MMS service is still in its infancy where the first customer experiences with the service will be critical for future adoption by the masses. An MMS message is going over an ever-wider range of protocols and equipment, therefore creating an increasing number of associated risks for failures. Currently, it is very difficult and troublesome for operators or vendors to quickly and easily pinpoint the reasons for MMS failures. One of these reasons that commonly occurs are provisioning issues.
A provisioning issue is when the subscriber’s mobile phone does not have the correct settings needed to use the service. These parameters are usually the MMSC URI, the APN and the WAPGW IP address. In cases of MMS provisioning issues, they can be a serious problem for service providers because of the potential revenue gain from subscribers who want to use the service, but are unable to do so and do not know how to resolve the issue themselves.
Unfortunately, these problems are often difficult to monitor without the right solution and can be left unresolved or unnoticed for days or months. This is a problem for carriers because they are not realizing this potential revenue from the subscriber using the service. Oftentimes, carriers have to wait for the subscriber to complain before being aware of a problem and trying to resolve the issue. Needless to say that all this leads to a lower user's Quality of Experience.
By using DPI to identify and measure provisioning problems, service providers can pro-actively identify and resolve these issues before they even occur. If the carrier can identify the root-cause of the provisioning problem, they can even push the correct settings onto the subscriber’s phone "over-the-air" via a simple SMS. This helps the carrier by reducing the time needed to handle and investigate customer complaints, as well as preventing a huge loss in revenue by helping the subscribers adopt the service and feel comfortable and confident using MMS.
