Bandwidth Management and Usage-based Billing for Cable and Fiber Operators
Bandwidth Commander: Bandwidth Usage Management
Video killed the radio star. Don’t let it kill your broadband business!
You see it happening. Bandwidth usage continues to rise. Customers are staying online longer and watching more video. It’s not just short clips on YouTube or Facebook anymore. It’s full-length TV shows and movies from sites like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. It’s not like a few years ago where you had a handful of young folks sitting in front of a PC, or the occasional video pioneer streaming to their TV using bleeding-edge technology and duct tape. It is now easy for the average subscriber to watch streaming video on their big-screen TV from their big, comfy couch.
This can be scary if you don’t have a way to automatically and fairly enforce policies for broadband usage management. Bandwidth Commander helps you control costs, as well as gain additional revenue from those subscribers using the most of your resources. You will have the comprehensive reporting and dynamic bandwidth policy management needed to put you back in control of your broadband business. You’ll be able to implement bandwidth usage management in a “net-neutral” way by fairly enforcing bandwidth usage limits based on your pricing tiers and network use policies, which will reduce costs, improve your overall customer experience, and provide opportunities for more revenue. Speaking of more revenue, check out what’s possible with our handy Revenue Calculation Tool.
What can you do with Bandwidth Commander?
Accurately Track Individual Subscriber Usage
In most cases Bandwidth Commander uses IPDR (Internet Protocol Detail Records) data to collect usage from your DOCSIS-compatible CMTS. You don’t need to wonder whether the usage you are seeing and reporting to the subscriber is really accurate. What you see is what they used. We can also leverage IPDR in some fiber deployments, as well as SNMP and PCMM protocols.
Track and Enforce Fair-Use Bandwidth Policies Any Day or Time
Monthly usage caps are a great way to price your service, but they won’t do a lot to bring down network congestion, especially in the early part of the month. In addition to keeping track of a subscriber’s monthly usage, Bandwidth Commander monitors usage minute by minute, every single day, and can dynamically apply fair-use policies based on the time of day and the congestion on your network, keeping you in command of your bandwidth even on the first day of the month. And, Bandwidth Commander can apply policies on the upstream and downstream separately.
Concerned about implementing bandwidth usage policies? Don’t worry. Your customers will thank you for it. Without fair-use polices in place, network congestion becomes the involuntary method of enforcement, and no one is happy. It’s much better to selectively address the small percentage of subscribers causing congestion so everyone’s experience will be better. Don’t you want to provide the best quality of service for everyone?
Dynamically Apply Bandwidth Usage Limits
Bandwidth Commander looks at resources that are being used in real-time. Limits can be put in place dynamically, which will help reduce usage during peak hours and make for a better customer experience. Have a class of customers that you don’t want limited at all? No problem. Those customers who want to pay more to ensure they will have bandwidth whenever they need it can remain unchanged when policies are being enforced.
Control Costs, Boost Revenue and Increase Satisfaction
Bandwidth Commander puts you back in control of your broadband network. Not only will you have a tool that helps reduce bandwidth, especially during peak hours, you can gain new revenue from subscribers who are your highest bandwidth consumers. Most customers subscribe to the lowest-priced tier as long as the speed suits their need, but they can also be some of the heaviest users of bandwidth. Bandwidth Commander gives you the tools needed to analyze bandwidth use and then create packages and policies that will allow you to migrate heavier bandwidth users to a higher-priced package that is better suited to their needs. Other users may decide to limit their bandwidth use, or modify their use so they are using more of their bandwidth during non-peak hours. This will reduce spending on equipment and circuits later, as well as increase customer satisfaction as you reduce overall congestion on your network.