User Acceptance of Mobile Broadband in Nigeria

Broadband access has been identified as a fundamental part of any thriving economy because it contributes to GDP.  Besides, mobile broadband has been seen as the means for which developing countries can leapfrog into the post-industrial era. According to the figure released by Nigerian Communications Commission in April, 2014, the number of mobile internet subscribers had dropped from 64.5 to 63 million as at February, 2014 and steadily rose to 87 million in April, 2015. Considering those figures and comparing it with the national population figure of about 178 million, and the mobile telephone subscription figure of about 145 million in Nigeria, the rate of acceptance of mobile broadband is not an appreciable penetration rate to substantially drive the adoption of other e-services like mobile commerce, mobile payment services throughout the entire country, except for few cities. To bridge this gap and foster faster rate of acceptance of mobile internet, this paper sought to investigate the factors that could stimulate the intention of users to use mobile broadband in Nigeria by empirically validating an integrated research model, adopted from the unified theory of acceptance and use technology (UTUAT) model by integrating mobile broadband motivation, government support and perceived price value constructs. Online survey data was collected from 376 respondents and analyzed using partial least square (SmartPLS) technique. Result shows that mobile broadband motivation, government support, perceived price value, social influence’ and facilitating conditions are significant determinants of intention behavior to use mobile broadband in Nigeria. The findings of this research are vital to telecoms and broadband service providers in understanding the factors that stimulate people’s behavior for subscribing to mobile internet and for deploying infrastructures and services; it will also help government and telecoms regulators to streamline their policy towards meeting these factors. To the academia, this integrated research model presents an extended view of the UTAUT model for investigating the determinants of broadband acceptance in developing countries. Keywords: mobile broadband, motivation, government support, Nigeri

Network sharing and co-investments in NGN as a way to fulfill the goal with the digital agenda

The European Commission and most European countries have set ambitious broadband targets aiming to provide up to 100 Mbits to the end-customers. On back of a declining fixed market, negative growth for operators and a slow take up of fiber while maintaining high capex levels operators will ultimately be forced to take innovative approaches towards broadband investments. This paper relates co-investments in NGA to the regulatory framework in the form of SMP regulation and competition law making the conclusion that the current regulatory framework is sufficient to avoid a distorted competition on the market. A number of examples of ongoing co-investment projects are presented underscoring a growing interest for co-investments and indicating that co-investments, at this point, are not hampering competition. The mobile industry has gradually moved towards network sharing indicating a tendency towards vertical disintegration, although so far only a tendency. The ongoing structural separation of Telecom New Zealand with the establishment of a separate network and wholesale company is an indication of this development. The paper concludes by stating that regulators have appropriate tools to handle potential competition issues regarding coinvestments, that co-investments could be a vehicle for reaching the broadband targets, that there are efficiency gains for operators to make by lower Opex and capex, and ultimately giving network companies the means to utilize their balance sheet in order to increase the return.NGA,co-investment,SMP regulation,horizontal and vertical agreements,capex,network sharing,financial gearing

Swept Notch NPR for Linearity Assessment of Systems Presenting Long-Term Memory Effects

Mobile and Satellite applications are progressively moving towards broader bandwidths, so nonlinear long-term memory effects manifested by RF Transmitters must not be neglected. This trend evidences the need for more informative and robust broadband linearity metrics. This work proposes a swept notch noise power ratio to capture co-channel long-term memory effects, moving the scientific discussion toward the definition of useful metrics for broadband nonlinear memory assessment

Fixed-to-mobile broadband substitution in South Africa.

Broadband is an important technology for development. Research has proven that development is directly linked to high speed internet. Over the past few years mobile broadband has overtaken fixed-line broadband as a primary connection for many households. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate how pricing and quality of service have either encouraged or inhibited fixed-to-mobile broadband in South Africa, and research if there are any other factors affecting broadband growth. The study, conducted in a predominantly middle-income neighbourhood, found that there is a trend towards fixed-to-mobile broadband substitution in South Africa

Flexibly reconfigurable fiber-wireless network using wavelength routing techniques: the ACTS project AC349 PRISMA

A dynamically reconfigurable fiber-wireless network using flexible wavelength routing techniques is proposed by the PRISMA project, which offers a "forecast-tolerant" solution for handling a wide variety of wireless services and capacity demands as may emerge in the fast evolving market of mobile communications. This approach can considerably increase the operation efficiency of wireless networks for broadband nomadic services (wireless LANs). It also supports the evolution from GSM and GPRS towards UMTS, and the entry of new operators and/or services into the liberalized mobile communications market. The system has been implemented in a field trial and has been operated successfully with real users and broadband nomadic services. The system concept is ready for further development into products

Fixed-Mobile Convergence in the 5G era: From Hybrid Access to Converged Core

The availability of different paths to communicate to a user or device introduces several benefits, from boosting enduser performance to improving network utilization. Hybrid access is a first step in enabling convergence of mobile and fixed networks, however, despite traffic optimization, this approach is limited as fixed and mobile are still two separate core networks inter-connected through an aggregation point. On the road to 5G networks, the design trend is moving towards an aggregated network, where different access technologies share a common anchor point in the core. This enables further network optimization in addition to hybrid access, examples are userspecific policies for aggregation and improved traffic balancing across different accesses according to user, network, and service context. This paper aims to discuss the ongoing work around hybrid access and network convergence by Broadband Forum and 3GPP. We present some testbed results on hybrid access and analyze some primary performance indicators such as achievable data rates, link utilization for aggregated traffic and session setup latency. We finally discuss the future directions for network convergence to enable future scenarios with enhanced configuration capabilities for fixed and mobile convergence.Comment: to appear in IEEE Networ

Spectrum Reallocation and the National Broadband Plan

Of the several significant changes in United States telecommunications policy proposed by the National Broadband Plan, none are more substantial than its proposals for spectrum policy. In particular, the Plan proposes to reallocate 500 MHz of spectrum from broadcast television, mobile satellite, government and other current uses to mobile broadband through the use of innovative incentive auctions and other voluntary, market-oriented mechanisms. The Plan\u27s spectrum proposals have the potential to be a major step forward in the decades-long, bipartisan effort to replace command-and-control spectrum allocation with a more flexible, dynamic and market-oriented approach. Considerable work remains to be done, however, and only time and future developments will tell whether the Plan signals a significant step towards a more market-oriented policy