Empirical Study of Effect of Deregulation, Competition, and Contents on Mobile Phone Diffusion: Case of the Japanese 3G Market

The Japanese mobile market has recently shown a remarkable growth in the last decade, with more than 106.2 million 3G (3rd Generation, or W-CDMA) subscribers and 4.4 million 2G (2nd Generation, or PDC) as of December 2009. This paper attempts to analyze factors promoting Japanese mobile phone, focusing on 3G technologies. Factors promoting it can be summarized as follows: (1) deregulations by government, such as MNP (Mobile Number Portability) and collocation; (2) competition among carriers, such as introduction of new charge plans; (3) technological development, such as connection speed; and (4) contents and applications. This paper utilizes the panel data of three main carriers of the mobile phone market, namely, NTTdocomo, au (KDDI), and Softbank. As for a model for estimation, we apply that of Madden and Coble-Neal [2004] which studied the relationship between fixed and mobile phone with the panel data by the dynamic random effects estimation. Dynamic models are based not only on the assumption such that carriers do not instantaneously adjust to satisfy their long-term demand but also on network externalities. Besides, the paper applies a dynamic panel data model in order to take care of the endogeneity problem. This paper deals with this problem rigorously by applying Arellano-Bond estimator (Arellano and Bond [1991] and Arellano and Bover [1995]) which estimates exogeneous or predetermined variables, in addition to instrumental variables, using the two-step generalized method of moments (GMM). Based on this framework, this paper identifies service innovations such as entertainment, flat rate charges are found significant for the 3G mobile phone diffusion. --dynamic panel data analysis,competition policy,network externalities,endogeneity,m-commerce,e-entertainment,MNP

The case for "Open Access" communications infrastructure in Africa : the SAT-3/WASC cable - a briefing

This study examines the impact the SAT-3 fibre optic submarine cable has had on telecommunications in four African countries has found that the potential of the cable has not been properly exploited. Instead, ownership of the cable by telecoms incumbents in the countries researched has reinforced their market positions. The study analyses the effect ownership of the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3/WASC) has had on the communications markets in Angola, Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal. It focuses on the 'Africa section' of the submarine cable -running along the west coast of Africa down to southern Africa- with a specific emphasis on access and cost

The rise and demise of Lucent Technologies

We analyze the rise and demise of Lucent Technologies from the time that it was spun off from AT&T in April 1996 to its merger with Alcatel in December 2006. The analysis, contained in the three sections that form the body of this paper, considers three questions concerning Lucent’s performance over the decade of its existence. 1.How was Lucent, with over $20 billion in sales in 1995 as a division of AT&T, able to almost double its size by achieving a compound growth rate of over 17 percent per year from 1995 to 1999? 2.What was the relationship between Lucent’s growth strategy during the Internet boom and the company’s financial difficulties in the Internet crash of 2001-2003 when the Lucent was on the brink of bankruptcy? 3.After extensive restructuring during the telecommunications industry downturn of 2001-2003, why was Lucent unable to re-emerge as an innovative competitor in the communications equipment industry when the industry recovered?Communications equipment; innovation; global competition; financialization

International benchmarking of remote, rural and urban telecommunications services

This paper looks at the extent of differences in the accessibility, quality and price of telecommunications services between remote, rural and urban areas in Australia and other comparable countries. It finds that users experience some disadvantages compared with urban users, but generally no more so than in other countries. This is despite the higher cost of providing services in more sparsely populated Australia. The prices of traditional telephone voice services are similar in rural and urban areas in Australia and in most of the countries studied (although callers’ bills can be higher depending on call patterns).telecommunications - remote - rural - urban - Internet - mobile phones - PSTN

Channel Estimation in Multicarrier Communication Systems

The data rate and spectrum efficiency of wireless mobile communications have been significantly improved over the last decade or so. Recently, the advanced systems such as 3GPP LTE and terrestrial digital TV broadcasting have been sophisticatedly developed using OFDM and CDMA technology. In general, most mobile communication systems transmit bits of information in the radio space to the receiver. The radio channels in mobile radio systems are usually multipath fading channels, which cause inter-symbol interference (ISI) in the received signal. To remove ISI from the signal, there is a need of strong equalizer which requires knowledge on the channel impulse response (CIR).This is primarily provided by a separate channel estimator. Usually the channel estimation is based on the known sequence of bits, which is unique for a certain transmitter and which is repeated in every transmission burst. Thus, the channel estimator is able to estimate CIR for each burst separately by exploiting the known transmitted bits and the corresponding received samples. In this thesis we investigate and compare various efficient channel estimation schemes for OFDM systems which can also be extended to MC DS-CDMA systems.The channel estimation can be performed by either inserting pilot tones into all subcarriers of OFDM symbols with a specific period or inserting pilot tones into each OFDM symbol. Two major types of pilot arrangement such as block type and comb type pilot have been focused employing Least Square Error (LSE) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) channel estimators. Block type pilot sub-carriers is especially suitable for slow-fading radio channels whereas comb type pilots provide better resistance to fast fading channels. Also comb type pilot arrangement is sensitive to frequency selectivity when comparing to block type arrangement. However, there is another supervised technique called Implicit Training (IT) based channel estimation which exploits the first order statistics in the received data, induced by superimposing periodic training sequences with good correlation properties, along with the information symbols. Hence, the need for additional time slots for training the equalizer is avoided. The performance of the estimators is presented in terms of the mean square estimation error (MSEE) and bit error rate (BER)

Communication infrastructure study for precise positioning services in regional Queensland

Providing precise positioning services in regional areas to support agriculture, mining, and construction sectors depends on the availability of ground continuously operating GNSS reference stations and communications linking these stations to central computers and users. With the support of CRC for Spatial Information, a more comprehensive review has been completed recently to examine various wired and wireless communication links available for precise positioning services, in particular in the Queensland regional areas. The study covers a wide range of communication technologies that are currently available, including fixed, mobile wireless, and Geo-stationary and or low earth orbiting satellites. These technologies are compared in terms of bandwidth, typical latency, reliability, coverage, and costs. Additionally, some tests were also conducted to determine the performances of different systems in the real environment. Finally, based on user application requirements, the paper discusses the suitability of different communication links

Convergence: the next big step

Recently, web based multimedia services have gained popularity and have proven themselves to be viable means of communication. This has inspired the telecommunication service providers and network operators to reinvent themselves to try and provide value added IP centric services. There was need for a system which would allow new services to be introduced rapidly with reduced capital expense (CAPEX) and operational expense (OPEX) through increased efficiency in network utilization. Various organizations and standardization agencies have been working together to establish such a system. Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a result of these efforts. IMS is an application level system. It is being developed by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and 3GPP2 (3rd Generation Partnership Project 2) in collaboration with IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector), and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) etc. Initially, the main aim of IMS was to bring together the internet and the cellular world, but it has extended to include traditional wire line telecommunication systems as well. It utilizes existing internet protocols such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting protocol), and COPS (Common Open Policy Service) etc, and modifies them to meet the stringent requirements of reliable, real time communication systems. The advantages of IMS include easy service quality management (QoS), mobility management, service control and integration. At present a lot of attention is being paid to providing bundled up services in the home environment. Service providers have been successful in providing traditional telephony, high speed internet and cable services in a single package. But there is very little integration among these services. IMS can provide a way to integrate them as well as extend the possibility of various other services to be added to allow increased automation in the home environment. This thesis extends the concept of IMS to provide convergence and facilitate internetworking of the various bundled services available in the home environment; this may include but is not limited to communications (wired and wireless), entertainment, security etc. In this thesis, I present a converged home environment which has a number of elements providing a variety of communication and entertainment services. The proposed network would allow effective interworking of these elements, based on IMS architecture. My aim is to depict the possible advantages of using IMS to provide convergence, automation and integration at the residential level