A mobile payment service is much more than the transaction, the payment is one part but other types of services and values can be added. In a Swedish research project with public transportation companies KTH researchers look into mobile services for the public transport. The mobile services include integrated solutions for information services, ticketing and payments. For the public transport sector, payment and ticket solutions is one way to attract new types of customers, to decrease barriers for users and to increase the use of public transport in general. These mobile services mainly target segment that do not use public transport on a daily basis, both car drivers (that never or seldom use public transport) and those that quite often (but not always) use public transport. From a research perspective, it is interesting to study mobile services for public transport since it is used by many persons – and often. If mobile payments can take off in this area it may be an “island” that can grow.
In this paper we consider business feasibility analysis of systems and services using cognitive radio and secondary use of spectrum. The approach is generally applicable to business analysis of services using "new" technology but the analysis is focused on cellular use of TV white space. The paper describes what can be learnt from history when mobile technologies have been introduced in the market. New services introduced by new actors are challenging since the market entrant need to invest in infrastructure and marketing and to build up a customer base. Hence the role and position of existing actors and services need to be considered. Promising business cases for mobile broadband services using cognitive radio and secondary spectrum access are presented for both wide area and local area systems. The difference between wide and local area network deployment and business are analyzed providing implications for future local area wireless systems.
This paper analyzes the technological development of local access provisioning of wireless broadband through the study of commercial forces of push-pull character behind its development. The work is conducted within the Novel Access Provisioning (NAP) project that is a joint techno-economic research effort between the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and the Swedish Telecom Agency (PTS). This paper reports the findings from a series of interviews with main representatives from actors within and outside the telecom industry confined to the Scandinavian market. The aim of the paper is to increase the understanding for the rate of diffusion of wireless broadband access solutions and to suggest innovative alternatives that may fuel its development.
Network sharing is a commonly used solution for macro cellular networks when mobile operators want to exploit benefits of sharing infrastructure, typically to save network costs. For local area and indoor networks infrastructure sharing using distributed antenna systems (DAS) and repeaters are commonly used solutions to improve indoor coverage. For these applications multi-operator solutions are well known and supported by both standardization bodies and by collaboration practices. However, when local networks are discussed in terms of femtocell solutions, offloading or heterogeneous networks, the multi-operator context seems to be forgotten. Small cells are often presented in a single-operator context. This does not comply with market demand and practices, since facility owners neither want one single mobile operator to dominate the capacity provision nor accept multiple indoor infrastructures provided by multiple mobile operators. In this paper we will discuss the business model implications of different multi-operator solutions for indoor deployment. The key findings are in the areas of: i) how multi-operator small cell solutions can fit into existing market practices when it comes to operator business, ii) how local network operators (3rd parties) and outsourcing can play a role in the business landscape, and iii) how different (novel) spectrum allocation and access strategies can play a role for indoor network deployment.
After year 2000 with the introduction of third generation (3G) mobile networks a new type ofcooperation between competitors emerged, network sharing. Cost reduction is often mentionedas the main driver for network sharing. However, cost aspects are only part of the story “why”operators cooperate. In this paper we discuss multiple aspects of “why” operators cooperate andalso “how” competing mobile operators cooperate.Besides cost the “why” aspect is discussed in terms of market position, market entry andexploitation of the resources and skills of the sharing partner but also drawbacks of sharing. Thepatterns of cooperation are illustrated by analyzing how roles, responsibilities and resources canbe distributed among the mobile operators. The findings are based on case studies where wemake comparison in three different domains. In the time domain we compare network sharing inSweden the years 2000 and 2010. From a cost perspective the drivers to share networks havedecrease since many base station sites can be re-used. Anyway, new network sharing companiesare formed in order to make the network operation more efficient.We also compare cooperation between operators at the Swedish and Indian mobile markets. Inboth countries the competition is very strong. Network sharing is used but in India thecooperation is organized through tower companies, hence the operator cooperation is weak.Finally we look into network sharing principles for indoor network deployment in Sweden. Thecooperation between operators is strong but not as strong as for the network sharing jointventures. The tie between two operators can be said to be weaker since several mobile operators,the facility owner and also enterprises may be included in cooperation. In addition theinvestment risk is lower.
In this paper we analyze the business feasibility of mobile broadband access services using secondary access of spectrum in the TV bands. We use a capacity-cost analysis considering costs for radio equipment, base station sites and radio spectrum. We compare network deployment by a market entrant and an existing mobile operator using either licensed spectrum or TV white spaces. In addition, we compare the impact of high and low spectrum prices using examples from Sweden and India. The analysis shows that market entrants will be in a more difficult position than the established actors. No matter the cost-capacity performance of cognitive radio equipment, a new operator needs to invest in a new infrastructure with sites and transmission. If the spectrum costs are "high" (like in India) the use of TW white spaces is more cost efficient for both existing operators and new operators.
In this paper we look into the business and service platform settings for a number of sharing services interpreted in a broad sense. It includes offering and renting of unused resources, bike and car pools, car rental, co-working spaces, second hand, and recycling. The objective of the study is to identify and describe requirements and features for an open two sided service platform for sharing services. The data set includes more than 30 sharing economy services and initiatives in Sweden. Primary data is collected from around 20 persons representing cities, local communities, providers of sharing services, technology providers and start-ups. We have also interviewed a few users of sharing services, car pools, bike pools, and coworking spaces in order to get some insight about user experience.. The sharing service should typically consider temporary use of idle capacity, usage of a platform enabling sharing and transaction between any persons in an open setting. We consider sharing of both goods and services. The main findings and research contributions are: i) a more clear definition of sharing services using the model with closed/open sets of both users and resources (providers), ii) identification of key values of a sharing service platform (as compared to values of a product or a rental service), and iii) a list of key features to implement in sharing service platforms.
It is envisaged that future internetworking technologies would continue to further the openness of interfaces and open up new business opportunities for new business players. An increased cooperation between different types of providers will result in improved service availability for end-users and in a potentially larger market for operators.
This paper investigates in what way regulatory support is needed to support new business models and value chains. It also discusses whether the deployment of ambient networking concepts is supported by current regulation and if features of Ambient Networks can be identified among emerging networking and business concepts.
Our view is that Ambient Networks concepts like network composition, dynamic roaming and new interfaces will enable the de-coupling of business roles of the traditionally vertically integrated value chain. This will enable increased cooperation both between operators as well as between operators and end-users. Other benefits of this kind of cooperation are that the risk associated with investments in own networks can be reduced and that barriers for new market entrants are lowered, hence this will support an increased competition.
Services based on the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) communications are actively being proposed for several industries. A lot of initiatives are presented for smart cities, smart homes and smart energy systems. But even with advances in new technology and substantial amount of research funding, most of these services are not deployed on a large scale. Innovation is not needed only for the technical solutions but also for the business models and how actors cooperate.In this paper, a number of projects on smart cities, smart homes and energy systems are presented and compared with some successful cases where new IoT and M2M concepts have been applied. Also, an analysis in presented for the benefits and values that can be identified for different IoT services, including cost saving in service provisioning and ease of use for end-users. It is also studied how drivers, such as improvement in resource utilization, are often hampered by the unwillingness of traditional actors to share a service platform, afraid of losing control over their customers.Examples show how the business models changed or need to be changed. The co-existence of services from parallel sectors and within the same sector is studied in this paper and further compared with a case of competing solutions for the same service (mobile parking). The application of new technology entails changes in the organization of actors; this paper reveals the decreased relevance of some traditional actors, like communication providers, in the service delivery when IoT and M2M solutions are adopted.
In this paper we study how IoT technology can be introduced and used in different sectors; industrial IoT, smart energy, smart homes, smart cities, health care and social care, sports and well-being. The research has given increased insights into opportunities and obstacles for the introduction of IoT in different sectors. The main obstacles are considered to be i) specific IoT solutions often tend to be a small part of the overall solution, ii) lack of knowledge about which overall services the IoT solution may be part of, iii) Fragmentation and insufficient scalability, iv) Distrust and hesitation among actors to share data and platforms and finally, v) fear of changing the own business model. The analysis of our cases indicates that most of the challenges occur due to the fact that the solutions initially have been developed using a single firm business model. In order to survive or grow a networked business model is needed.
In this paper we will compare the cost & capacity performance of femtocell and macrocellular networks. The motivation is the possibility to use femtocells as complement or as replacement of wide area networks and hence to save investments in macrocell networks. In this study the femtocells thus are used as a tool for operators to reduce network costs for mobile broadband. This represents another business case than the often presented cases with focus on improved indoor coverage in homes with focus on voice services. Our techno-economic analysis is made as a comparative case study where capacity and cost is analyzed for wireless broadband deployed in a newly built office area with high user density. In addition to wall penetration losses we take into account; the level of user demand, the density of existing macro base station sites, the recent improvements in cost and spectral efficiency for radio access technologies, and the use of wider system bandwidths. The main finding of the study is that femtocell solutions, for the considered demand levels, are more cost efficient when new macro base station sites need to be deployed, otherwise macrocell solutions are more cost-efficient.
Internet access now changes from mainly being a service consumed in own and fixed locations to be a service used at any location. The main topic in this paper is to address what kind of market actor that will be the most important for the provisioning of these public Internet access services. The research questions and methodology are related to business roles, market actors, customer relations, payment options and business mechanisms. The analysis is based on interviews with market actors within and outside the telecom sector that are candidates to take one or several business roles for access provisioning. The main finding of the analysis is that public local access provisioning to a large extent differs from the traditional operator business Actors from outside the telecom sector start to enter telecom business and the main driver is to support the non-telecom core business. The access is often provided based on temporary or short term customer relations.
The introduction of mobile broadband technology, smartphones and dongles has resulted in a tremendous increase of mobile data traffic. Future demand for more capacity can be met by allocation of more bandwidth and new spectrum bands to mobile communication.
But spectrum is a scarce resource and allocation of new licensed bands will only partly satisfy the growing demand.
Another possibility is secondary use of spectrum bands which primarily have been allocated for other services, e.g. TV or weather and traffic control radars. The secondary use exploits un-used spectrum in frequency, time or physical location. Such un-used spectrum in the TV bands is called TV white space (TV WS).
In this paper we will focus on the business analysis of “cellular use of TV white spaces” where the service is mobile broadband access. A number of business cases are analyzed where we look into mobile broadband services in rural and urban areas and for indoor use. The service can be provided by a mobile network operator with licensed spectrum or by an operator using TV white spaces only.
The analysis indicates that market entrants will be in a more difficult position than the established actors. New operators need to invest in networks, platforms, marketing and customers. Promising business cases are presented for existing mobile operators that use TV WS as complement for capacity expansion in urban areas and for local operators (e.g. facility owners) that will use TV WS and own indoor infrastructure in order to offer ”indoor” capacity to mobile operators
In this paper we investigate business models for the provisioning of wireless broadband access services in a local environment. We focus on low cost and high data rates and volumes and on market actors that are not traditional mobile network operators. The analysis is based on interviews with actors within and outside the telecom sector. First, we identify business roles and company assets related to operation of networks and sites, customer acquisition and management, charging and billing. Next, we group and analyze the different types of value constellation and interaction between actors. The results show that a key driver for provisioning of local wireless access is to support the core business of the site owner, e.g. a hotel, and that the ability to establish and exploit short term customer relations is important.
The usage of Internet is currently changing from mainly being a service consumed in fixed and known locations like your home or at your work to be a service used at any location. This 'public' wireless broadband access can either be based on extension of broadband systems using WLAN for the local area or be wide area cellular systems with high data rate capability. Mobile network operators have started to offer very competitive flat rate subscriptions for wireless broadband based on 3G / HSDPA. The 'business' WLAN hot spot are also challenged by wireless access offered for free (or very cheap) at cafés, a restaurant, hotels, buses etc. A large increase in wireless broadband usage is expected. We can expect more or less the same penetration as for mobile telephony. At the same time there will be a migration from fixed to wireless or even mobile networks. Mobile networks promise anytime everywhere services. This is a very strong quality guarantee. It is important to realize that in using Internet access at fixed and Âknown locations people have been used to get a more or less guaranteed data rate and availability. A wide scale migration from fixed networks to wireless network is likely to result in the same kind of requirements. The paper will look at the consequences of such kind of quality guarantee from capacity, cost and availability point of view. Since quite large capacities are needed it is vital to study how those capacities can be provided in a cost efficient way and also to study options for new types of business models. For fixed and mobile telephony and for broadband connections the business model has been the same for many years. End-users have a subscription with an operator that provides the service. For wireless access provided at public places there already today exists a number of different business concepts. A number of submarkets can be identified. The involved market actors are; Mobile Network Operators and Internet Service Providers but also Municipality Network Operators and Facility owners. As mentioned above, other types of actors outside the telecom sector have started to offer wireless access services. In this paper we will describe and analyze these submarkets with different sets of actors and different ways to cooperate and to organize the value network. The description of these submarkets also includes type of markets segment, the value proposition, cost structure and profit potential. We claim that new strategies for cooperation are needed in order to be able to offer public Internet access with high quality and capacity at low cost. This includes both 'technical' cooperation between wide area and local area network and, more importantly, cooperation in the business domain between different market actors.
In this work we present results from the Swedish Tele-economic research project Novel Access Provisioning. We target business aspects for wireless access services in the local environment with focus on concepts that enable public access for anyone. Key characteristics are high data volumes and data rates combined with low cost, low price or access for free. For fixed and mobile telephony and for Internet access services the traditional business model is based on a long term business agreement between the end-user and the provider, the subscription. Internet access now changes from mainly being a service consumed in own and fixed locations to be a service used at any location. The main topic in this paper is to address what kind of market actor that will be the most important for the provisioning of these public Internet access services - traditional operators or new market actors?
The research questions and methodology are related to business roles, market actors, customer relations, payment options and business mechanisms. The analysis is based on interviews with market actors within and outside the telecom sector that are candidates to take one or several business roles for access provisioning. Groups of business models, i.e. different ways to form the value constellation, were identified based on three groups of business roles; network operation & access provisioning, customer relation management & customer acquisition and establishment of trust & payment relations. Customer relations and payment options were analyzed and common characteristics of a SWOT analysis were summarized.
The main finding of the analysis is that local access provisioning to a large extent differ from the traditional operator business based on subscriptions. Low cost, high capacity public internet access is often a kind of “here and now” support of the daily life activities and are often based on temporary (“short term”) customer relations.
The last year Mobile Operators have successfully offered mobile broad band services based on ÂUSB dongles and competitive flat rate subscriptions. Both the numbers of users as well as the Âusage in terms of transferred number of Mbytes per user and month are increasing substantially. This will require very cost-efficient high capacity network solutions. Mobile communication systems with coverage almost Âeverywhere (e.g. GSM) are deployed for mobile telephony services. They are feasible solutions for voice or low rate data services, but not economically viable for high data rates and high capacity access. For cellular systems so called hierarchical cells structures (HCS) are used to provide services in areas with varying demand. The macrocells are complemented by micro and pico cells in areas with high demand. Recently femtocell solutions with small (possibly user deployed) indoor base stations have been proposed and this deployment option is currently investigated by operators and manufacturers (see www.femtoforum.org).
New ways of increasing cost efficiency and introduction of new services are necessary to promote development of extensive usage of a multitude of high data rate wireless services similar to the Internet. The Novel Access provisioning (NAP) project investigates the possibilities in small scale access and service provisioning as a low cost complement to existing Mobile Networks. New market players and business models are analysed. Private companies, shops etc can act as Local network operators where the company network is re-used for public access. Companies with large customer base, a strong brand and wide spread local presence represent another type of new market player where company assets like marketing, customer support and billing units also can be exploited for operation of mobile networks.
This paper analyses the marginal value of spectrum which includes engineering and strategic value. The analysis of the engineering value shows that operators that are able to obtain more spectrum than their competitors, and pursue network sharing and spectrum aggregation have a competitive advantage as they have the lowest production cost, highest margin and highest capacity when usage takes off. The analysis of the strategic value shows that the level of offered data rates is pivotal for operators’ marketing of mobile broadband services and that network sharing in combination with spectrum aggregation has a positive impact on the strategic value. Altogether, the willingness to pay for spectrum in recent auctions has been lower than the estimated marginal value in this analysis. However, it is likely to increase when a broad range of smart mobile devices and mobile broadband are ubiquitously used as this will put unprecedented pressure on mobile networks increasing the demand for spectrum.
The overall objective of this paper is to highlight the need to consider a multitude of scenarios for the requirements, design and deployment of mobile broadband networks. The R&D and standardization have for many years been targeting high peak data rates enabled by improved spectral efficiency, adding more spectrum bands, aggregation of frequency bands and offloading to local wireless networks connected via public fixed phones or broadband. However, many of these features driving the technology development are representative for the conditions in US and Western Europe. The wireless networks also need to be designed assuming deployment in regions in the world where both the availability of spectrum as well as the penetration of fixed phones and broadband are limited.
In this paper we focus on Sweden and India where the conditions in terms of fixed line infrastructure and amount of allocated radio spectrum to operators are totally different.This means that for an expected rapid growth of mobile broadband services in India the coming years the mobile operators need to consider a wider range of network solutions compared to Sweden. As examples of these different conditions and it consequences we discuss three different network deployment strategies including the related spectrum allocation aspects: networks sharing, the use of TV white spaces and use of narrowband femtocells for off-loading of macrocell networks.More work is needed in these areas but the main finding of the analysis in the paper is that existing network deployment strategies need to be modified and adapted to conditions other than those in Europe.
The numbers of users and usage of mobile data service are increasing dramatically due to the introduction of smartphones and mobile broadband dongles. For the next decade the mobile broadband market is expected to grow and reach a level where the average data consumption per user is orders of magnitude greater than today. For the telecom industry it is a magnificent challenge to design and deploy these s high-capacity wireless networks taking into account limitations in cost, energy and radio spectrum.
The objective of this paper is to highlight the need to consider a multitude of scenarios for the requirements, design and deployment of mobile broad band networks. The R&D has for many years been targeting high peak data rates enabled by improved spectral efficiency, adding more spectrum bands, aggregation of frequency bands and offloading to local wireless networks connected via public fixed phones or broadband.
However, many of these features driving the technology development are representative for the conditions in US and Western Europe. The wireless networks also need to be designed assuming deployment in regions in the world where both the availability of spectrum as well as the penetration of fixed phones and broadband are limited.
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 roadband are limited, just a few per cent of ARPU, 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.
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.
Wide spread adoption of mobile Internet services will increase the demand for low cost high capacity wireless networks. Cooperation between different types of operators will enable increased network utilization and availability for the end-users. This will lead to more satisfied customers and potentially both more users and increased usage. The benefits of cooperation is clear for end-users as they can freely chose access networks and services from a larger pool of options. The operator benefits are not as straightforward although some benefits can be identified. In this paper we will present both end-user and operator related performance metrics that describe the effects of network cooperation. The Ambient Networks concepts and functionality are used to illustrate cooperation mechanisms and performance gains. The main result is that the proposed Operator Satisfaction Index (OSI) can be used to describe benefits of cooperation in terms of network utilization, user perception of availability, revenues and network cost
The Ambient networks concepts will enable operators to co-operate in new ways and allow users to connect to a multitude of “visited networks” although the user is within coverage of the “home network”. In this paper we will investigate how operators and users can exploit the flexibility in selection among different access options. More specific questions are:
In this paper low cost concepts for future wireless access are presented and discussed from the business perspective. Instead of extending todays cellular technology or to focus on the bandwidth efficiency of the radio equipment, the chosen approach focus on reduction of costs for network deployment and operation. Adaptive antennas (MIMO), multihop schemes and local access points are combined with user deployed infrastructure and reuse of existing network assets. Business models candidates are analysed, showing that all proposed low cost solutions can be used either by local network operators (LNOs) in close cooperation with mobile operators (network franchising) or to be user deployed using a traditional subscriber model. MIMO and multihop relays require close integration into the cellular network implying that these solutions would be less suitable for an independent LNO.
This paper analyzes push-pull initiatives of technological development by studying the concept of Novel Access Provisioning of new wireless Internet access to existing backbone infrastructure. The Novel Access Provisioning project is conducted within the Swedish techno-economic research project with participants from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) and the Swedish Telecom Agency (PTS).
This paper reports on the results from a series of interviews during the fall of 2005 with main representatives from within the Telecom Industry and outside in the Nordic market having an interest in the development and use of mobile services. The aim of the paper is to increase the understanding for why some innovations have a rapid rate of adoption while others are deployed more slowly.
Operator utility is related to expected profits, risks and strategic issues. In this paper we focus on the potential change in operator utility from network cooperation. If network cooperation would increase operator utility significantly, that would be an important driver of cooperation. We show that the most important effect of network cooperation would be increased user utility, which in turn is shown to have significant impact on operator utility. The user utility is compared without and with cooperation between mobile operators. The user utility is expressed as a User Satisfaction Index (USI) which is depending on the service availability, service quality and the price. Cooperation in the form of sharing of network resources is usually seen as a way to share costs and risk for network deployment. However, there are other operator benefits:
The network related property of cooperation to reduce the number of disconnected users is transformed into a higher degree of user satisfaction. This would most likely result in more loyal customers and hence the churn would be reduced. In this paper we discuss the implications of the increased user satisfaction on operator costs for customer acquisition and management. We see business opportunities for mobile operators leading to cost savings and changes in the cost structure.
Mobile network operators (MNOs) face a future characterised with new challenges, such as growing data consumption, a slowdown in subscriber growth and reduced revenues due to the success of over-the-top providers. MNOs must offer affordable services and provide innovative strategies to retain current customers. Quality of experience (QoE) is a well-established methodology for measuring the overall level of customer satisfaction and has also been presented as a way to improve telecommunication services. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on how the MNOs can take advantage of QoE and its potential benefits. In this paper, we explored the implications of the incorporation of QoE feedback in mobile networks at the business level. The analysis shows that value-added offers of differentiated and personalised services can be seen as alternatives to generate new revenue streams in the mobile service market.
M2M sector is an increasingly important source of connections growth for mobile operatorsworldwide. Operators are looking at M2M as a new business alternative means to reduce the impact of theslowing growth (or declines) in traditional consumer mobile services. As a result, many operators areadapting their organisational structures and business models exploring opportunities to expand theirportfolio to emerging markets in developing countries. These markets are still in process of maturing,with M2M implementations at very early stage. On the other hand, the benefits that could accrue todeveloped countries through the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine type communication (MTC) arenumerous. In this context, this paper presents an initial study about the current status of M2M in somedeveloping countries, considering as study cases regions such as Latin America and Asia. Presentedinformation remarks the potential of the considered markets to boost the growth of M2M solutionsworldwide. Finally, we show some specific requirements for M2M business models for developingcountries and a description of the technical challenges to be considered at the moment of investing inM2M solutions for developing countries.
The remarkable growth of mobile communication has reinforced the significance of the radio spectrum for mobile network operators. The availability of spectrum varies considerably between different countries due to national regulatory decisions. The focus in this paper is on India where operators have access to a limited amount of spectrum. This paper analyses the value of spectrum by estimating the opportunity cost, which is calculated by the savings that can be achieved by acquiring appropriate amount of spectrum rather than investing in additional base stations. The applied approach combines network deployment, user demand levels, cost, and capacity issues, which are integrated in the application in the opportunity cost approach for spectrum. The opportunity cost of spectrum is compared with prices paid at spectrum auctions. The analysis includes a discussion of drivers that determine the willingness to pay for spectrum. The results show that the opportunity cost of spectrum in relation to auction prices is lower than prices operators paid for 3G spectrum in the metro circles (service areas) while the value derived from the opportunity cost is higher than auction prices in the remaining circles.
Radio spectrum is a vital asset and resource for mobile network operators. With spectrum in the 800 and 900 MHz bands coverage can be provided with fewer base station sites compared to higher frequency bands like 2.1 and 2.6 GHz. With more spectrum, i.e. wider bandwidth, operators can offer higher capacity and data rates. Larger bandwidths means that capacity can be provided with fewer base station sites, i.e. with lower cost. Operators that acquire more spectrum in existing or new bands can re-use existing sites for capacity build out. Engineering value is one way to estimate the marginal value of spectrum. The calculation of engineering value is based on comparison of different network deployment options using different amounts of spectrum. This paper compare estimates of engineering value of spectrum with prices paid at a number of spectrum auctions, with a focus on Sweden. A main finding is that estimated engineering value of spectrum is much higher than prices operators have paid at spectrum auctions during the last couple of years. The analysis also includes a discussion of drivers that determine the willingness to pay for spectrum.
Mobilebroad band is increasing rapidly both when it comes to traffic and number of subscriptions. The rapid growth of the demand will require substantial capacity expansions. Operators are challenged by the fact that the ARPU from mobile broad band is very small and it does not compensate the declining revenues from telephony. In this paper we will analyze the potential of different strategies to reduce the network costs, to use alternative pricing schemes and to increase revenues.
The continued expansion of mobile communications revolves around mobile broadband and mobile applications besides the basic function with ubiquitous communication. The growth rate of mobile market has declined in conjunction with the vast growth of traffic volumes in the mobile networks. The deployment of 3G has resulted in increased capacity but the take off for mobile broadband has fundamentally shifted the traffic balance of the mobile networks. Although operators are enjoying lower equipment prices capacity enhancement has inevitable be done through either increasing the number of sites or adding more spectrum. The demand for spectrum has never been stronger as it enables operators to increase capacity without having to deploy costly network upgrades. A number of spectrum auctions around the world demonstrate that the value of spectrum is going up. In order to make a contribution to this area this paper analyze the value of spectrum from an engineering point, how capex is impacted through different spectrum levels. The analysis exhibits the fundamental difference between 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz when it comes to create coverage in Rural areas. Besides the impact of capex does it also have an effect on the strategic position for operators’. Altogether, this paper addresses a key issue for the mobile industry where the regulators are playing a vital role.
This paper analyses the marginal value of spectrum which includes engineering and strategic value. The analysis of the engineering value shows that operators that are able to obtain more spectrum than their competitors, and pursue network sharing and spectrum aggregation have a competitive advantage as they have the lowest production cost, highest margin and highest capacity when usage takes off. The analysis of the strategic value shows that the level of offered data rates is pivotal for operators’ marketing of mobile broadband services and that network sharing in combination with spectrum aggregation has a positive impact on the strategic value. Altogether, the willingness to pay for spectrum in recent auctions has been lower than the estimated marginal value in this analysis.
Mobile broadband is increasing rapidly both when it comes to traffic and the number of subscriptions. Operators are challenged by the fact that revenues from mobile broadband are de-coupled from the traffic. In this paper we will analyze if this de-coupling results in a “revenue gap” for the combined voice and mobile broadband business and, if this is the case, how significant the gap is. We analyze a country and operator case where the increasing user demand requires network upgrades. The impact of increasing traffic, revenues and costs is analyzed in terms of profit margin for the voice and mobile broadband businesses. The results show that the overall profit for the modeled operator decreases due to declining voice revenues. The contribution from mobile broadband depends heavily on the amount of traffic growth and prices.
The present document has the objective of analyzing the impact of several factors that are part of mobile telecom markets into the feasibility of sharing resources as a strategy for operators to deploy their networks in a cost-efficient manner and cope with the ever increasing amount of data traffic. These factors include the situation of the operators with their distribution of market shares, the nature of national regulatory authorities, and their lines of action. The study comprises the description and analysis of three markets: Ecuador, Chile, and Sweden, as they pose very different scenarios and are useful to prove the contrast present in two different regions of the world.
The results of this research work show that in order to ease the adoption of network sharing in a market, a state of fair competition must be encouraged, reflected by a good distribution of market shares between operators. This is for the most part a task of the regulators, as they must make sure to award resources to operators in an equitable manner, as well as to identify the right moments to introduce new actors into the market, as it is observed in the cases of Chile and Sweden. Additionally, the regulators must have a liberal approach in their decisions, by permitting both active and passive network sharing, as this study shows that this is not the case in Chile and Ecuador so far.
Nowadays, the increasing mobile data traffic adds extra pressure on the almost congested mobile networks. In order to meet the new demand, mobile operators have to improve their networks but as revenues are not expected to rise, they have to add extra capacity in a cost-efficient way. The solution might come from shifting the mobile data traffic towards indoor alternative networks, an approach known as mobile data offloading.Among indoor solutions two technologies stepped forward, Wi-Fi and smallcells. This paper analyses the two technologies as complementing solutions for macrocell layer in the mobile data offloading context. The main discussed questions are whether the two solutions are interchangeable and what are the risks and pitfalls when choosing one of the two technologies. In order to answer the research questions, based on a proposed real life deployment scenario, a capacity-cost calculation has been driven. Thus, a newly built office building lacking indoor mobile coverage has been considered. Based on the calculated offered capacity, the deployment costs for a comprehensive solution using either of the two technologies have been estimated. The cost of provisioning for different solutions is based on the fact that either of these solutions needs to be built from scratch and no former type of coverage exists.Regarding the interchangeability question, based on the conducted analysis, we claim that the answer is both “Yes” and “No”. “Yes” since the total cost of ownership for each technology is one order of magnitude lower compared to the traditional macrocell deployment. “No”, since deploying a smallcell network is four times more expensive than the Wi-Fi case when the same capacity is required. Thus, we can conclude that Wi-Fi and smallcells are two complementary rather than competing technologies. The goal is to offer a solution where the end-customer cannot tell whether he is connected on Wi-Fi or cellular. Integrating the two technologies into one single offered solution comes as the next normal step, more an evolution rather than a revolution.
According to the Ambient Networks vision `any´ user will be able to connect to `any´ network at `any´ time. This requires some new technical innovations like new ways to advertise networks and services, new ways to perform access and service provider selection as well as new ways to form the network side cooperationÂs between business players. In the paper, we investigate how operators and users can benefit from the flexibility in selection among networks and providers. Network Composition is one of the Ambient Networks concepts and it provides a set of tools for dynamical establishment of cooperation between network and service providers. This means that the business landscape is likely to go through some changes as well. The business dynamics will increase with a multitude of service and network providers and with many forms of cooperation. Flexible roaming between networks will be a key characteristic of access and service provisioning. The difference between `home´ and `visited´ network is getting minimal, when users are able to freely choose their accesses and the `home operator´ is seen more like an entity taking care of billing and other subscription related support services. The impacts of operatorÂs cooperation are analyzed in a multi-access scenario where operators have partially overlapping network deployments. In order to model and measure the end user and operator satisfaction, we introduce two new performance metrics; the User Satisfaction Index and the Operator Satisfaction Index. These indexes are used in our simulation experiment. The results indicate both technical and non-technical gains with the network cooperation.
In future mobile networking environments end users will face increasing challenges to cope with diverse networking environment with a multitude of service providers and offered services. Users will be able to smoothly switch between different operators based on their communication needs and available access networks. In this paper, we will investigate a new approach to evaluate how cooperation influences both end users and operators. The EU IST project Ambient Network proposes concepts for cooperation in environments with heterogeneous networks. One key feature is Network Composition that provides technical and business support for cooperation between networks and different business entities. Network composition has an important role in future networking since it `hides´ additional complexity for the end users and supports evaluation and selection of networks. In this paper we address the important question on `how to measure the impacts of network cooperation?´. Two performance metrics are introduced; the User Satisfaction Index and the Operator Satisfaction Index. The analysis shows that cooperation results in benefits in terms of network utilization, increased revenues and improved user connectivity statistics. It is also shown that the proposed metrics can capture and describe the user experience as function of availability, quality and price and the operator performance in `user happiness´ and profitability.
In future wireless systems can ambient networks technology enable the users to utilize a multitude of networks. Frequent roaming between networks will be a key characteristic of mobile services and the terms "home" and "visited" networks will be common also at local and national level. In this paper we will investigate cooperation between operators and what benefits the end users can expect. Ambient Networks concepts include new advertising, attachment and composition functionalities providing a set of tools that enable dynamic connectivity establishment. Especially end-user preferences can be taken into account during the evaluation and selection of access networks. The impact of cooperation in the multi-operator environment is analyzed in a scenario with operators that have partially overlapping radio coverage, set of provided services and a large number of moving user terminals. The results indicate substantial gains with cooperation; both for overall network utilization and for the end-user "up-time". In order to describe the end-user perception we use a performance metric called user satisfaction index (USI) proposed in the ambient networks project.
Nowadays, the access selection methods are done based on operator incentives using static and predefined rules that are not sufficient once the number of deployed access technologies and mobile services is increasing and the access technologies are becoming more diverse in terms of connectivity characteristics, then today’s access selection practices are not adequate anymore. We need to think about end-user preferences in a decision making process. Two new distributed decision making algorithms called the Network Centric and the Terminal Centric algorithms exploiting Ambient Networks mechanisms are presented. These algorithms use a richer set of constrains and rules. In order to evaluate these algorithms from an end-user perspective, we introduce a new performance index called the User Satisfaction Index. We present our simulation model, performance results and analysis. The results indicate that the cooperation between networks increases the network utilization and service availability. The benefits from an end-user perspective are expressed using the proposed performance metric called User Satisfaction Index. Finally, we discuss on further challenges of a decision making for information centric networking.
This paper presents initial findings on how Ambient Networks technology will enable new ways to establish and manage access and service provisioning from a business perspective. A concept called network composition, developed in phase 1 of the Ambient Networks project provides the basic framework for ambient networking meaning that “any” user will be able to connect to “any” network implying that users have readiness to use services from anywhere as long as a service is available. This service availability is one challenge from business perspective.
The paper focuses on the composition concept as a “tool” for making business, including how to dynamically establish and maintain business relations and how to handle related negotiations and transactions made “on the fly”, and providing services for end users according their preferences “everywhere”. The analysis is focused on five different aspects of composition; i) network advertising, ii) selection mechanisms and criteria, iii) negotiations on terms and conditions, iv) dynamic roaming and v) subscription provisioning. The methodology is based on the Business Blueprint Method and applied to a number of case studies.
Spectrum is a key factor for network deployments, since it determines the capacity of thenetwork. Nonetheless, spectrum is a limited natural resource, i.e. a finite, non-exhaustiblecommon resource. In order to fulfill the high performance targets of future mobile broadband(MBB) systems, a more efficient use and more effective management of spectrum resources haveto be developed.Licensed Shared Access is a new complementary spectrum access scheme that allows for thesharing of partially used licensed spectrum from an incumbent (e.g. a government organization),by a limited number of “LSA licensees” (e.g. Mobile Network Operators). The LSA agreementfollows pre-defined dynamic or static sharing conditions, that determine where, when and how touse the incumbent’s spectrum.The implementation of Licensed Shared Access needs the support of a very good regulatoryframework and follow the harmonized spectrum pathway. Spectral harmonization or the uniformallocation of frequency bands across an entire region lowers the technology costs, making iteasier for any country to consider its implementation. Once adopted throughout the regions,economies of scale are achieved.The approach taken in this research covers the interrelations between technical, market andregulatory conditions in Latin America, in order to present the possible value LSA could bring tothe region. The research showed how the region still has a vast amount of spectrum to beallocated as exclusive spectrum, which is preferred by operators. The low mobile broadbandpenetration in most of the region is another factor for the low value of LSA at the time of thisstudy.
This paper will describe roles and market actors enabling new forms of co-operation and competition using Ambient Networks technology and concepts. According to the Ambient Networks vision “any” user will be able to connect to “any” network, which will challenge traditional “one operator – one subscriber” solutions. Ambient Networks will stimulate an unbundled value network but will also facilitate the dynamic and flexible way of doing business in an environment with many access and service providers. The roles described in more detail in this paper are the Local Access Provider, Access Aggregator, Access Broker, Trusted Third Party, ClearingHouse, Compensation Service Provider and Service Aggregator
A number of different mobile payment solutions have been presented the last decade. The phone subscription with its security mechanisms are used for user identification and payments. This is the case for SMS based payment and ticketing systems that are getting more and more popular. However, there are other ways to implement a Trusted Element (TE) , where a SIM card architecture is only one. It can be in the mobile phone, as a separate integrated circuit, as an optional customer deployed plug-in device (e.g., microSD) or be running as an application on a server existing entirely as software.
In this paper we analyze what roles and responsibilities different actors have in different types of mobile payments solutions. The main focus is on the implications for the mobile operator business. It turns out that new types of intermediary actors in most cases play an important role. Sometimes mobile operators are not even involved. The emergence of new payment together with other non-SIM card based TE solutions opens up for many different market scenarios for mobile payment services.
In future wireless systems using Ambient Networks technology the users will be able to use a multitude of networks. Frequent roaming between networks will be key characteristic of mobile services and the terms “home” and “visited” networks will be common also at local and national level. The user will be able to access any network. Besides business agreements/roaming there are several functions that need coordination to provide connectivity and access everywhere and any time. The attachment of a user with an access link is one such key consideration. The actual access link attachment includes several steps including access advertisement, evaluation, selection and activation.
In this paper the Ambient Networks concepts are briefly introduced. Business relations, business agreements and value networks are described for different scenarios. Selected results of performance evaluation illustrate how operators and users can exploit the flexibility and benefits in selection among different access options and especially look at access evaluation and selection decision effects.