Nokia Policy Controller

Scale your Policy Control Function for 4G and 5G with the Nokia Policy Controller

Overview

The Nokia Policy Controller (NPC) in mobile networks determines the resources and services that can be used to support connected devices. It is a vital part of ensuring the customer experience for modern voice and data services.

It determines, for example, whether customers are subscribed to 4G or 5G services, their data allocations, whether they are fixed or mobile subscribers, and even what entertainment services they may have subscribed to through their operator.

What is Nokia Policy Controller?

The cloud-native Nokia Policy Controller is a combined scalable network function fulfilling both 5G policy rules and interoperability with 4G with independently scalable sub-functions. As combined microservices-based stateless network function has interfaces serving 4G Diameter and 5G HTTP/2 service-based architecture.

Nokia’s Policy Controller was designed for the needs of 5G and IoT to provide scale and simplicity even for the most complex use cases. Fully cloud-native, it can be deployed rapidly into multi-vendor networks and provides the elasticity and reliability required for efficient and effective policy control. Production-ready for 5G today, almost 100 service providers around the world rely on Nokia’s policy management capabilities for 5G, 4G and fixed networks.

Nokia Charging Function and Nokia Policy Controller are powerful tools that can help you monetize. By using these solutions, you can increase your revenue potential while reducing your overall costs. Plus, with a single vendor solution, implementation, integration, and operation become simpler and more affordable.

On this page

What is Nokia Policy Controller?
How does Nokia Policy Controller work?
Benefits and features
Improve delivering 4G and 5G services
Supercharge your services and monetization with URSP
Resources
Related solutions and products
Learn more

Video

Nokia 5G Core Policy Controller

How does Nokia Policy Controller work?

What are the benefits of Policy Control Function?

Comprehensive capabilities

Addresses a wide range of use cases with a comprehensive set of field-proven capabilities

Automation

Continuous delivery via DevOps tools

Network integration

Ease of network integration with built in Diameter manipulation

Flexibility

Creating rules without relying on fixed rule table schedules supported by A.R.T rule system including 150+ patents

Interoperability with 4G

Provides an integrated PCRF (4G) +PCF (5G), but separate deployments are also supported

Service management

GUI and API functions of a service platform to interact with CRM and other systems

Different deployments

Designed for multi-vendor installations and fully pre-integrated with other Nokia solutions as well

Learnings from the installed base

Leverages the rich heritage of the previous Policy and Charging product generation with over 100 deployments

High performance and modularity

Based on Nokia’s Common Software Foundation: updated software sourcing, development, and delivery practices for speed, quality, and serviceability

How to improve delivering 4G and 5G services using policy management

5G notably expands the services that the network supports compared to 4G/LTE. There is no use case that works without policy control — both traditional and cutting-edge use cases for consumers and enterprises require a flexible policy control function. As we enter the 5G era, many of the new use cases will be in Industry 4.0 and include critical Machine-Type Communications (cMTC) for industrial automation, as well as massive IoT networks. This means that with 5G, there is a much wider range of devices and use cases and greater complexity in terms of policy rules.

Read our e-book to discover how to manage this complexity and scale in a flexible and agile way.

eBook

E-book: Nokia Policy Controller

Supercharge your services and monetization with URSP

User Equipment Route Selection Policy (URSP) - powered by Nokia Policy Controller - offers a new generation of building and operating networks, ensures unlimited flexibility and speed in providing differentiated services. URSP enables a new approach to monetization for Communication Service Providers (CSPs).

URSP enables the user equipment (UE) to switch automatically among different network slices, depending on which application is running on the device and which profile is associated with it. Applications - based on the specific requirements of the assigned profile - are routed to a dedicated slice to get the required Quality of Services (QoS), and therefore a pre-defined user experience. Among other attributes, low latency, high bandwidth, ultra-reliability can be associated with an application. The policies can either be pre-configured on the device itself or can be provided dynamically by the Nokia Policy Controller.

URSP is not only beneficial to subscribers to get the best user experience but also to operators, who can optimize the usage of resources, address a wide range of use cases, and deliver new services to the market quickly. This way, the CSPs can maximize its return on investment and minimize time to market.

Watch our video to discover how to supercharge your services and monetization with URSP.