Wireless Network Design: Optimization Models and Solution ...

15 Major Trends in Cellular Networks and Corresponding Optimization Issues 359
tional voice revenues and establish their role in the Internet value chain by exploiting
their assets. In addition to the subscriber identity infrastructure, MNOs typically
own the access and core infrastructure. They also have direct control of the network’s
quality parameters and know a customer’s actual status and profile. Combining
these assets can produce a massive improvement in convenience and personalization
for the user [26]. Many providers offer multi-play packages consisting of
high speed Internet access, voice, which can be either classic voice or VoIP, mobile
telephony, and TV services. The packages usually give the user the advantage of
one-stop-shopping, a perceived discount on his entire monthly telecommunication
and TV spending, and cost control due to a single bill. Going beyond single billing,
some operators are leveraging their control of fixed and mobile infrastructures to offer
fixed-mobile integrated services, such as Converged TV. With a Converged TV
subscription, a user can access TV services anywhere, any time, from any device
(TV set, PC, Mobile device). Integration enables features such as session continuity,
e.g., stopping a video session on the mobile device and continuing on the TV set,
and common user interface. Following the success of the Apple App Store (two billion
downloads less than 14 months after its commercial launch in July 2008 [34]), a
growing number of MNOs are hoping to cash in on the application storefront model
as a new revenue source.
Some operators also want to get in the mobile cloud computing game — where
the computing and storage are moved away from the mobile devices into the network
cloud — making the apps and user data available to a wide range of user devices.
Cloud computing is the basis of popular services such as web mail and Blackberry’s
email services, hosted photos (Flickr, Photobucket), media streaming (YouTube),
social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace), etc. The concept has been extended
in new services like Apple’s MobileMe, Microsoft’s MyPhone and Google Sync,
which allow users to synchronize the information on the mobile device and the PC
by hosting it on the cloud which is accessible from any device. An example of an
operator’s mobile cloud service is Vodafone’s 360 which lets users sync contacts,
emails, photos, conversations, music and location-based services via mobile device
and PC [37].
A more expansive view of the cloud is “platform as a service (PaaS)”, where
customers can build and run their own apps on a cloud platform. PaaS is about to go
mobile with the advent of mobile broadband access as the key enabler. Smartphone
versions of Google’s App Engine and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are expected
in 2010 [34].
According to ABI Research, “By 2014, mobile cloud computing will become
the leading mobile application development and deployment strategy, displacing
today’s native and downloadable mobile applications.” The number of subscribers
will be close to 1 Bn [7].
With mobile cloud, applications and content are no longer dependent on the mobile
device’s operating system (OS). Application developers do not have to face the
dilemma of writing an application for only one OS, or writing multiple versions of
the same application. Furthermore, less-capable handsets can have access to sophisticated
applications running in the network. Mobile cloud also offers new service