Sandvine Zero Rating and Application Based Plans
For service providers, the financial pressure to increase profitability and further monetize the network continues to build, even in the era where the average revenue per user (ARPU) continues to decline. Zero-Rating can be a powerful tool for operators to overcome profitability issues and offer high-value services for users. Zero-Rating and Application Based Plans allows operators to monetize the key phenomena areas of video, gaming, and social sharing with end-to-end solutions.
In order to combat the need for additional revenue, some service providers have been offering unlimited plans to justify a higher price point, without adding further value to their offerings. However, there are evident challenges that come with unlimited plans:
- Firstly, Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is still declining for service providers when the only way to stay competitive in an unlimited market is to lower the price
- Secondly, usage tends to increase drastically with uncapped plans, meaning the cost of expanding the network capacity also increases for the service provider
Finally, unlimited plans push all users into the same bucket without segmenting them, leaving no room for service creativity and personalization.
Service providers can launch personalized plans with unlimited usage of those applications to add value and improve customer retention. Zero-Rated services are a game changer in a volume-based market, where it sits on top of the base quota of a plan to add more value for users. Sandvine's Zero-Rating and Application Based Plans software module leverages Sandvine’s industry leading capability to identify traffic. Sandvine offers an unparalleled level of accuracy and granularity when identifying applications or categories of applications. These are highly important factors for successful deployments of any policy requiring traffic identification.
