The rapid growth of Mobile Data has raised the need of granular control of resource usage in Mobile Networks. The operator business model has been flat rate charging without any usage limit, why the heavy traffic growth in the 3G-networks has caused increased costs from capacity expansions and also increased operational costs from traffic shaping and quality control. The increased cost has little relations to revenue growth.

The operators are looking for means and tools to control who-does-what in the network while introducing limitations and shaping of individual usage. It is essential to find effective means to act on an individual level, as customers reach their respectively usage limits. Also, as the customer charging starts to depend on usage volume, it’s required to keep customers updated on their respectively consumption balance as time goes by.

3GPP has specified standards under the name Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) to meet the operator’s basic needs of policy management of who-does-what in the network. Concurrently, the national regulators are releasing new demands on the operators to offer customers cost control, to intercept specific individual’s traffic streams and to prioritize e.g. blue light staff in case of congestion or network problems.

ServiceFactory has the independent policy server solution consisting of applications and adapters for easy implemented in any operator’s network using open API’s in a scale-able architecture. ServiceFactory’s solution isn’t tied to any Vendor’s Radio Access Network (RAN) or Charging System.