Andre L. Nel

Optimal pricing of telecomm services in a developing country: A game theoretical approach

Pricing is an important feature in preventing the misuse of any resource (specifically public resources) in a telecommunication network. The free-rider, tragedy of the anti-commons and tragedy of the commons problems can arise in the provision of public resources, when users of the resource have to contribute towards the cost of production. Selfish users in a group have the tendency to misrepresent preferences, so as to minimize their individual contributions and maximize their utilities, preventing the free rider and tragedy of the commons problems in telecommunications networks is crucial to prolonging the existence of a free or subsidized public resource. In this paper we develop a game theoretical approach to mitigating the free rider and tragedy of the commons problems in telecom networks.

Engineering education, reality TV and ethics

In this paper we consider engineering education as a process that has over many years developed a particular ethical and philosophical framework. These ethical and philosophical frameworks are often dormant and unquestioned. During the development of an innovative reality TV mediated engineering design and test project (the Fuelduel1 project) for undergraduate students ethical issues arose that challenged long-held views on engineering education. This paper discusses the ethical issues that became evident during the course of the Fuelduel project and how these lead to a consideration of the underlying philosophical framework inherent in most engineering education.

Enhancing telecommunications business operations and service level agreements by incorporating operational risk management

In this paper, the need for integrating operational risk management into service level management for telecommunication service providers is discussed, where business operations are predominantly governed by a service level agreement. Operational risks that do or could effect the organization and its ability to comply with service level agreement requirements can then be determined and appropriately managed. Further, service level agreement management and compliance in terms of customer quality of service definitions and metrics can be better defined and monitored, and business operations more effectively aligned to the delivery of customer required services. These needs and benefits also tie in with the fact that enterprise risk management has become mandatory since the introduction of regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley act and Basel II.

Structured guidelines for novice researchers to produce their first peer reviewed academic paper

The aim of this paper is to document the process of developing a usable publication guide to support students to publish their first academic paper. Academic publishing is obviously a wide and complex field, taking many years to master. The intention was therefore not to develop students to “expert” level in a single event, but rather to get students to “novice” level with a first success behind them - enough to ensure that they will try a second time. We are here reminded of a quote from Henry Boettinger: “Training teaches us the rules, experience teaches us the exceptions” - we will focus on teaching the rules, by the second paper a student will be a bit more experienced and can start to experiment with the exceptions.

Liberalization, regulation and privatization (LRP): Telecommunication reform challenges in Zambia

Telecommunication reforms in Zambia is seen as the means of promoting social and economic growth in both the urban and rural areas of Zambia. However, many challenges arise in the implementation of the telecommunication reform process in Zambia. First, a strong resistance to telecommunication reforms by interested groups, opposition parties, people and the unions has hampered much of the telecommunication progress in Zambia. Secondly, the regulation and institutional framework of Zambia is still in its early stages providing unlimited guidance to the reform process. Thirdly, the cost of telecommunications services in Zambia has had a significant challenges on the absorption of communication services, particularly in the rural areas or underserviced region of the country. In this paper we evaluate the challenges the Zambian Government is facing in implementing telecommunication reforms for a competitive telecom sector in Zambia.

Enterprise Risk Management: A New Philosophy

There is a need to develop a risk management model for generic Operational Support Systems (OSS), preferably implemented on top of the eTOM framework. On closer inspection of the the eTOM framework it was discovered that risk management was virtually non-existent. After considering existing risk management recommendations such as the COSO KM framework, a need was identified for a new risk management paradigm. This paper presents the solution offered by the authors to serve the needs of not just the telecommunications industry, but any industry in need of a simple, logically structured risk management methodology.

The Use of Service Level Agreements in Operational Risk Management to Enhance Telecommunications Business Operations

In this paper, the authors discuss the need for enterprise risk management and operational risk management in organizations where substantial elements of the business processes are governed by a service level agreement (SLA). To ensure the operational risk management is properly integrated into the operational support systems, we recommend the use of active feedback to drive the link between the customers interpretation of the SLA and the operational view of the SLA. Further, a combined network-centric and customer-centric business model within the integrated operational risk management function is proposed that can enhance existing business models, such as the eTOM for telecommunication service providers.

Foreground segmentation in atmospheric turbulence degraded video sequences to aid in background stabilization

Abstract. Video sequences captured over a long range through the turbulent atmosphere contain some degree of atmospheric turbulence degradation (ATD). Stabilization of the geometric distortions present in video sequences containing ATD and containing objects undergoing real motion is a challenging task. This is due to the difficulty of discriminating which part of visible motion is real motion and which part is caused by ATD warping. Due to this, most stabilization techniques applied to ATD sequences distort real motion in the sequence. We propose a method to classify foreground regions in ATD video sequences. This classification is used to stabilize the background of the scene while preserving objects undergoing real motion by compositing them back into the sequence. A hand-annotated dataset of three ATD sequences is produced with which the performance of this approach can be quantitatively measured and compared against the current state of the art.

The application of machine learning to the problem of classifying voxels in X-ray microtomographic scans of mineralogical samples

Processing X-ray microtomography scans of ore samples to extract quantitative mineralogical information regarding composition, porosity and particle size is complicated by the presence of noise in the tomograms and artefacts resulting from non-ideal scanning conditions. In order to obtain quantitative information, one must first classify voxels into their different mineral classes. This paper presents work done using fuzzy inference systems to learn the classification rules for identifying different mineral classes in the tomogram. The advantages and disadvantages of this method are discussed.

ARMA Analysis of Chest X-rays for Computer Assisted Detection of Tuberculosis

Computer Assisted Detection (CAD) is an important tool for use in areas where there is a shortage of skilled x-ray readers. South Africa is currently experiencing a Tuberculosis (TB) epidemic and does not have enough skilled x-ray readers to effectively assess all of the screening TB lung x-rays, especially in the mining sector. Thus, this work is intended to form part of a CAD TB system being developed by the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Autoregressive-Moving-Average (ARMA) is a technique for mathematically modeling a system.