Business models for deployment and operation of femtocell networks; - Are new cooperation strategies needed for mobile operators?

In this paper we discuss different business models for deployment and operation of femtocell networks intended for provisioning of public mobile broad band access services. In these types of business cases the operators use femtocells in order to reduce investments in "more costly" macro networks since the traffic can be "offloaded" to "less costly" femtocell networks. This is in contrast to the many business cases presented in Femtoforum where femtocells mainly are discussed as a solution to improve indoor coverage for voice services in homes and small offices, usually for closed user groups The main question discussed in this paper is if "operators need to consider new forms of cooperation strategies in order to enable large scale deployment of femtocells for public access?" By looking into existing solutions for indoor wireless access services we claim that the answer is both "Yes" and "No". No, since many types of cooperation are already in place for indoor deployment. Yes, because mobile operators need to re-think the femtocell specific business models, from approaches based on singe operator networks to different forms of cooperation involving multi-operator solutions, e.g. roaming and network sharing. --

Revenue requirements for mobile operators with ultra-high mobile broadband data traffic growth.

Mobile broadband data access over cellular networks has been established as a major new service in just a few years. The mobile broadband penetration has risen from almost zero to between 10 and 15 per cent in Western European leading markets from 2007 to the end of 2009. More than 75% of network traffic was broadband data in 2009, and the data volumes are growing rapidly. But the revenue generation is the reverse as the average for operators in Europe in 2009 was around 77 per cent of service revenues from voice, 10 per cent from SMS and 13 per cent from other data. Voice and broadband data service are built on two quite different business models. Voice pricing is volume based. Revenue depends linearly on the number of voice minutes. Broadband data service on the other hand is mainly flat fee based even if different levels are being introduced as well as tiers. Revenue is decoupled from traffic and therefore also from operating costs and investment requirements. This is what we define as a revenue gap. Earnings as well as internal financing will suffer from increasing traffic per user unless the flat fee can be raised or changed to volume based, other revenue can be obtained and/or operating costs and investments can be reduced accordingly. Observable trends and common forecasts indicate strong growth of mobile broadband traffic as well as declining revenue from mobile voice in the next five year period. This outlook suggests a prospective revenue gap with weak top-line growth and expanding operating costs and investment requirements. This is not only a profitability and cash flow issue. It may also severely restrict the industry's revenue and profit growth potential if it is handled mainly by cost-cutting. In sections 2 - 4 we describe related work, our contribution, the specific research questions as well as the methodology and its problems. Section 5 is an overview of mobile operators' revenue, its sources and development till today. Section 6 presents trends, developments and published forecasts that may be relevant for the future. Section 7 contains our conclusions. --Mobile broadband,mobile operator revenues,revenue requirements,voice revenues,non-voice revenues

Mobile Music Business Models in Asia\u27s Emerging Markets

In the telecom business, there has been a heavy competition from Internet, media and handset vendors companies. These over-the-top (OTT) players offer compiling telecom services, cause a transformation in the telecom business ecosystem, and the most challenging services posed here are media services. China, India and Indonesia, as world’s emerging markets in Asia, are predicted to take the largest share in the global mobile traffic explosion by 2015. It is critical for mobile network operators (MNOs) in this region to explore strategy for mobile media services, as mobile broadband is likely preferred compared to fixed broadband. In this paper, we analyze and compare mobile music business models used in these markets and structure the relation models between the key actors, using Actors, Relations and Business Activities (ARA) model. We present the economic models that are emerging, and an insight of why and how these multitudes actors are betting on currently. We found that the MNOs generally have a much stronger position compared to their counterparts in the developed markets, and the personalization services, like ring-back tone, are still a huge success. The actors tend to deliver the services by their own, rather than to collaborate in a horizontal business setting

5G as an opportunity for the rupture of the duopoly in the mobile market

Mobile networks transformation into the main support for Internet access since last decade made Apple and Alphabet the most lucrative companies in a market where they were not present until then. The reinterpretation of platform model as multilateral markets where the value of service providers tends to increase, largely relinquishing control over supply, relegated telecommunications operators to access providers role in a market built on their own networks. The evolution towards the 5G could reverse this tendency to concentration by opening new markets for operators in the industrial sector within the Internet of Things (IoT), but also deepening the personalization of the offer to the user. This article analyzes the main milestones in the evolution of mobile networks, the strategies employed by Apple and Alphabet to position themselves as leaders in the most profitable niches, the basic characteristics of 5G and why this system can be an opportunity for operators to overcome the current duopoly

Спосіб передачі даних у високонавантажених мобільних мережах

Актуальність теми. Мобільний зв'язок є невід’ємною частиною нашого теперішнього життя. Чимало речей у нашому житті так чи інакше пов’язані з використання мобільного пристрою. Але телефон майже не несе користі якщо використовувати його без мобільного зв’язку. Тому надзвичайно важливою характеристикою мобільного зв’язку є його якість. Одним з показників якості є стабільність, що характеризує можливість у будь який момент часу отримати доступ до мережі. Зазвичай якість мобільного зв’язку є прийнятною та задовольняє більшість потреб користувачів. Проте існують ситуації, коли базові станції мобільного зв’язку не витримують великої кількості користувачів і через це якість з’єднання суттєво погіршується. В таких випадках навіть коротке текстове повідомлення може передаватися протягом декількох хвилин. Така проблема є характерною під час масових скупчень людей, наприклад, на концертах, фестивалях або ярмарках. Метою роботи є покращення способу передачі даних у мобільній мережі з використанням алгоритму, який зможе зменшити надлишкове навантаження мережі без потреби модифікації існуючого обладнання. Об’єктом дослідження є мережі стільникового зв’язку та методи обміну даними між мобільними пристроями. Предметом дослідження є характеристика навантаження стільникової мережі, проблеми що пов’язані з перевантаженням та методи вирішення надлишкового навантаження мережі. Методи дослідження. Моделювання роботи мережі з можливістю зміни основних параметрів мережі, що стосуються досліду, та відстеження показників мережі у кожен момент часу. Наукова новизна полягає у створенні способу передачі даних у мережі, що дозволяє зменшити надлишкове навантаження мережі без значної втрати у швидкості передачі даних, і при цьому, без потреби змін у апаратному забезпеченні. Практична цінність полягає у пришвидшені передачі даних у високонавантажених мережах при незначних ресурсних затратах як з боку користувача так і з боку поставника послуг передачі даних. Структура та обсяг роботи. Магістерська дисертація складається з вступу, чотирьох розділів, висновків та додатків. У вступі представлена загальна характеристика проблеми, обґрунтована необхідність розробки нового алгоритму, сформульована задача роботи. У першому розділі дається визначення стільникової мережі та описані основні характеристики роботи стільникової мережі. У другому розділі описані можливі проблеми, дається визначення високонавантажених мереж, та проведена оцінка існуючих рішень та їх недоліків. У третьому розділі наведено покращений спосіб передачі даних у високонавантажених мережах, описані переваги на недоліки. У четвертому розділі, наведено приклад роботи алгоритму на різних наборах даних, та проведений аналіз результатів. У висновках описано результати дослідження.Actuality of theme. Mobile communications are an integral part of our lives today. Many things in our lives are related to the use of a mobile device in one way or another. But the phone is almost useless if you use it without a mobile connection. Therefore, the quality of mobile communication is an extremely important characteristic. One of the indicators of quality is stability, which characterizes the ability to access the network at any time. Mobile quality is generally acceptable and meets most user needs. However, there are situations where mobile base stations do not withstand a large number of users and as a result, the quality of the connection deteriorates significantly. In such cases, even a short text message can be transmitted within minutes. This problem is typical during mass gatherings, such as concerts, festivals or fairs. The aim of the work is to improve the method of data transmission in the mobile network using an algorithm that can reduce the overload of the network without the need to modify existing equipment. The object of research is cellular networks and methods of data exchange between mobile devices. The subject of the study is the characteristics of the load on the cellular network, the problems associated with congestion and methods of solving the overload of the network. Research methods. Simulation of network operation with the ability to change the basic parameters of the network related to the experiment, and tracking network performance at any time. The scientific novelty is to create a method of data transmission in the network, which reduces the overload of the network without a significant loss in data rate, and without the need for changes in hardware. The practical value lies in the accelerated data transfer in high-load networks at low resource costs both by the user and by the data service provider. Structure and scope of work. The master's dissertation consists of an introduction, four chapters, conclusions and appendices. The introduction presents the general characteristics of the problem, substantiates the need to develop a new algorithm, formulates the task. The first section defines the cellular network and describes the main characteristics of the cellular network. The second section describes possible problems, identifies high-load networks, and assesses existing solutions and their shortcomings. The third section presents an improved method of data transmission in high-load networks, describes the advantages and disadvantages. In the fourth section, an example of the algorithm on different data sets is given, and the results are analyzed. The conclusions describe the results of the study

Media Processing in Video Conferences for Cooperating Over the Top and Operator Based Networks

Telecom operators have dominated the communication industry for a long time by providing services with guaranteed quality of service. Such services are provided by the operator at the cost of maintaining a high grade network. With the introduction of broadband and internet, many over the top (OTT) services have emerged. These services use the underlying operator networks as a mere bit pipe while all service intelligence resides in the application running on the client device. Introduction of OTT services has seen a good response from general users who are no longer bound to services provided by the network operator. This in turn has caused operators and telecom companies to loose the ownership of their customers. This thesis takes media processing in video conferencing as a case study to compare the two competing domains of operator networks and OTT networks. Both domains offer video conferencing to end users, but they follow different architectures. The study shows that OTT services can perform much better if they utilize support of the underlying network. This will also bring the user base back to the network operator. The proposal is to turn the competition into cooperation between both parties. Assessments are done from both technical as well as business perspectives to assert that such cooperative agreements are possible and should be experimented in real life

Aspects of knowledge mining on minimizing drive tests in self-organizing cellular networks

The demand for mobile data traffic is about to explode and this drives operators to find ways to further increase the offered capacity in their networks. If networks are deployed in the traditional way, this traffic explosion will be addressed by increasing the number of network elements significantly. This is expected to increase the costs and the complexity of planning, operating and optimizing the networks. To ensure effective and cost-efficient operations, a higher degree of automation and self-organization is needed in the next generation networks. For this reason, the concept of self-organizing networks was introduced in LTE covering multitude of use cases. This was specifically done in the areas of self-configuration, self-optimization and selfhealing of networks. From an operator’s perspective, automated collection and analysis of field measurements while complementing the traditional drive test campaigns is one of the top use cases that can provide significant cost savings in self-organizing networks. This thesis studies the Minimization of Drive Tests in self-organizing cellular networks from three different aspects. The first aspect is network operations, and particularly the network fault management process, as the traditional drive tests are often conducted for troubleshooting purposes. The second aspect is network functionality, and particularly the technical details about the specified measurement and signaling procedures in different network elements that are needed for automating the collection of the field measurement data. The third aspect concerns the analysis of the measurement databases that is a process used for increasing the degree of automation and self-awareness in the networks, and particularly the mathematical means for autonomously finding meaningful patterns of knowledge from huge amounts of data. Although the above mentioned technical areas have been widely discussed in previous literature, it has been done separately and only a few papers discuss how for example, knowledge mining is employed for processing field measurement data in a way that minimizes the drive tests in self-organizing LTE networks. The objective of the thesis is to use well known knowledge mining principles to develop novel self-healing and self-optimization algorithms. These algorithms analyze MDT databases to detect coverage holes, sleeping cells and other geographical areas of anomalous network behavior. The results of the research suggest that by employing knowledge mining in processing the MDT databases, one can acquire knowledge for discriminating between different network problems and detecting anomalous network behavior. For example, downlink coverage optimization is enhanced by classifying RLF reports into coverage, interference and handover problems. Moreover, by incorporating a normalized power headroom report with the MDT reports, better discrimination between uplink coverage problems and the parameterization problems is obtained. Knowledge mining is also used to detect sleeping cells by means of supervised and unsupervised learning. The detection framework is based on a novel approach where diffusion mapping is used to learn about network behavior in its healthy state. The sleeping cells are detected by observing an increase in the number of anomalous reports associated with a certain cell. The association is formed by correlating the geographical location of anomalous reports with the estimated dominance areas of the cells. Moreover, RF fingerprint positioning of the MDT reports is studied and the results suggest that RF fingerprinting can provide a quite detailed location estimation in dense heterogeneous networks. In addition, self-optimization of the mobility state estimation parameters is studied in heterogeneous LTE networks and the results suggest that by gathering MDT measurements and constructing statistical velocity profiles, MSE parameters can be adjusted autonomously, thus resulting in reasonably good classification accuracy. The overall outcome of the thesis is as follows. By automating the classification of the measurement reports between certain problems, network engineers can acquire knowledge about the root causes of the performance degradation in the networks. This saves time and resources and results in a faster decision making process. Due to the faster decision making process the duration of network breaks become shorter and the quality of the network is improved. By taking into account the geographical locations of the anomalous field measurements in the network performance analysis, finer granularity for estimating the location of the problem areas can be achieved. This can further improve the operational decision making that guides the corresponding actions for example, where to start the network optimization. Moreover, by automating the time and resource consuming task of tuning the mobility state estimation parameters, operators can enhance the mobility performance of the high velocity UEs in heterogeneous radio networks in a cost-efficient and backward compatible manner