Östen Mäkitalo

A comparative study of deployment options, capacity and cost structure for macrocellular and femtocell networks

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.

Analysis of Business Models and Market Players for Local Wireless Internet Access

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.

Decoupling of revenues and traffic - Is there a revenue gap for mobile broadband?

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.

Drivers of Novel Access Provisioning -Re-Use Aspects and Operator Cooperation

New network and business architectures with low cost factors 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 local access and service provisioning as a complement to existing mobile networks. We expect that successful high bandwidth mobility services require more than local coverage even if wide area coverage is compromised. Many local access providers need to cooperate to make the service reasonably accessible. Different drivers of new market players and business models are analyzed

Business Model Analysis for Local Access Provisioning

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.