Free-G
Project Arieh
Lahat, E-Commerce Manager, EL AL Israel
Airlines Ltd. Patrick Moshe
Perelsztejn, Internet Infrastructure &
Technologies Coordinator, EL AL Israel Airlines
Ltd.
1.1.
Purpose of the document This
document describes the mi800 implementation
solution in EL-AL as part of the Free-G trial. It
targets all stakeholders from all parties involved
in the mi800 implementation in
EL-AL. 1.2.
Scope of the document This
document provides a high-level overview of the
mi800 implementation solution in EL-AL. It
describes the business context and the technical
environment in which the mi800 is implemented, as
well as the required adaptations and interfaces
with the operator’s network and billing
systems. 1.3.
Business Context The mi800
implementation in EL-AL is currently deployed as
part of a pan European trial – the Free-G project.
The European Commission’s IST (Information Society
Technologies) program has chosen the
mi800™ for a trial. The Free-G
project involves a consortium of 12 parties on a
pan European level, including mobile operators and
business enterprises in the UK, Israel, Greece and
Norway. The Free-G project will
trial and test, on a pan-European level, the
mi800™ advanced billing technology for GPRS mobile
data services. The results will be exploited for
implementing a whole range of usage-based and
content-based data billing solutions.
The project partners (in Israel)
are: -
EL AL, Israel Airlines Ltd., content
provider. -
Cellcom, mobile operator.
-
SchlumbergerSema, solution provider and
integrator. 1.4.
Terminology and
Acronyms DMEE – DataMeter
Enterprise Edition DMOE – DataMeter
Operator Edition BE – Business
Enterprise MO – Mobile
Operator OPM – mi800, GUI based,
Operational Management
Application M2MDM – Many to Many
Data Manager (Service Center) UBUD –
URL Based Usage Data NTP – Network
Time Protocol ILC – Interface Layer
Component HCA – HTTP">HTTP">HTTP">HTTP
Content Accelerator mi800™ - Background 1.4.1.
General Overview The mi800™
service aims to bring the principle of the
successful wire-line free-phone 0800 (or toll-free
1-800) to the realm of mobile-Internet, whereby
business enterprises can offer their customers a
subsidized access to their mobile-Internet sites.
This groundbreaking service
represents a new revenue source for cellular
carriers seeking to stimulate their subscriber
bases’ usage of mobile Internet. At the same time,
it presents a powerful marketing tool for business
enterprises in attracting their customers to carry
out activities in their mobile web sites. The
service provides transaction based enterprises,
content providers, portals, companies engaged in
sponsorship campaigns and enterprises maintaining
mobile workforce with tools to selectively pay for
customers’ mobile access
fees. Subscribers are notified
that they are about to access a mi800 zone by a
special mi800 icon displayed on their mobile
device. Refunds for access costs related to mi800
sites are provided via the customer’s phone bill.
For prepaid customers, refunds are granted in
real-time. Upon entering a mi800
free access site, a special mi800 icon appears on
the mobile device’s screen indicating links to
pages where the cost of air access is being
subsidized. Customers who visit multiple sites
during a single mobile-Internet session will only
be billed for the air access accrued at sites that
are not mi800 enabled. mi800™
platform supports a variety of access technologies
including CSD, 2.5G, 3G, fixed-line Internet and
wireless LAN, as well as pre-or post-paid mobile
environments. mi800™ platform supports both CSD
and GPRS networks, both HTTP">HTTP">HTTP">HTTP
and WAP protocols & browsers, both local &
roaming subscribers and can be configured to
support both postpaid and prepaid
subscribers. The mi800™ platform
knows how to identify predefined patterns of
browsing through the value chain that includes the
operator, wireless ISP, wireless portal and the
enterprise. The platform generates CDRs according
to subscribers’ browsing through certain web pages
previously identified as part of the service.
Revenue sharing between these parties could be
influenced by these patterns. The
mi800™ service via the mi800™ platform enables an
enterprise to decide to target specific customers
(“Gold” or other preferred customers, for example)
or to offer varying subsidy levels to different
groups. An enterprise may select to offer a
subsidy only when an actual transaction is carried
out, thus be assured that its subsidy is
back-to-back guaranteed by an actual purchase or
transaction. Enterprises may select which of their
web site “zones” they wish to subsidize and
designate time periods during which the service is
to be offered. To make the service even more
compelling, at the stage where enterprises search
for ways to build up their wireless customers’
base, mi800 offers an option where enterprises
subsidize first time users
only. mi800 interfaces with
various operator’s and enterprise’s network
elements to collect a URL-based usage data
(hereinafter “UBUD”) records. The information,
collected locally (operator’s environment) and in
the distributed environment (enterprise), is
correlated and aggregated, based on a set of
predefined rules. Then, the platform generates
credit CDRs, which are forwarded to the operator’s
postpaid and prepaid systems. Although mi800
is capable of generating both rated and un-rated
CDRs, it usually generates un-rated CDRs. However,
it is up to the specific operator, during the
integration process on site, to decide whether
these CDRs shall be rated. Usually, this decision
depends on the capabilities of the operator’s
CCBS. 1.4.2.
mi800™ architecture As appears
in the following diagram, a standard mi800
platform configuration employs several
components: 1.
DataMeter™ Operator Edition (hereinafter “DMOE”) –
a real time data-metering engine installed as part
of the operator’s
infrastructure. 2.
Icon Generator (hereinafter “IG”) – Two servers
responsible for notifying the subscribers when
about to access a mi800 zone by a special mi800
icon displayed on their device. It is installed as
part of the operator’s
infrastructure. 3.
DataMeter™ Enterprise Edition (hereinafter “DMEE”)
– a server installed as part of the enterprise’s
infrastructure, responsible for tracking
subscribers’ URL Based Usage Data (UBUD) based on
information available on the enterprise’s
equipment, and for filtering the collected
information according to the appropriate involved
operators. 4.
M2M Data Manger – a central clearing house for
data collected in the many to many
environment mi800™
platform is designed to support simultaneous UBUD
distributed collection from both the operator’s
and the enterprise’s networks. This platform is
capable to support several configurations of
network browsing such
as: 1.
WAP E2E secured environment - an environment in
which the enterprise maintains a WAP gateway in
its own premises rather than using the operator’s
WAP
gateway 2.
A non Proxy (gateway) related environment - an
environment in which there is no proxy available
as part of the operator’s network.
UBUD
distributed collection from the enterprise is
carried out for, among others, fraud detection
generated by hackers who may try to abuse the
operator / enterprise to get subsidy while surfing
through un-subsidized pages. Fraud detection is
achieved by making a crosscheck between data
collected on the enterprise side and data
collected on the operator’s side to detect usage
imparities. mi800
integration and deployment at the enterprise’s
site aim to support the following functional
requirements:
Identify the various pages and their
associated mi800 related action.
UBUD collection from the enterprise’s web
servers, WAP servers and HTTP">HTTP">HTTP">HTTP
content accelerators
Tracking the subscriber:
Behavior - whether a transaction was carried
out.
User type - targeting a specific
customers (“Gold” or other preferred
customers, for example)
Overall browsing
Icon insertion – an insertion of a link as
part of the enterprise’s content pointing to the
mi800 IG, which generates icons
Site adaptations to support subscribers’
tracking for credit calculations and fraud
detection purposes
Selectively transfer of mi800 UBUD to the
M2M Data
Manager
this page was last updated on Thursday, October 19, 2004 by Moshe Patrick Perelsztejn , 1995 - 2004
