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. --

Business Innovation Strategies to Reduce the Revenue Gap for Wireless Broadband Services

Mobile broadband is increasing rapidly both when it comes to traffic and number of subscriptions. The swift growth of the demand will require substantial capacity expansions. Operators are challenged by the fact that revenues from mobile broadband are limited, just a few per cent of APRU, and thus not compensating for declining voice revenues, creating a so called "revenue gap". Concurrently, mobile broadband dominates the traffic, set to grow strongly. In this paper we analyze the potential of different strategies for operators to reduce or bridge the revenue gap. The main options are to reduce network costs, to increase access prices and to exploit new revenue streams. The focus in the paper is on cost & capacity challenges and solutions in the network domain. Operators can cooperate and share sites and spectrum, which could be combined with off-loading heavy traffic to less costly local networks. In the network analysis we illustrate the cost impacts of different levels of demand, re-use of existing base station sites, sharing of base stations and spectrum and deployment of a denser network. A sensitivity analysis illustrates the impact on total revenues if access prices are increased, whether new types of services generate additional revenues, and if it fills the revenue gap. Our conclusion is that the different technical options to reduce the revenue gap can be linked to business strategies that include cooperation with both other operators as well as with non-telecom actors. Hence, innovations in the business domain enable technical solutions to be better or fully exploited.Wireless Internet access, data traffic, revenues, network costs, spectrum, deployment strategies, HSPA, LTE, operator cooperation, value added services, NFC, B2B2C.

Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogeneous network deployment based on micro, pico and femto-cells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technologyComment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

A survey of self organisation in future cellular networks

This article surveys the literature over the period of the last decade on the emerging field of self organisation as applied to wireless cellular communication networks. Self organisation has been extensively studied and applied in adhoc networks, wireless sensor networks and autonomic computer networks; however in the context of wireless cellular networks, this is the first attempt to put in perspective the various efforts in form of a tutorial/survey. We provide a comprehensive survey of the existing literature, projects and standards in self organising cellular networks. Additionally, we also aim to present a clear understanding of this active research area, identifying a clear taxonomy and guidelines for design of self organising mechanisms. We compare strength and weakness of existing solutions and highlight the key research areas for further development. This paper serves as a guide and a starting point for anyone willing to delve into research on self organisation in wireless cellular communication networks

Opportunistic Third-Party Backhaul for Cellular Wireless Networks

With high capacity air interfaces and large numbers of small cells, backhaul -- the wired connectivity to base stations -- is increasingly becoming the cost driver in cellular wireless networks. One reason for the high cost of backhaul is that capacity is often purchased on leased lines with guaranteed rates provisioned to peak loads. In this paper, we present an alternate \emph{opportunistic backhaul} model where third parties provide base stations and backhaul connections and lease out excess capacity in their networks to the cellular provider when available, presumably at significantly lower costs than guaranteed connections. We describe a scalable architecture for such deployments using open access femtocells, which are small plug-and-play base stations that operate in the carrier's spectrum but can connect directly into the third party provider's wired network. Within the proposed architecture, we present a general user association optimization algorithm that enables the cellular provider to dynamically determine which mobiles should be assigned to the third-party femtocells based on the traffic demands, interference and channel conditions and third-party access pricing. Although the optimization is non-convex, the algorithm uses a computationally efficient method for finding approximate solutions via dual decomposition. Simulations of the deployment model based on actual base station locations are presented that show that large capacity gains are achievable if adoption of third-party, open access femtocells can reach even a small fraction of the current market penetration of WiFi access points.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure