TechNews digests: Jan - Mar 2010

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

An intelligent-agent approach for managing congestion in W-CDMA networks

PhDResource Management is a crucial aspect in the next generation cellular networks since the use of W-CDMA technology gives an inherent flexibility in managing the system capacity. The concept of a “Service Level Agreement” (SLA) also plays a very important role as it is the means to guarantee the quality of service provided to the customers in response to the level of service to which they have subscribed. Hence there is a need to introduce effective SLA-based policies as part of the radio resource management. This work proposes the application of intelligent agents in SLA-based control in resource management, especially when congestion occurs. The work demonstrates the ability of intelligent agents in improving and maintaining the quality of service to meet the required SLA as the congestion occurs. A particularly novel aspect of this work is the use of learning (here Case Based Reasoning) to predict the control strategies to be imposed. As the system environment changes, the most suitable policy will be implemented. When congestion occurs, the system either proposes the solution by recalling from experience (if the event is similar to what has been previously solved) or recalculates the solution from its knowledge (if the event is new). With this approach, the system performance will be monitored at all times and a suitable policy can be immediately applied as the system environment changes, resulting in maintaining the system quality of service

A Content-Based Pricing Model for Municipal and Community Wireless Networks

The escalation of municipal and community wireless networks (CWNs) has raised many questions about the most suitable business model, funding instrument, and service pricing policy for a specific community. Unlike traditional Internet service providers, these networks provide wireless Internet access for the purpose of boosting the social and economic development of the community at large. Therefore, such projects need customized business models and pricing policies in order to achieve these objectives. We propose a content-based pricing model where the price of wireless applications is an increasing function of the used bandwidth and a decreasing function of the provided packet delay. We used the Opnet simulation tool to validate the proposed pricing model. The simulation results show that network operators may charge users only for audio and video applications because of the high bandwidth they use compared to data applications. The proposed pricing solution considers the social and economic objectives of CWNs

\u27Wi-Fi\u27ght Them When You Can Join Them? How the Philadelphia Compromise May Have Saved Municipally-Owned Telecommunications Services

When the Mayor of Philadelphia announced his plan to provide municipally sponsored Wi-Fi Internet access, Verizon, the incumbent telecommunications service provider organized lobbyists to block the plan. The compromise eventually struck between Pennsylvania municipalities and Verizon, which allows municipalities to offer telecommunications services after giving Verizon a right of first refusal has resulted in a certain degree of uncertainty in the future of municipally sponsored Internet access. This Note examines this compromise and argues that it represents an optimistic future for municipally sponsored telecommunications services. The Note first discusses the history of Wi-Fi technology and the development of the law regarding municipally owned telecommunications providers. It then addresses the likelihood that the Philadelphia plan will succeed and the plans implications on telecommunications providers

The U.S. M-Business Market: Fad or the future

M-Business is information available on any device, anywhere and at anytime, offering businesses in any industry the potential to expand markets, improve their services and reduce costs. The U.S. m-business market is still in its infancy and is a few years away from becoming a growth market. This is due to a few reasons, which are the lack of standards for connectivity and service, no real applications to support the market and the lack of strong encryption to support m-business and e-commerce. M-business is not a fad but a potential new channel for business operations. This thesis will address the issues of why the U.S. m-business is slow to mature and what is required for the U.S. m-business to become a growth market

\u27Wi-Fi\u27ght Them When You Can Join Them? How the Philadelphia Compromise May Have Saved Municipally-Owned Telecommunications Services

When the Mayor of Philadelphia announced his plan to provide municipally sponsored Wi-Fi Internet access, Verizon, the incumbent telecommunications service provider organized lobbyists to block the plan. The compromise eventually struck between Pennsylvania municipalities and Verizon, which allows municipalities to offer telecommunications services after giving Verizon a right of first refusal has resulted in a certain degree of uncertainty in the future of municipally sponsored Internet access. This Note examines this compromise and argues that it represents an optimistic future for municipally sponsored telecommunications services. The Note first discusses the history of Wi-Fi technology and the development of the law regarding municipally owned telecommunications providers. It then addresses the likelihood that the Philadelphia plan will succeed and the plans implications on telecommunications providers