Wireless Network Design: Optimization Models and Solution ...

360 Khiem Le
opportunities: location-based services, business apps such as collaborative document
sharing, scheduling, and sales force management apps, and remote control.
One of the most promising avenues for operators is to leverage their intimate
knowledge of the customer (preference profile, location, etc.), their trust relationship
with the customers, and control of network capabilities to provide optimized
user experience, through personalized services, based on excellent navigation and
location-based information. The operator can capitalize on the trust relationship to
offer services related to payment (e.g., the operator can consolidate a third party
provider’s bill with the mobile subscription bill) or security (e.g., provide parental
control of access to applications).
To be able to offer an attractive menu of services, operators have to open up
their network and present APIs to third party application providers or application
developers. Efforts are under way to define standard APIs, such as the GSM Association’s
OneAPI [30] reference implementation that attempts to create common
web-friendly APIs for integrating apps with MNO network capabilities (charging,
messaging, location and user context).
Many operators are adopting IT-style concepts and techniques such as Service
Delivery Framework (SDF), Service Delivery Platform (SDP) and Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA), to more efficiently in provide interfaces to applications, and
open software development kits for third party application and service development,
through support of distributed computing and easy reuse of components and functions.
In Section 15.7, we will look more in depth at how the MNOs can leverage their
unique subscriber identity infrastructure asset to go beyond connectivity services
and generate value added in the Internet space. For the low income population case,
the key is to reduce the operator’s TCO. With lower costs, the CSP is in a stronger
position to offer services more affordable to its customers and still remain profitable
in its business. Complementary to reducing the cost of connectivity services,
the operator could develop value added services on top of connectivity specifically
geared towards the needs of low income people. We will describe some approaches
based on a mix of innovative technology and business models to minimize the CSP’s
OPEX and CAPEX, and/or offer new services.
15.4 New Wireless Access Technologies
New technologies are designed to better address many of the above challenges. In
particular, they attempt to improve user experience (higher data rates and lower
round trip time), spectral and network architecture efficiency. As an example, LTE,
the evolution of the GSM technology family towards 4G, boasts the following characteristics
[1, 9]:
• Much improved user experience: Peak data rates in the range of 100-300 Mbps
and 50-80 Mbps for downlink and uplink respectively, and packet round trip time
reduced to 10 msec