Integration of WiMAX and WiFi Services: Bandwidth Sharing and Channel Collaboration

and WiMAX networks; however, most of them either concentrate on the design of collaborated protocols or figure out the issue without the overall consideration of customer preference and contract design. In the present study, we consider a wireless service market in which there are two wireless service providers operating WiFi and WiMAX, respectively. One of the research dimensions given in the study is whether wireless operators implement bandwidth sharing, while the other is whether wireless operators make decisions independently or jointly. By involving customer preference and wholesale price contract in the present model, we find that bandwidth sharing would benefit a WiMAX service provider, yet a WiFi service provider has no significant saving under a wholesale price contract. In addition, the profit of a WiMAX service may increase with WiFi coverage when bandwidth sharing is implemented but decease with WiFi coverage when both wireless services operate without bandwidth sharing. Besides, the WiMAX service provider would allocate more capacity when average usage rate increases, but decrease the amount of capacity when average usage rate is too large

Challenges to support edge-as-a-service

A new era in telecommunications is emerging. Virtualized networking functions and resources will offer network operators a way to shift the balance of expenditure from capital to operational, opening up networks to new and innovative services. This article introduces the concept of edge as a service (EaaS), a means of harnessing the flexibility of virtualized network functions and resources to enable network operators to break the tightly coupled relationship they have with their infrastructure and enable more effective ways of generating revenue. To achieve this vision, we envisage a virtualized service access interface that can be used to programmatically alter access network functions and resources available to service providers in an elastic fashion. EaaS has many technically and economically difficult challenges that must be addressed before it can become a reality; the main challenges are summarized in this article

Oligopolies in private spectrum commons: analysis and regulatory implications

In an effort to make more spectrum available, recent initiatives by the FCC let mobile providers offer spot service of their licensed spectrum to secondary users, hence paving the way to dynamic secondary spectrum markets. This dissertation investigates secondary spectrum markets under different regulatory regimes by identifying profitability conditions and possible competitive outcomes in an oligopoly model. We consider pricing in a market where multiple providers compete for secondary demand. First, we analyze the market outcomes when providers adopt a coordinated access policy, where, besides pricing, a provider can elect to apply admission control on secondary users based on the state of its network. We next consider a competition when providers implement an uncoordinated access policy (i.e., no admission control). Through our analysis, we identify profitability conditions and fundamental price thresholds, including break-even and market sharing prices. We prove that regardless of the specific form of the secondary demand function, competition under coordinated access always leads to a price war outcome. In contrast, under uncoordinated access, market sharing becomes a viable market outcome if the intervals of prices for which the providers are willing to share the market overlap. We then turn our attention to how a network provider use carrier (spectrum) aggregation in order to lower its break-even price and gain an edge over its competition. To this end, we determine the optimal (minimum) level of carrier aggregation that a smaller provider needs. Under a quality-driven (QD) regime, we establish an efficient way of numerically calculating the optimal carrier aggregation and derive scaling laws. We extend the results to delay-related metrics and show their applications to profitable pricing in secondary spectrum markets. Finally, we consider the problem of profitability over a spatial topology, where identifying system behavior suffers from the curse of dimensionality. Hence, we propose an approximation model that captures system behavior to the first-order and provide an expression to calculate the break-even price at each network location and provide simulation results for accuracy comparison. All of our results hold for general forms of demand, thus avoid restricting assumptions of customer preferences and the valuation of the spectrum

Telecommunication Economics

This book constitutes a collaborative and selected documentation of the scientific outcome of the European COST Action IS0605 Econ@Tel "A Telecommunications Economics COST Network" which run from October 2007 to October 2011. Involving experts from around 20 European countries, the goal of Econ@Tel was to develop a strategic research and training network among key people and organizations in order to enhance Europe's competence in the field of telecommunications economics. Reflecting the organization of the COST Action IS0605 Econ@Tel in working groups the following four major research areas are addressed: - evolution and regulation of communication ecosystems; - social and policy implications of communication technologies; - economics and governance of future networks; - future networks management architectures and mechanisms

Telecommunication Economics

This book constitutes a collaborative and selected documentation of the scientific outcome of the European COST Action IS0605 Econ@Tel "A Telecommunications Economics COST Network" which run from October 2007 to October 2011. Involving experts from around 20 European countries, the goal of Econ@Tel was to develop a strategic research and training network among key people and organizations in order to enhance Europe's competence in the field of telecommunications economics. Reflecting the organization of the COST Action IS0605 Econ@Tel in working groups the following four major research areas are addressed: - evolution and regulation of communication ecosystems; - social and policy implications of communication technologies; - economics and governance of future networks; - future networks management architectures and mechanisms

Techno-economic Model for Rural Broadband Access Implementation

Unatoč brojnim koristima koje proizlaze iz primjene širokopojasnih pristupnih tehnologija i usluga, danas postoji mnoštvo ruralnih područja u Svijetu u kojima širokopojasni pristup Internetu nije dostupan. Ova se disertacija bavi problematikom vezanom uz uvođenje širokopojasnog pristupa Internetu u ruralnim područjima. U disertaciji je provedena analiza stanja te su utvrđene razlike u stopama usvajanja i primjeni širokopojasnih tehnologija i usluga u odabranim ruralnim i urbanim područjima. Nadalje, prikazana je metodologija za rješavanje problematike nedovoljne dostupnosti širokopojasnog pristupa Internetu u ruralnim područjima, odnosno problematike tzv. digitalnog jaza - određivanje najrelevantnijih čimbenika za uvođenje širokopojasnog pristupa Internetu uz primjenu regresijske analize i uključivanje tih čimbenika u postupak tehno-ekonomskog modeliranja. Isto tako, u radu su razmotreni i načini na koje se tehno-ekonomske metode modeliranja mogu koristiti pri povezivanju analiziranih tehnoekonomski orijentiranih zahtjeva korisnika (za kvalitetom usluga, količinom prometa, pristupnom brzinom, cijenom usluga) te zahtjeva operatora za isplativim tehničkim rješenjima za ruralna područja. Zato je definiran novi okvir za analizu i modeliranje eksplicitno definiranih zahtjeva. Predloženi okvir služi kao nadogradnja tehno-ekonomskih modela i omogućuje detaljniju analizu specifičnosti različitih ruralnih područja temeljenu na dostupnim podacima. Na posljetku, prikazana je korisnost predloženog modela pri izboru najboljih strategija za operatore u konkurentskom okruženju.Despite the numerous benefits arising from the application of broadband access technologies and services, in the majority of rural areas in the world broadband Internet access is not yet available. Therefore, the thesis deals with the issues related to the introduction of broadband Internet access in rural areas. In the thesis, the differences in the adoption rates of broadband technology and services in rural and urban areas for several studied cases are examined. The given results indicated a lower level of broadband adoption in rural compared to urban areas, i.e. the presence of the digital divide. Therefore, the selected methodology for addressing the digital divide problem is introduced – the determination of the most relevant factors for broadband adoption using regression analysis, and the inclusion of these factors in the techno-economic modeling process. Furthermore, the techno-economic modeling methods used for connecting analyzed techno-economically oriented user requirements (for the quality of broadband services, the broadband traffic amount, the broadband access speed, and the broadband service price) with the operators’ requirements on the cost effective business models in rural areas are considered. Therefore, a new framework for analyzing and modeling the explicitly defined users and operators’ requirements is proposed. The proposed framework serves as an upgrade for the existing techno-economic models and allows a detailed analysis of the specificities of different rural areas, based on the available data. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed model application in choosing the best business strategies for operators in a competitive environment is shown