Challenges in deploying the 3GPP Policy and Charging Control framework

This paper gives a reflection on practical demands and actual field integrations of the 3GPP Policy and Charging Control (PCC) framework. As opposed to clean standards-compliant architectures, the practical deployments are driven by many factors such as legacy systems, the network evolution path, subscriber base, market trends and segmentation, which all in great effect influence and shape the target PCC architecture. The paper presents and analyzes several such examples based on experiences from own field projects. The goal is to illustrate commonly encountered technical challenges and deployment particularities.