ITWire

It is also possible to prioritise traffic associated with specific applications, or on a geographical basis (eg, higher speed and high priority when using the service at home, with a lower speed and no prioritisation at other locations).

Ericsson is also predicting that carriers will look to draw revenue from upstream service providers in return for prioritising their services (network neutrality, anyone?) or by packaging and promoting those providers' offerings to the carriers' customers.

So why does Ericsson care about all this? The company provides products and services to mobile carriers, including the network equipment needed to take advantage of QoS and other concepts outlined above, plus a billing system that can provide the flexibility and responsiveness needed to support  value-based pricing. Chaisatien also pointed out that a good self-service portal is also a must for carriers planning to make such offers to their customers, for example the opportunity to top-up their plans as an alternative to moving into the dreaded 'excess data' territory, or to pay a little extra to ensure movies are streamed at full speed to avoid those annoying 'buffering...' pauses.