Internet Access Services Research Articles

The Role of Quality in Bit Stream Access Internet Service Providers on Customer Loyalty

The Internet Service Provider (ISP) sector in Palestine operates in a highly competitive market that presents many challenges related to Israeli rules and regulations concerning internet services. Such challenges emphasize the need for the various ISPs to have a detailed and clear understanding of the critical service quality dimensions that affect the loyalty of customers, and to constantly evaluate and strengthen the service they provide. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study the influence of service quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty in the Palestinian internet sector. The study used a quantitative approach based on the SERVQUAL dimensions to collect the data from internet subscribers through a questionnaire and the data was analyzed using statistical methods. The survey data was gathered from 403 valid responses covering more than eight ISP companies in the West Bank. An examination of the study variables based on the conceptual framework was achieved by using SPSS, where means of quantitative methods such as a comparison of means, and simple and multiple regressions were calculated. The results indicate that, in general, the level of service quality does not meet customer expectations. In addition, a descriptive analysis of the study variables indicates that the means of three service quality dimensions (reliability, responsiveness, and tangibility) have a medium degree level, while empathy and assurance have a high degree level. It is showed that service quality positively affects customer satisfaction. A positive relationship exists between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The study suggests that the effect of the “responsiveness” dimension on consumer satisfaction and loyalty is stronger than the effects of the other dimensions, with “tangibility” having the lowest effect. Finally, the study recommends to ISPs to improve the level of service quality in order to meet customers' needs and wants, and in order to gain long-term customer loyalty.

Stepping Back onto the Escalator: Answering the D.C. Circuit’s Remand of the Pole Attachment Question

In the recent case of Mozilla v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit evaluated the legal legitimacy of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (“RIFO”). The question at bar was the agency’s decision to reverse the imposition of Title II common carrier regulation on the Internet dictated by the Obama-era 2015 Open Internet Order and to return the classification of broadband Internet access services back to a Title I “information” service. After review, the D.C. Circuit agreed. But while the court upheld the Commission’s decision to place broadband back under the umbrella of Title I, the court also held that by deliberately placing “broadband outside of its Title II jurisdiction” the Commission had essentially abdicated all legal authority — express and ancillary — over information services. The D.C. Circuit’s “statutory abdication” logic created a ripple effect across a wide variety of legal action items the Commission sought to resolve in its RIFO. One of these issues was the question of who is eligible to take advantage of the pole attachment regime contained in Section 224 of the Communications Act, ultimately remanding the issue to the FCC for further consideration. This paper reviews the court’s reasoning and sets forth some suggestions about how the Commission should address the court’s concerns on remand. In particular, the paper explains that conspicuously absent from the Majority’s pole attachment discussion is the recognition that that prior to the 2015 Open Internet Rules broadband-only carriers were foreclosed from the statutory regime under Section 224. Thus, the correct legal question on remand is not whether the RIFO deprived broadband-only carriers of inalienable “statutory rights” as the court suggests, but rather whether these carriers had valid reliance interests that were harmed by the Commission’s choice to reverse the 2015 Open Internet Order two years later? According to the D.C. Circuit’s own opinion in Mozilla, the answer to that question is a resounding “No.”

Techno-economic analysis of satellite implementation as a broadband internet provider in Indonesia

Indonesia is an archipelago that consisting of a group of islands from Sabang to Marauke. To be able to communicate each other, it needs a telecommunications network that can load all regions of Indonesia, without exception. The use of satellites as a means of telecommunications is very suitable to be applied in Indonesia. Because by using satellites, operators can provide internet services to rural areas that cannot access internet services by terrestrial networks. This is what causes businesses in this field is very promising. However, this business is not an expensive business because it requires very large costs in planning until operating. Therefore, it takes a research that shows the feasibility of this business for people to investment. In this paper shows that, NPV value during the active period of the satellite was USD 555,804,583 with an IRR value of 7% with PBP 5 years 8 months. Based on these parameters it can be seen that the investment is still classified as feasible to continue.

Impact of twisting rate in 10 pairs of unshielded twisted-pair copper cables on insertion loss and crosstalk coupling for G.fast technology

An ultrafast digital subscriber line (DSL) technology called G.fast is important for ultrafast broadband Internet access services. In G.fast, the existing cable bundles installed for 250 m from the distribution point to the customer’s premises are used to support the gigabit data transmission (aggregated 1 Gbit/s) for frequency up to 106 MHz or 212 MHz. Since unshielded cable is used, and the frequency is 12 times higher compared to the very high-speed DSL2 (VDSL2), it is important to investigate the cable performance in terms of insertion loss and crosstalk coupling. In this paper, the impact of cable twisting rate on 10 pairs of unshielded twisted-pair copper cables for a small copper bundle on insertion loss and crosstalk coupling is investigated. A simulation model is developed based on the standard cable installed in Malaysia. The model reliability is validated by comparing the obtained result with the published result in the literature. Besides, the twisting rate of 100 m cable is manipulated by changing its lay size to determine its impact on insertion loss and crosstalk coupling. The results showed that a high twisting rate can reduce the far-end crosstalk but increase both the insertion loss and near-end crosstalk.

Gigabit broadband measurement workshop report

On July 24-25, 2018, MIT hosted an invitation-only workshop for network researchers from academia, industry, and the policy community engaged in the design and operation of test schemes to measure broadband access, in order to address the measurement challenges associated with highspeed (gigabit) broadband Internet access services. The focus of the workshop was on assessing the current state-of-the-art in gigabit broadband measurement tools and practices, the technical and policy challenges that arise, and possible strategies for addressing these challenges. A goal of this initial workshop was to provide a level-setting and networking opportunity among representatives of many of the leading research and operational efforts within academia, industry, and the government to collect, analyze, and make use of broadband and Internet performance measurement data and in the design of the measurement methods and tools.

Increasing Broadband Reach with Hybrid Access Networks

End-users and governments force network operators to deploy faster Internet access services everywhere. Access technologies such as FTTx, VDSL2, DOCSIS3.0 can provide such services in cities. However, it is not cost-effective for network operators to deploy them in less densely populated regions. The recently proposed Hybrid Access Networks allow to boost xDSL networks by using the available capacity in existing LTE networks. We first present the three architectures defined by the Broadband Forum for such Hybrid Access Networks. Then we describe our experience with the implementation and the deployment of Multipath TCP-based Hybrid Access Networks.

Distributed Blockchain-Based Trusted Multidomain Collaboration for Mobile Edge Computing in 5G and Beyond

Mobile edge computing (MEC) sinks computing power to the edge of networks and integrates mobile access networks and Internet services in 5G and beyond. With the continuous development of services, privacy protection is extremely important in a heterogeneous MEC system for multiserver collaboration. However, most of the existing schemes only consider the privacy of users or services other than the privacy of network topology. For the purpose of topology privacy protection, this article employs blockchain to construct heterogeneous MEC systems and adopts accommodative bloom filter as a carrier for multidomain collaborative routing consensus without exposing topology privacy. Blockchain is used to implement multiplex mutual trust networking and collaborative routing verification through the membership service and consensus mechanism. Experiments are conducted to evaluate the feasibility and performances of our scheme. The results indicate that the proposed scheme can highly improve the credibility and efficiency of MEC collaboration.

Mobile Social Service User Identification Framework Based on Action-Characteristic Data Retention

Mobile social services are an indispensable part of our daily lives. These services are also favored by criminals because it is difficult to retrieve communication data from them. In the past, communication data provided by telecommunication carriers usually indicated when, from where, and with whom the communication occurred. Presently, it is difficult for law enforcement agencies and public security departments to obtain information regarding mobile social services. For this reason, these departments have requested Internet access service providers to store data that can be used to identify the user of a mobile social service at any given time. However, many non-government and civil society organizations claim that these practices violate privacy rights; hence, they strongly oppose the retention of the subscribers’ data by the government. Currently, the European Union law does not allow “general and indiscriminate retention of traffic data and location data,” except for “targeted” use against “serious crimes.” Under this premise, ensuring the necessary data retention, while reducing the privacy violations and maintaining public security is a challenging task. In this study, a novel identification framework based on different types and action characteristics of mobile social services is proposed. Based on this framework, government agencies do not need to retain general and indiscriminate traffic data, but only data that aid in identification. Thus, this framework substantially reduces the volume of potential targets and improves the probability of correct target identification, ensuring a balance between privacy and public security.

Enhancing Dynamic-Viewport Mobile Applications with Screen Scrolling

The pervasive penetration of mobile smart devices has significantly enriched Internet applications and undoubtedly reshaped the way that users access Internet services. Different from traditional desktop applications, mobile Internet applications require users to input via touch screens and view outputs on the displays with considerably limited size. The significant conflict between the limited-size of touch screens and the richness of online media contents widely exists in dynamic-viewport mobile applications, a class of mobile Internet applications that download contents beyond the user's viewing region (referred to as viewport). As dynamic-viewport mobile applications usually use HTTP for content downloading, to improve their quality of experience (QoE) and cost efficiency, in this paper, we present a Mobile-Friendly HTTP middleware (MF-HTTP), which can interpret user touch screen inputs and optimize the HTTP downloading of media objects for such applications. We first demystify screen scrolling in mobile operating systems and precisely break down the viewport moving process. We identify the key influential factors for media object downloading and develop an optimal download scheme. Towards building a practical middleware, we further discuss and address the implementation issues in detail. We implement a MF-HTTP prototype based on Android platforms and evaluate the performance of MF-HTTP by conducting concrete case studies on two representative dynamic-viewport mobile applications, namely, web browsing and 360-degree video streaming.

An improved user authentication scheme on smartphone using dominating attribute of touch data

In the era of science and technology, the user of Smartphone is omnipresent, as the data of research shows the number of Smartphone users is rising exponentially. Earlier Mobile phones used for calling and sending messages. Technology has evolved, and presently Smartphone is used as multipurpose device. The smartphone is used for online shopping, reading books, listing music, clicking photo, recording video, internet access, digital banking, and many more sophisticated services. Access of Smartphone data must be by secure and user-friendly system of authentication. Authentication methods of traditional computer systems cannot fit as it is into Smartphone authentication due to small size screen for input. Presently fingerprint authentication, pattern authentications systems and many more are used for Smartphone authentication, but they are just providing the security at entry-level authentication. Once a user does entry-level authentication device is open for use, and unattended phone can be unauthorized access. There is research going on in the area where the unauthorized person must not have access even the device is in unlock state. This dimension of authentication is called continuous Smartphone authentication. Our focus in this paper is on continuous mobile authentication. In this paper dataset of 41 users is used. Feature selection methods for continuous Smartphone authenticationuses dominating features. For the better tradeoff OptAT performance parameter is proposed. The improvement of 16% has been achieved using this parameter. The learning curve also has been drowned for the features.

Peering Among Content-Dominated Vertical ISPs

Content providers (CPs) typically control the digital content consumption services and are getting the most revenue by implementing an “all-you-can-eat” model via subscription or hyper-targeted advertisements. Revamping the existing Internet architecture and design, a vertical integration where a CP and access Internet service provider (ISP) will act as unibody in a sugarcane form seems to be the recent trend. In this letter, using the U.S. as a case study, we show the overlaps between access ISPs and CPs to explore the viability of a future in terms of peering between these new emerging content-dominated sugarcane ISPs and the healthiness of Internet economics.

English

  This study focused on the role of Noakhali Science and Technology University Library in the academic development of the university. A mixed method research design was used whereby copies of questionnaires and structured interview guide were utilized to collect data. The study was conducted among 100 library users (students, faculty and university staff), librarian and another member of academic council as two key informants. The study found that the Noakhali Science and Technology University Library is playing an important role in the academic development in terms of education and research. The library offers information literacy training, free Internet access and digital library services for e-resources for all users. The study also found that Noakhali Science and Technology University Library plays a significant role in contributing to teaching and learning by providing reference services and circulation of books, journals, magazines and newspapers. The study however identified the challenges that bedeviled the university library to include: lack of relevant resources, inadequate ICT facilities and absence of enough reading space for users.   Key words: University libraries, academic development, Noakhali Science and Technology University Library, Bangladesh.

Public vs. Private Mobile Services: An Analysis of a Tortured History

The most important and widely used mobile service of our time, mobile broadband service, is now classified as a private mobile service. The service is clearly broadly offered to the public. How did it come to be classified as a private mobile service? This paper undertakes a historical analysis of the relevant statutes and regulations from the 1940s through 2018. We start with the problem facing the FCC in the 1940s, when it attempted to create a framework for allocating spectrum to a long list of competing wireless services. We analyze how the statutory mandate to consider the public interest led the FCC to segregate non-governmental mobile services into public safety radio services, industrial radio services, domestic public radio services, and land transportation radio services. We examine why the FCC made a distinction between public mobile service and private mobile service, based on whether the service was common carriage, characterized by an offering to the public for a fee. We then examine the effect upon regulation of mobile services of the introduction in the 1950s and 1960s of pre-cellular mobile telephone services and paging services. We turn next to the effect upon regulation of mobile services of the introduction in the 1970s and 1980s of cellular voice service. Cellular voice service dramatically changed the landscape of mobile service. We analyze why and how the shift in use of mobile service triggered corresponding changes in regulatory policy. In particular, we examine the competition for spectrum between public cellular service and private dispatch service, and how the FCC considered the public or private nature of the service in spectrum allocation decisions. We also examine why the FCC for the first time placed limitations on interconnection of private mobile services with the telephone network. We then turn to Congressional action. We examine Congress’s attempt in 1982 to give statutory guidance on spectrum allocation. We analyze why and how Congress defined for the first time private land mobile service. In particular, we analyze the role of interconnection in that definition. We examine the FCC’s ensuing Orders that had the effect of expanding private mobile services to include services offered to the public, and how that blurred the lines between private and public mobile services. We then analyze Congress’s response in 1993, when it introduced new definitions of private and commercial mobile services, in an attempt to more clearly distinguish between private and public versions of similar mobile services. In particular, we examine how interconnection with the public switched network became a significant factor in the classification of private and commercial mobile services. The paper concludes with a review of the recent arguments of whether mobile broadband Internet access service is a commercial mobile service or a private mobile service. We hope that a better understanding of the history of private and public mobile services may lend insight into how mobile broadband service came to be classified as a private mobile service, as well as to whether such a classification is reasonable given that history.

Consortium Blockchain-Based Secure Software Defined Vehicular Network

The vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a promising technology that can provide Internet access services for vehicles. With the development of VANET, tremendous intelligent vehicles will emerge mass and different communication requirements. Software-defined networking (SDN) is regarded as a potential technology to enhance network performance. In recent years, a new networking paradigm called software defined vehicular networks (SDVN) has been proposed. Nevertheless, the security issues still need to be considered for SDVN, because malicious vehicles can put forward fake requirements on the control plane of SDVN, which deteriorates the network performance in a certain degree. In this paper, we associate resources allocation problem with trust value of vehicles for the first time. The trust value of vehicles can be obtained through trust management system. Considering that there are many defects in the state-in-art trust management schemes, in this paper, a decentralized trust management architecture is designed which constitutes of three layers based on consortium blockchain. A joint proof-of-stake and modified practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PoS-mPBFT) algorithm is proposed to the shorten the confirmation time, which is deployed on RSUs. Different from previous researches that focus on designing methods to evaluate trust value, we use prediction model to estimate trust value of vehicles in the next period. After calculating trust value of vehicles, it assigns more resources to those high credibility vehicles when SDN services are provided. Meanwhile, to increase the efficiency of resource allocation, we convert the multiple-path mapping problem of the virtual network into the multi-commodity flow problem, which is solved by a heuristic algorithm. The simulation results indicate that the proposed trust management architecture and heuristic algorithm could provide better safety in SDVN and shorten consensus time, meanwhile effectively abstract underlying resources to enhance network load balance and capacity.

Broadband Internet Access Services through Power Line Communication to the Rural Dwellers in Nigeria

Broadband Internet Access Services through Power Line Communication to the Rural Dwellers in Nigeria

A Practical Assessment of Competition Regulation as a Viable Option for Protecting Net Neutrality in Nigeria

A Practical Assessment of Competition Regulation as a Viable Option for Protecting Net Neutrality in Nigeria

Is Bandung Wifi Juara Program Success?

The purpose of this study was to determine the public perception of Bandung Juara Wifi program 2013-2015. In this research, there are attributes Bandung Juara Wifi used to determine the public perception that consists of Internet access services, internet access tool, the cost of internet access, internet access time and service packs. The sampling technique used in this research is purposive sampling so as to produce the 400 respondents who answered the questionnaire. This research data analysis technique is univariate data analysis techniques. The results of this study stated that overall public perception of the Bandung Juara Wifi is good. But needs to be improved on one attribute, namely, the services pack by improving the speed and stability of the Internet that are owned by Bandung Juara Wifi.

Zero rating and end-users’ freedom of choice: an economic analysis

PurposeAccording to European Union Open Internet Regulation, commercial practices of internet access service providers (IASP) should not restrict end-users’ choice regarding services, applications or contents. This paper aims to analyze the effects of Zero Rating (ZR) on freedom of choice translating this regulatory criterion into a formal expression: providing a ZR offer on a content or application provider (CAP) restricts end-users’ choice if it reduces the volume or provision of others usages.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is made in two steps. First, the authors assess the direct effect of introducing zero rating on non-ZR usages, all other things equal. Second, the paper studies the knock-on effect of ZR on IASP offers and the supply of CAP.FindingsIn the short term, zero rating does not restrict end-users’ choice increasing both ZR and non-ZR usages. In the long term, in the case of pure ZR, IASPs may adapt their offer to support ZR costs impacting negatively other usages. However, in practice, these effects are compensated or diluted by competitive forces or if the ZR traffic is small relatively to the data allowance. In the case of SD, the CAP covers the cost which prevents cross-subsidies and protects freedom of choice if SD is open to all CAPs.Originality/valueThe economic literature on zero rating is scarce and assesses this practice from the general economic criterion of social or consumer welfare. This paper is the first one to use economic analysis to analyze whether Zero Rating is compatible with the EU regulatory criterion of freedom of choice.

‘A More Human Approach’. Human Rights, Obligations of the State and Network Neutrality in Europe

The article explores the concept of the positive and negative obligations of the state in securing human rights, recognized in human rights literature, and in the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. The concept is then applied to show the importance of securing freedom of expression in regulating Internet access services and enforcing pertinent regulations in EU Member States. The author is of the opinion that economic arguments should not overshadow the need to secure the freedom of expression of the end-users of Internet access services.

A Spectrum Sharing Paradigm for GSO Satellite System and Radio Astronomy System

Geostationary orbit (GSO) satellite communication systems (SCSs) play an important role in nowadays satellite communication. Orbiting in the Clarke Belt, the GSO satellites provide voice, video, Internet access, and other data services to the users all over the world. The GSO SCSs are seeking for more spectrum resource to satisfy the growing demand of high downlink data rate, while the radio astronomy system (RAS) is suffering the inevitable radio-frequency interference (RFI) from the downlink of these GSO satellites. To solve the conflict between the GSO SCSs and the RAS in the spectrum allocation, we propose a spectrum sharing paradigm for the GSO SCS and the RAS with three potential RFI reduction methods. Depending on the radio astronomical observation (RAO) tasks of different observatories, the corresponding appropriate RFI reduction method combination can be chosen. Our analyses show that the proposed paradigm can guarantee most of the telescopes with the sample loss rate lower than 2% in both protected and unprotected RAS bands, while the SCS can obtain up to 13.88% extra average downlink throughput.