Programme Making And Special Events Research Articles

Unleashing the potential of QoS-aware pricing within licensed shared access framework

We present a techno-economic analysis of a cellular market that operates within the licensed shared access (LSA) framework, consisting of a mobile network operator (MNO) that leases spectrum to a number of programme making and special events (PMSE) users. The MNO offers two quality-of-service (QoS) classes (high and low), differentiating the price based on the QoS class. The key question that we address is whether and to which extent the MNO has incentive to adopt this form of QoS-aware pricing. After getting some promising insights from the analysis of two case studies, we propose a general methodology. The first step is to model the parameters that are controlled by each PMSE user: (i) the way to choose between the two QoS classes and (ii) the available budget per QoS class. The second step is to compute the maximum revenue of the MNO. Our analysis reveals that the MNO can always tune the prices so as to maximise its revenue for the scenario where all users belong to the high QoS class. This is a consistent result throughout our study that holds for any considered set of user-controlled parameters and of technical parameters. We conclude that the adoption of QoS-aware pricing in an LSA market generates a tussle between the MNO and the regulator. The MNO has incentive to support fewer users but with high QoS and charge them more, which is not aligned with the regulator’s goal for social welfare maximisation.

Techno-Economics of Licensed Shared Access with Mobile Network Operators Leasing Spectrum to PMSE Users

Licensed shared access (LSA) has been adopted as a new paradigm by several different regulatory and industrial stakeholders. The European LSA two-tier approach opens the possibility to lease the spectrum more dynamically among network operators implementing different wireless technologies. The initial use cases considered mobile network operators (MNOs) leasing spectrum from other technologies. However, recent initiatives emphasized an important symmetric use case, where programme making and special events (PMSE) users could lease spectrum from MNOs short-term for concerts, conferences, etc. In this market, the MNOs should first have economic incentives to temporarily lease the spectrum that they do not fully use to PMSE users. The goal of this work is to address the relevance of economic aspects for spectrum sharing under LSA. Importantly, this is also of broader regulatory interest, since spectrum could be utilized more efficiently using LSA-like schemes only if this is techno-economically attractive in practice. To this end we present an extensive techno-economic study, analysing the interactions between the MNO and a number of PMSE users. For the MNO, the key challenge is to determine the pricing policy that maximizes its revenue for scenarios where users belong to two distinct quality-of-service (QoS) classes, suitable for different audio applications. Our contributions are as follows. From a technical perspective, we perform extensive simulations in ns-3 for several deployment scenarios, whereby we estimate the maximum number of supported PMSE users. We consider the effect of target QoS throughput, carrier frequency, base station (BS) transmit power, bandwidth, and propagation environment. From an economic perspective, we propose three QoS-aware pricing policies for the MNO that correspond to applications of second and third degree of price discrimination, compute the corresponding revenue, and compare them with the baseline policy of no price discrimination, as currently adopted by the UK regulator Ofcom. Our analysis highlights the importance of the purchasing power of the users, in particular the ones that belong to the low QoS class. Whenever all of them can afford a fixed price set by the regulator, similar to the one suggested by Ofcom, we expect that, in almost all technical configuration settings, the market will operate at a region where it is more profitable for the MNO to support only these low-QoS PMSE users. Therefore, there is no need for price discrimination. On the contrary, whenever the MNO needs to reduce the face value (i.e. the initial price) for some of them, QoS-aware pricing schemes can generate higher revenue. For these cases, price discrimination should be the de facto policy and scenarios with users with high QoS, as well as mixed QoS scenarios, can be supported. Our results show that there is a strong interplay between economic and technical conditions, which ought to be considered when designing regulatory measures for encouraging spectrum sharing in such markets.

Beachfront commons

Technology competition between wireless communication technologies can lead to new, more or less disruptive services. A potentially disruptive technology would be to have unlicensed transmission in the lower UHF bands at power levels up to, e.g. 2 W EIRP. This would give citizens a share of the best spectrum for free use. Tools against congestion could be based on mandatory stochastic channel back-off or, if multiple users are present, on adaptive power and bandwidth control. Compared to the FCC TV white space regulation, no back link would be needed as the spectrum would be used exclusively by wireless devices. In an environment of shrinking interest in terrestrial TV broadcasting, such a regulation is expected to create a new market for high-range consumer devices, competing with licensed communication, while also being suitable for offloading traffic from licensed operations. Furthermore, the approach will allow for efficient digitization of equipment for Programme Making and Special Events (PMSE), but could also be made compatible with novel disaster relief services. To enable accurate interference prediction, it is proposed that, instead of only providing transmitter regulation, receivers should also be regulated, such as be required to adhere to a certain minimum selectivity. The proposal should be taken up in the WRC process.