens: Usage, Set Limits, and Special Offers. These screens are highly customizable to meet the requirements of individual operators.

Usage Screen

Benefits

Allow customers to track their own personal usage compared with their plan by megabyte or on a currency basis.
Provide transparency for customers on their usage at a more detailed level – by application, roaming, and home network.
Ensure compliance with regulations on roaming limits, notifications, and controls for customers.

Set Limits Screen

Benefits

Allow customers to proactively set personal controls - for example, in advance of business or leisure travel plans.
Extend control to customers – what their limits are, how much they are willing to spend, and how and when they are to be notified.
Allow customers to modify usage and notification controls in line with personal spending limits and circumstances, which may be different at different times.
Ensure compliance with regulations around roaming limits, notifications, and controls for customers.
Provide a personalized mobile experience to customers to reduce churn and improve customer satisfaction.

Special Offers Screen

Benefits

Improve customer satisfaction by providing timely and relevant offers to customers when they need them most – for example, bandwidth top-ups.
Allow users to try new applications while being protected against mobile bill shock – for example, a day pass for unlimited usage of a new application.
Generate new revenues through special offers that can be pushed to customers.

myPolicy Broker and Policy Controller: Overview

Bridgewater’s myPolicy solution features the following policy control components that reside in the service provider network – myPolicy Broker and Bridgewater Policy Controller.

myPolicy Broker

myPolicy Broker is a module of the Bridgewater Policy Controller. It brokers requests from the myPolicy client application as well as other applications and portals, and communicates with the Bridgewater Policy Controller to retrieve the appropriate data and present it back to the user according to their preferences.

Features and Benefits

Functions as an extension of the Policy Controller, and resides outside the firewall to provide a client presentation layer broker to the backend Policy Controller which resides in the service provider network.
Deployable on a separate hardware platform, and eliminates direct client access to a policy decision network element such as the Policy Controller.
Features universal HTTPS interface to handset clients and is provided over a web services interface.
myPolicy client broker communicates with the Bridgewater Policy Controller using SOAP/ XML interfaces.

Policy Controller Overview

The Bridgewater Policy Controller is a PCRF-compliant policy control function that applies real-time network, application and subscriber rules such as updating usage information and enforcing limits. In the myPolicy solution, the Policy Controller sends requests to the relevant IT, billing, on-line charging or other systems for the required information.

Using a sophisticated underlying subscriber data management core provided by Bridgewater's Subscriber Data Broker™ or through integration with existing subscriber data management systems, the Policy Controller supports subscriber, application, network and now client policy control from a common software platform, enabling service providers to personalize the mobile experience.

Features and Benefits

Features a smart and unique approach to policy control:
- Smart Client: Real-time subscriber self-service and notifications in a convenient client interface that extends control to customers to manage their data usage.
- Smart Controls: Real-time subscriber entitlements, authorization, and control to enable a personalized customer experience.
- Smart Apps: Dynamic and intelligent access to open applications, Smart Apps reduce provisioning points and potential for errors. Smart Apps are proven to accelerate time to market with one customer deploying 20+ applications in weeks.
- Smart Caps™: Precise, real-time bandwidth controls that adapt to changing network conditions and dynamic subscriber context. Smart Caps enables adaptive, contextual bandwidth controls based on customer behavior, network conditions, and real-time state (e.g. subscriber roaming).
On board quota management to manage usage thresholds on a per subscriber basis using real-time metering based on volume or time:
- Enable monthly or “burst limits” based on real-time quota management.
- Provide immediate control when a customer’s limits have been reached; for example, downspeed or send notification.
Configurable business rules engine allows you to easily create rules, for notification and usage breaches and other policy decisions based complex conditions and actions:
- Masks underlying network complexity by abstracting business rules from detailed protocol interactions.
- Allows you to easily create and modify policies at pace with service innovation.
- Removes the need for custom software coding – flexible manipulation of business rules into policy-driven services.
Easily integrates with back-end systems and features the following adaptors:
- Middleware
- IT Systems
- OSS/BSS
- Subscriber data

myPolicy SDK: Overview

The myPolicy SDK supports specific customizations, extensions, and branding – including integration to an operator’s self-service portal.