Encharge: A Converged Prepaid and Postpaid Solution

P-Cube's Encharge application offers mobile carriers the ability to increase revenues and leverage infrastructure investments by adding prepaid and postpaid content-based services to existing mobile offerings. Encharge works with existing OSS and BSS systems creating a converged voice and data prepaid-postpaid environment that eliminates the need to deploy redundant systems and immediately results in cost savings for mobile providers. The solution further extends network investment by consolidating the charging infrastructure for current and future services while simultaneously providing protection against unauthorized use of premium content and enabling parental controls and individualized viewer preferences.

Encharge works with P-Cube's Service Engine forming a single extensible network element that provides:

• Comprehensive Layer 7 stateful inspection enabling identification and usage analysis for any mobile service. Encharge supports over 600 protocols including: WAP, HTTP, MMS, SIP, and RTSP

• Instant creation of new service and billing policies accelerating revenue recognition using real-time charging for a multitude of content-based service offerings

• Bandwidth optimization based on the individual characteristics of a service application

• Protection against unauthorized use of premium content

• Parental controls and individual viewer preferences

• An extensible platform for the deployment of an unlimited number of content-based services and branded service applications

As mobile content-based services such as gaming, streaming multimedia, ring tone downloads and push-to-talk become more ubiquitous, it is essential for carriers to have the ability to identify, classify and establish performance levels and value for a single application, transaction or bundled service. Carriers must have granular analysis and control capabilities within their networks to track different applications, ensure quality of service (QoS) and develop business models for service applications or individual customer needs.

P-Cube's Service Control technology makes this possible by provisioning an intelligent overlay onto the existing network transport.

Powerful Mobile Content Analysis, Charging and Control

Encharge Functionality:

• Network agnostic
• Application-level analysis and subscriber-awareness
• Standard integration with existing billing, mediation and business systems
• Wire-speed performance
• Programmable and extensible software
• Content access control

Featuring:

• Real-time device-level charging and rating
• Detailed metering and local quota support
• Bandwidth Shaping and Policy Management
• Detailed traffic and application usage records
• Common platform approach to prepaid and postpaid services

P-Cube's Service Engines running Encharge can fully reconstruct data flows while analyzing the Layer 7 state of each individual application. P-Cube's solutions are application and subscriber-aware. True application-awareness is the ability to statefully track all subscriber data flows by application and content and only P-Cube's service control technology has the ability to maintain application state while tracking network data flows at wire-speed.

Application and subscriber-awareness allows mobile networks to identify, classify guarantee performance and charge for new and emerging data-oriented application services running on high-speed 2.5G, 3G, Wi-Fi or combined networks.

Simultaneously Launch and Charge for New Services

Encharge provides the ability for carriers to define configurations and charging parameters at deployment time for virtually any mobile service. When new protocol support is required Encharge's programmability enables mobile carriers to adapt and deploy new charging schemes to support service delivery or modify billing plans as business models change.

Traditional delays associated with vendor selection, development, integration, or program updates can add months to service delivery schedules deferring revenue generating opportunities or competitive differentiation. P-Cube's technology is specifically designed to provide carriers with the flexibility to be responsive to changes in market conditions and maintain a competitive edge.

Easily Integrates with Existing Network Infrastructure and Adds Flexibility

With Encharge, mobile providers avoid the costly integration and development costs associated with multi-vendor solutions since metering, control and quota management are all done from a single solution. Carriers can be assured that the capital investments they have made in creating fast, reliable networks can be efficiently enhanced to provide new service and billing plans for content-based services, which opens new markets and extends carrier reach.

P-Cube service engines are designed to seamlessly integrate with network devices and topologies that mobile providers already have in place without network configuration changes.

In typical deployments, the service engine resides ‘in traffic' behind an aggregation point such as a PDSN or GGSN. Encharge's back-office integration is done via standard based protocols such as OSA/Parlay, RADIUS and LDAP, easily integrating with existing OSS/BSS systems.

P-Cube's out-of-the-box solution integrates into any mobile data carrier network adding fractional cost to the core network and support for additional services with no incremental investment.