Jan Van Ooteghem

Making a well-founded choice of the wireless technology for train-to-wayside data services

The provisioning of wireless data services in the railway environment will become increasingly important for train operators and train constructors in the upcoming years. A well-founded choice of the technology to be used for the outdoor network connection is investigated in this paper. Several wireless technologies - including HSPA, E-UTRA and WiMAX - are compared by calculating their wireless ranges for reception outside and inside trains, based on the location of the transceiver. These wireless ranges determine the number of base stations needed to cover a pre-defined area along a railway track. Results show that generally 3G (UMTS-HSPA) and 4G (E-UTRA/LTE) technologies offer the best coverage over a range of data rates, from 2 Mbps to 8 Mbps. These data rates relate to a wide variety of services, from network control data, surveillance, crew services to passenger Internet traffic.

Municipalities as a Driver for Wireless Broadband Access

Municipalities can form a driving force behind the deployment of new telecom infrastructure. While a telecom operator focuses on direct (financial) profits, a municipality is mainly interested in the social benefits for its inhabitants. In this paper, we evaluate a wireless municipality network from both a technical and an economic point of view. WiFi and WiMAX are considered as the most suited technologies for this purpose. A detailed techno-economic study has been performed including forecasting of the user adoption, dimensioning of the wireless network and modelling the related costs and revenues. The trade-off between installing a high number of relatively cheap WiFi access points, and a smaller number of more expensive WiMAX base stations for delivering full coverage is investigated in several scenarios.

Adoption and Pricing: The Underestimated Elements of a Realistic IPTV Business Case

The adoption of IPTV increases competition for telecom operators. Especially video on demand and the move to HDTV push the bandwidth requirements to the limits. It is very challenging for an operator to construct a successful and sustainable introduction of IPTV over the existing infrastructure. This article gives an overview of a typical business case followed by a detailed discussion of the adoption and evaluation of the outcome. The results of this article indicate the importance of a correct choice of adoption model and related parameters. It illustrates how different IPTV-specific effects on adoption (i.e., competition and analog switch off) might have a considerable impact on the outcome. After adoption, the article shows how the outcome of the business case can be used within pricing decisions by setting sustainable and competitive boundaries on the tariff. Finally, as pricing will also have an important impact on adoption (e.g., a price reduction could lead to increased adoption), the possible impact of this feedback loop is indicated. In this sense the approach discussed in the article could easily be extended with a highly detailed cost model of the network architecture and technology, leading to a full business case for IPTV introduction by a telecom operator.

Economic Viability of eCare Solutions

Provisioning of good quality care to the elderly population and at the same time reducing the pressure on the health care expenditures is a challenging issue for governments today. Many ICT supported, distant care systems (eCare) have been proposed but few have found their way to the market. The problem is to provide a viable business case for each actor involved (including eCare platform, health care and finance providers) when offering eCare services. We have constructed a model for evaluating the (socio-)economic viability of different business models when introducing eCare solutions. A multi-actor approach has been implemented, calculating and evaluating the business case for each actor involved. For a Belgian case we will show (socio)-economic advantages to participate in an eCare ecosystem.

Parking sensor network: Economic feasibility study of parking sensors in a city environment is well

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have a variety of purposes. They are mainly used for monitoring environmental factors, like CO2 concentrations, temperature and humidity. Other applications of sensor networks focus on detecting traffic parameters, e.g. passenger flows, damaged roads and traffic lights. This paper extends the current research with an economic feasibility of a real case, deploying a wireless parking sensor network in a city environment. After modeling the service adoption, the costs and revenues of the project are estimated. The static Net Present Value (NPV) case is already highly profitable. However, like most network projects, WSNs offer many flexibility options. A business case is extended with a Real Option Analysis (ROA), in order to quantify the value of the learning possibilities. We show that the built-in flexibility in the original project raises the attractiveness of the project.

The OCareCloudS project: Toward organizing care through trusted cloud services

The increasing elderly population and the shift from acute to chronic illness makes it difficult to care for people in hospitals and rest homes. Moreover, elderly people, if given a choice, want to stay at home as long as possible. In this article, the methodologies to develop a cloud-based semantic system, offering valuable information and knowledge-based services, are presented. The information and services are related to the different personal living hemispheres of the patient, namely the daily care-related needs, the social needs and the daily life assistance. Ontologies are used to facilitate the integration, analysis, aggregation and efficient use of all the available data in the cloud. By using an interdisciplinary research approach, where user researchers, (ontology) engineers, researchers and domain stakeholders are at the forefront, a platform can be developed of great added value for the patients that want to grow old in their own home and for their caregivers.

Economic analysis of future access network deployment and operation

In this paper we take into account the business aspects of building wireless and optical access networks. A detailed view on broadband access network deployment costs, including both capital (CapEx) and operational expenditures (OpEx) is given. Main cost components of optical and wireless access networks have been identified, and the deployment costs of different architectures have also been presented.

Implications of mhealth service deployments: a comparison between dissimilar european countries

Despite several successful pilot studies, a general implementation and adoption of mobile health services is not often the case. The deployment of eHealth and in particular mHealth services is discussed for three non similar European countries: Cyprus, Georgia, and Belgium. Each country uses the same kind of mobile health services with a different emphasis. By comparing results of a reference case, tele-monitoring heart patients, major implications are identified for a general rollout of services and respective recommendations.

Practical steps in techno-economic evaluation of network deployment planning part 1: methodology overview

Provides an abstract for each of the tutorial presentations and a brief professional biography of each presenter. The complete presentations were not made available for publication as part of the conference proceedings.

A methodology for multi-actor evaluation of the impact of eCare services

The healthcare sector is an incredibly complex system with many public and private actors and a wide diversity of services. Because of the aging society and the growing evolution of health expenditures, pressure on available resources (time, people, budget, etc.) is increasing. Innovative ICT supported eCare and eCure services are expected to increase efficiency, coordination and organization of care. Currently many initiatives already introduced ICT-supported eCare services into the current healthcare ecosystem. However, its quite a challenge to estimate the impact and expected uptake of these new eCare services. Its no surprise that only few services commercially succeeded. This paper presents a methodology that identifies and evaluates the PEST factors (political, economical, social and technological aspects) that impact the involved care actors when introducing eCare services. The model takes into account the overall socio-economic aspects of the service, but also the subjective importance that an individual actor can ascribe to a particular eCare service. Combining the impact of these PEST factors leads to an expected adoption rate. Both new services and existing initiatives can be compared to one another and the impact of economies of scale can be investigated. In case a negative impact on some actors is observed, the model proposes cost allocation or service offer alternatives to ameliorate the business case for a particular service. Finally, a sensitivity analysis helps to indicate the most significant parameters that drive the business case.