SYSTEM AND METHOD PROVIDING FIXED MOBILE CONVERGENCE VIA BONDED SERVICES

1 . A method of providing a bonded service, comprising:

determining, at a gateway device configured to support a User Equipment (UE) data plane session having multiple bearers, an allocation of UE traffic communicated by the multiple bearers according to policy information received by the gateway device, wherein each bearer is associated with a different IP Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN); and

adapting UE traffic communicated via the multiple bearers according to the determined allocation.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said UE traffic comprises any of service data flows (SDFs) and application flows (AFs).

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein said UE traffic comprises service data flows (SDFs), wherein at least one SDF is allocated to more than one of said multiple bearers, said at least one SDF being associated with a respective Quality of Service Class Indicator (QCI), Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and a Radio Access Technology (RAT) indicator.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said UE is associated with the same IP address for each of said multiple bearers.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said UE is associated with a different IP address for each of said multiple bearers, and a single advertised loopback IP address.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said UE is multi-homed to said gateway device.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said gateway device comprises a provider equipment (PE) gateway device configured to allocate downstream UE traffic among said bearers.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said gateway device comprises a Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) gateway device configured to allocate upstream UE traffic among said bearers.

9 . The method of claim 7 , wherein said policies are received from a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF).

10 . The method of claim 8 , wherein said policies are received from an Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF).

11 . The method of claim 8 , wherein said CPE comprises a residential gateway (RG) wherein a first bearer is associated with a DSL access network and a second bearer is associated with a 3GPP/LTE access network.

12 . The method of claim 11 , wherein a third bearer is associated with a Wi-Fi access point (WAP).

13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said gateway device comprises a plurality of routers configured as enterprise gateway device, each of said routers allocating respective upstream traffic among said bearers.

14 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

establishing, at said gateway device, an initial data plane session for said UE each of said multiple bearers carrying receiving, at said gateway device,

15 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said IP-CANs comprise at least two of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), Wi-Fi technology, WiMAX and 3GPP/LTE.

16 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said adapting UE traffic communicated via the multiple bearers comprises hashing UE traffic to spread a traffic load associated with the UE across a multiple bearers.

17 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising forwarding, toward Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), an uplink traffic policy adapted to configure said CPE to allocate upstream traffic across multiple upstream errors.

18 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising adapting a downstream traffic allocation among said multiple bearers in response to one or more of access technology congestion levels, service level agreement (SLA) requirements, service optimization, access technology path failure and traffic type.

19 . An apparatus providing a bonded service, the apparatus comprising:

a processor and a memory, the processor configured for:

determining, at a gateway device configured to support a User Equipment (UE) data plane session having multiple bearers, an allocation of UE traffic communicated by the multiple bearers according to policy information received by the gateway device, wherein each bearer is associated with a different IP Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN); and

adapting UE traffic communicated via the multiple bearers according to the determined allocation.

20 . A telecom network element, comprising a processor configured for:

determining, at a gateway device configured to support a User Equipment (UE) data plane session having multiple bearers, an allocation of UE traffic communicated by the multiple bearers according to policy information received by the gateway device, wherein each bearer is associated with a different IP Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN); and

adapting UE traffic communicated via the multiple bearers according to the determined allocation.

21 . A tangible and non-transient computer readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by a computer, adapt the operation of the computer to provide a method, comprising:

determining, at a gateway device configured to support a User Equipment (UE) data plane session having multiple bearers, an allocation of UE traffic communicated by the multiple bearers according to policy information received by the gateway device, wherein each bearer is associated with a different IP Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN); and

adapting UE traffic communicated via the multiple bearers according to the determined allocation.

22 . A computer program product wherein computer instructions, when executed by a processor in a telecom network element, adapt the operation of the telecom network element to provide a method, comprising:

determining, at a gateway device configured to support a User Equipment (UE) data plane session having multiple bearers, an allocation of UE traffic communicated by the multiple bearers according to policy information received by the gateway device, wherein each bearer is associated with a different IP Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN); and

adapting UE traffic communicated via the multiple bearers according to the determined allocation.