Mobile Network Operators and Cooperation - IMP Group

56 CHAPTER 3. NETWORK SHARING AND DYNAMIC ROAMING
Investments
The network costs do not only depend on if the networks are shared or not. As indicated
above, the possibility to re-use existing base station sites is very important.
For the operator profitability it is essential that the deployed network capacity is
used. These aspects will be illustrated using a country case.
A country case - assumptions
The operators. The market is assumed to consist of four operators, three established
operators and one greenfield operator. Two of the established operators build
a common network where sites and spectrum are shared. The other operators build
their own networks. The greenfield operator is forced to deploy a new network. The
other operators have existing networks (GSM/EDGE or UMTS) with a number of
existing sites that can be re-used.
Users and demand. The different levels of user demand is modeled both by
considering different population densities as well as use of different demand levels.
Each operator is assumed to have a market share of 25 % for mobile broadband
access services. The modeling and analysis of network capacity and cost is made
for rural, suburban, urban and super-urban areas.
Two levels of demand are considered. The low demand level is represented by a
total penetration of 10% of the population and a monthly usage of 5.4 GB per user.
For the high level we assume 40% penetration and a monthly usage of 10.8 GB per
user. Assuming that the data is transferred during 8 hours per day, all days on the
month, 5.4 GB and 10.8 GB per user correspond to 50 kbps and 100 kbps per user
during the busy hours.
Radio access network and technology. The existing base station sites are used
as the starting point for the deployment. 2000, 1000 and 2000 sites are supposed
to already be deployed in rural, suburban and urban areas respectively.
All operators are assumed to have 10 MHz of spectrum in the 800 - 900 MHz
band and 40 MHz in the 2.1 - 2.6 GHz bands. In each type of area the deployment
starts with deployment of LTE type of technology in the 800 - 900 MHz band. At
least half of the available 800 - 900 MHz spectrum is assumed to be allocated to
GSM voice services. When the 800 - 900 MHz band is fully utilized higher frequency
bands are applied re-using existing sites. New sites will be added when the available
spectrum in all bands no longer is sufficient.
Network costs. The assumed cost for deploying a macro base station in rural
areas is 100 k€. New sites in urban and suburban areas are estimated to cost 50
k€ per installation. For the radio equipment and transmission the cost per site in
the previous section are used, i.e. 10 k€ for the radio equipment and 20 k€ for
transmission.