A primary objective of a next generation network architecture is to develop a set of infrastructure capabilities that facilitate the creation and delivery of premium services. One of these capabilities, session-based quality of service (QoS), may be used by service providers or application service providers to assure the quality of delivery of their IP content/application sessions over broadband networks. This paper introduces session-based QoS and discusses a number of considerations arising in the design of this capability for broadband services in the next few years.