Workshop on “Monitoring Quality of
Service and Quality of Experience of Multimedia
Services in Broadband/Internet Networks”
(Maputo, Mozambique, 14-16 April 2014)
Current QoS Policy Challenges
Joachim Pomy
Consultant@joachimpomy.de
OPTICOM, Germany
Version : 11 December 2008
[Content]
ITRs: Setting the stage for
a connected world
 Current QoS Policy Challenges
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Introduction
Global Challenges
The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
International Agreements
Proposals for dealing with the matter
Summary
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End-to-end QoS
 Quality of Service (QoS)
 The totality of characteristics of a telecommunications
service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied
needs of the user of the service
 Characteristics can be measured by objective means
 level meter
 delay counter
 etc.
 Often confused with Network Performance (NP)
 IETF uses QoS to describe the performance of functional services in
network layer models
 QoS often more precisely named as "end-to-end QoS"
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User Perception influenced by much more
trends
advertising
tariffs,
costs
customer expectation of QoS
customer satisfaction
QoS
(technical)
Network
Performance
Terminal
Performance
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QoS
(non-technical)
Point of Sale
Customer
Care
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Introduction
 User Perception of quality not limited to the objective
characteristics at the man-machine interface
 For end users counts the quality that they personally
experience during their use of a telecommunication
service
 Quality of Experience (QoE) takes into account
additional subjective parameters
 stemming from user expectations
 from the context, in which the user is embedded during the
use of the service, such as
 personal mood
 environment
 potential discrepancy between the service offered and
individual users reading additional features into the service
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[Content]
ITRs: Setting the stage for
a connected world
 Current QoS Policy Challenges






Introduction
Global Challenges
The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
International Agreements
Proposals for dealing with the matter
Summary
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Global Challenges
 Move from traditional networks
 based on dedicated service-channels
 Towards on a single packet based transport infrastructure
 With integrated (transport) services
 Pre-defined transmission planning of QoS has become a major
challenge:
 Fixed allocation of resources is no longer possible
 Packet-based network quality parameter requirements are pretty
undefined
 Responsibility for end-to-end QoS has been lost
 Services must be considered as applications executed in the terminal
devices
 IP networks cannot provide for self standing end-to-end QoS
 Only transport classes, which enable QoS differentiation
 QoS Challenges depend strongly on role of stakeholders
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Challenges for Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs)
 The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
 The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
 The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
 Have collective knowledge and expertise with respect to QoS
 related to the change of paradigms in networks and terminals
 regarding to planning and possible regulation of end-to-end QoS
 Are contribution-driven
 If stakeholders
 rely on industry standards instead of globally recognized standards
 wish to keep control of their intellectual property
 wish to not invest resources in globally recognized standards
 SDOs must try to convince industry leaders
 For example in dedicated events such as conferences
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Challenges for Network Equipment Manufacturers
 Rely on the QoS related performance requests
(of network and system functions) from
network operators and service providers
 Ideally, network equipment manufacturers
would participate in the QoS work of SDOs
To standardize the QoS and performance
requirements between several parties involved in
the network business
Often no visible incentive on the short term
 Return of investment cannot easily be seen
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Challenges for Terminal Device Manufacturers
 Confronted with a mass market
 Move away from minimum attachment requirements
 No harm to the network, not necessarily high QoS
 Towards terminal standards which target the possibility
of provision of high-level end-to-end QoS to the
customer
 Acceptance in the market based on other factors
 Price
 Other functions of terminals
 Applications available for that terminal
 Brand
 End-to-end QoS - not in the first place
 "kids prefer the pink phone!"
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Challenges for Network Operators and Service Providers
 Huge investments in both infrastructure and access technology, likely to
partially
 Investing in new capacity, and
 Rationing existing capacity
 Traffic management tools
 Increase efficiency of managing existing network capacity.
 Appropriateness of different approaches to traffic management is at the
heart of the Net Neutrality debate
 Important to bear in mind that traffic management has always beneficial aspects
 Commonly used to protect safety-critical traffic
 Question is not whether traffic management is acceptable in principle, but
whether particular approaches to traffic management cause concern
 Network operators and service providers may or may not use traffic management
as a welcome method towards suppressing competition
 Opening access and core packet networks as pure bit pipes will probably not
provide the envisaged revenues
 Therefore network operators and service providers are aiming at providing
services on top of the bit stream itself
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Challenges for Regulators and Administrations
 Responsibility to consumer protection affected by rapid introduction of vendorspecific new services
 Also required to set a right balance between service competition and infrastructure
competition
 In the early days of the move towards end-to-end services being no longer provided on a
fixed, well-known platform, it still seemed to be fairly easy to require that the new
technology provide QoS "not less than in the ISDN era"
 Today it is easy to lose the overview of proprietary services "on-net" and the respectively
offered QoS
 Services are not standardized
 For interconnection scenarios (one of the major responsibilities of the ITU, and one of the
main purposes of the ITRs) one would need specific service agreements for each networkto-network-interface (NNI).
 In contrast, Regulators and Administrations have seen in the recent past that the unmanaged Internet has led to the creation of new services offered "over the top"
 Important factor contributing to the economical benefits
 Regulators and Administrations to have a close look
 Conditions under which access to services in comparison to the access to the Internet is
being provided
 There may be a certain percentage of the bandwidth or of the capacity reserved for the onnet services which then are not available for the access to the Internet
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Challenges for Consumers
 Personal affairs of using telecommunication services
 Discrepancy between advertised and actual delivery speeds
of the network
 Consumers may not be able to detect the actual
applications of discriminating traffic management
techniques and find it difficult to distinguish between
the effects of traffic management techniques on QoS
from the effects of other quality degrading factors
 A consumer observing that traffic is routinely throttled may
not know whether this is done by intention, or is caused by
other factors
 Traffic management techniques and policies are difficult to
understand for consumers
 Consumers may find it difficult to act upon such information
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... in Technical Terms
 Dramatic increase in mobile communication, both in terms of the number of
registered devices and of the volume of requested resources makes it is quite
likely that migration scenarios and hybrid connections with existing wirebound and traditional networks and terminals will be neglected and
appropriate QoS standards will not be established or enforced
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Main technical parameters to consider will be:
speed (data throughput) of the access network
congestion in the backbone
end-to-end delay (latency)
delay-variation (jitter)
packet loss (loss of information)
 Jitter is the variation in delay between different packets
 Compensation (by de-jitter buffers) converts jitter into additional delay
 Packet loss may be concealed
 Essential information may be lost
 Bad terminal implementations may destroy reasonable performance
delivered from the network(s)
 Users will not be able to judge the difference in end-to-end QoS
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Current Policy Challenges
 Need to consider new approaches to anchor national strategies or regulatory
frameworks around the multi-facetted concept of QoS required
 To set and keep the right balance between service and infrastructure
competitions
 To address the challenges associated with QoS on the telecommunication
network
 To continue providing adequate QoS, network operators and service
providers claim to need a certain traffic management over increasingly
congested networks
 This might include data restrictions, traffic throttling, filtering and/or the use of
data caps of thresholds
 Once the cap is exceeded, customers or end-users may be, knowingly or not,
confronted with the fact that, "Internet access" provided to them is no longer
Internet access, but a service provided by their ISP;
 Such possible circumstances have influenced debates over ‘net neutrality’ and
‘differentiated traffic management’
 These issues are increasingly likely to come to the fore, if data traffic continues to grow
at its current projected rate
 Currently, many regulators are launching public consultations and investigations into
traffic throttling practices
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Status of Net Neutrality Initiatives in selected Countries
Stage in process
Position along the spectrum
(least to most stringent)
Country
No consultation
Considered net neutrality, but found no
problems requiring a consultation and
subsequent rule; will continue to monitor
Denmark
Germany
Ireland
Portugal
Non-binding neutrality guidelines
Norway
In consultation stage
Rules/legislation
adopted
Information gathering on current practices to Italy
potentially establish rules
Transparency/disclosure rules proposed, but
no traffic management
United Kingdom
Transparency/disclosure rules and traffic
management/non-discrimination rules
proposed
Brazil
Sweden
Transparency/disclosure rules but no traffic
management/non-discrimination rules
European Commission
Transparency/disclosure rules and traffic
management/non-discrimination rules
Canada
Chile
France
Netherlands
United States
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Current Policy Challenges
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Best Practice Guidelines for Enabling Open Access from ITU’s Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) in 2010
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The European Commission (EC) policy on net neutrality published in April 2011, The Open Internet and Net
Neutrality in Europe
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whether to ban optional business-to-business transactions between broadband ISPs and content providers or application
providers for enhanced QoS in the delivery of “their” packets over the network
The discussions have significant economic and financial aspects
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calls for greater disclosure of traffic management practices
recognizes that traffic management is necessary to ensure the smooth flow of Internet traffic
One of the key policy questions regarding network neutrality regulation is
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Recommend that only objectively justifiable differentiations be made in the way in which various data streams are treated
The Guidelines stress the importance of legislation to set out the general principles of open access: non-discrimination,
effectiveness and transparency.
Affect who pays for what with respect to delivery of the network infrastructure and content.
This in turn affects how future infrastructure will be financed and rolled out.
Much of the traffic growth is coming from video
Some fixed-line operators have been seeking for a way to implement differentiated pricing in order to increase their
revenues
In the European Union, discussions are taking place to one degree or another regarding the following:
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The ability of consumers to address all legal content on the Internet.
Transparency, in the sense of clear information on services and prices.
Non-discrimination, in the sense of not prioritizing certain content or applications in harmful ways.
Traffic management, in the sense of intervening in the flow of traffic, for example to optimize bandwidth or to eliminate
spam.
Differentiation, in the sense of allowing customers to choose service offers that differ with respect to characteristics such
as price and speed.
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[Content]
ITRs: Setting the stage for
a connected world
 Current QoS Policy Challenges






Introduction
Global Challenges
The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
International Agreements
Proposals for dealing with the matter
Summary
Maputo - Mozambique - 14 - 16 April 2014
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The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
 The ITU has a long-standing history of QoS Work
 Starting as early as 1957 the ITU has been conducting expert
work in the fields of transmission planning, subjective testing
and standards for telephone sets.
 Since 1986 the Speech Quality Experts Group (SQEG)
provided coordination of the quality requirements and
subjective testing methodologies for speech coding
algorithms
 Since 1997 the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) provides
coordination of the quality requirements and subjective
testing methodologies for video coding algorithms
 Today, in the ITU-T, Study Group 12 is the Lead Study
Group on Performance, Quality of Service (QoS) and
Quality of Experience (QoE)
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The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
 There are approximately 175 Recommendations, 7 Supplements and 3
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Handbooks on QoS published by the ITU and in force.
Recently, a free download of ITU-T Test Signals for Telecommunication
Systems was provided.
POLQA (Perceptual Objective Listening Quality Assessment) as per new Rec.
ITU-T P.863 is the most sophisticated tool the ITU ever published for
assessment of a QoS parameter "by objective means“. Listening Quality can
be "measured" with excellent accuracy, e.g. during mobile network drive-by
testing.
Rec. ITU-T Y.1541 (Network performance objectives for IP-based services)
provides technical parameters for the differentiation of IP network traffic
classes, encompassed by a huge number of appendices explaining
application scenarios and background.
Rec. Y.1542 (Framework for achieving end-to-end IP performance objectives)
considers various approaches toward achieving end-to-end (UNI-UNI) IP
network performance objectives.
The ITU GSR10 Best Practice Guidelines for Enabling Open Access have been
developed (available at www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/bestpractices.html ).
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[Content]
ITRs: Setting the stage for
a connected world
 Current QoS Policy Challenges






Introduction
Global Challenges
The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
International Agreements
Proposals for dealing with the matter
Summary
Maputo - Mozambique - 14 - 16 April 2014
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Non-ITU International Agreements
 No significant internationally binding
agreements on end-to-end QoS outside the ITU
Specification work takes place in some industry fora
ETSI Technical Committee "Speech and multimedia
Transmission Quality" (STQ)
 Terminals and networks for speech and media quality
 End-to-end single multimedia transmission performance
 QoS parameters for networks and services
 QoE descriptors and methods
Maputo - Mozambique - 14 - 16 April 2014
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[Content]
ITRs: Setting the stage for
a connected world
 Current QoS Policy Challenges






Introduction
Global Challenges
The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
International Agreements
Proposals for dealing with the matter
Summary
Maputo - Mozambique - 14 - 16 April 2014
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Proposals for dealing with the Matter
 Many proposals in recent years
 Technical aspects of management of QoE
 In various forums, including ETSI
 Most of these items have been on the table in ITU-T Study
Group 12
 But no contributions from stakeholders
 Work is contribution-driven
 Questionable whether new standards will be established
 Other kind of approach comes from regulators
 Seeking balance between
 the protection of the rights of consumers and
 excessively rigid regulation
 Ofcom in the UK have proposed "easy-to-understand" labelling
 as illustrated on the next slides
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Elements for "easy-to-understand" labelling
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Illustrative QoE Summary for 3 hypothetical ISPs
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Illustrative transparent traffic management status representations
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Proposals from the Membership for dealing with the Matter
 Interesting approach
Not a technical solution
Assumes standardized services
However will improve the QoE
 User can realize that a sudden decrease in quality is
caused by a contractual limit of the service rather than a
technical deficiency
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[Content]
ITRs: Setting the stage for
a connected world
 Current QoS Policy Challenges






Introduction
Global Challenges
The ITU’s past and current Work on QoS
International Agreements
Proposals for dealing with the matter
Summary
Maputo - Mozambique - 14 - 16 April 2014
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Summary
 Move to packet-switched networks creates challenges
and opportunities for all stakeholders
 Network operators need to develop appropriate business
models and QoS technologies
 Policy makers and regulators need to consider the
advantages and disadvantages
 of a “hands-free” approach to differentiated QoS offers
 versus imposing QoS levels
 versus imposing no differentiation of traffic management
– the so-called “network neutrality” paradigm
 Consumers need to consider the tradeoffs between
 undifferentiated “bit-pipe” offer and
 more complex offers
– including different priorities or bandwidths for different types of
services
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Any questions
?
Contact:
Consultant@joachimpomy.de
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