Telecommunications Carriers Research Articles

5G and urban amenity: regulatory trends and local government responses around small cell deployment

PurposeAs part of the 5G rollout, small cell base stations will be deployed across cities. This paper aims to identify an international effort to remove regulatory barriers around deployment and outline emerging strategies Australian local governments are developing to ensure urban amenity in a deregulatory context.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyses existing legislation, policy frameworks and grey literature and has conducted eight interviews with participants from the local government sector.FindingsThis paper identifies a global deregulatory trend around small cell deployment and that councils are trying to renegotiate their relationship with telecommunications carriers as 5G is rolled out. Three strategies are identified: the design and installation of smart poles, network sharing and partnerships.Originality/valueThis research contributes to scholarship focused on the 5G rollout and offers one of the first accounts of the emerging tensions between regulatory frameworks, commercial imperatives and municipal authorities, identifying urban amenity as a key area of concern.

Ensuring communication redundancy and establishing a telementoring system for robotic telesurgery using multiple communication lines

Assuring communication redundancy during the interruption and establishing appropriate teaching environments for local surgeons are essential to making robotic telesurgery mainstream. This study analyzes robotic telesurgery with telementoring using standard domestic telecommunication carriers. Can multiple carriers guarantee redundancy with interruptions? Three commercial optical fiber lines connected Hirosaki University and Mutsu General Hospitals, 150 km apart. Using Riverfield, Inc. equipment, Hirosaki had a cockpit, while both Mutsu used both a cockpit and a surgeon’s console. Experts provided telementoring evaluating 14 trainees, using objective indices for operation time and errors. Subjective questionnaires addressed image quality and surgical operability. Eighteen participants performed telesurgery using combined lines from two/three telecommunication carriers. Manipulation: over 30 min, lines were cut and restored every three minutes per task. Subjects were to press a switch when noticing image quality or operability changes. Mean time to task completion was 1510 (1186–1960) seconds: local surgeons alone and 1600 (1152–2296) seconds for those under remote instructor supervision, including expert intervention time. There was no significant difference (p = 0.86). The mean error count was 0.92 (0–3) for local surgeons and 0.42 (0–2) with remote instructors. Image quality and operability questionnaires found no significant differences. Results communication companies A, B, and C: the A/B combination incurred 0.17 (0–1) presses of the environment change switch, B/C had 0, and C/A received 0.67 (0–3), showing no significant difference among provider combinations. Combining multiple communication lines guarantees communication redundancy and enables robotic telementoring with enhanced communication security.

Resilience enhancement in open network–cloud ecosystems through disaggregation and cooperation [Invited

To accommodate the growing demand for cloud services, telecom carriers’ networks and datacenter (DC) facilities form large network–cloud ecosystems (ecosystems for short) physically supporting these services. These large-scale ecosystems are continuously evolving and must be highly resilient to support critical services. Open and disaggregated optical-networking technologies promise to enhance the interoperability across telecom carriers and DC operators, thanks to their open interfaces in both the data plane and control/management plane. In the first part of this paper, we focus on a single entity (e.g., a telecom carrier or an emerging telecom/DC partnership company) that owns both the network and DC infrastructures in the ecosystem. We introduce a solution by leveraging open and disaggregated technologies to enhance the resilience of the optical networks within a multi-vendor and multi-domain ecosystem. In the second part of this paper, we consider the case when the networks and DCs are owned by different entities. Also, in this case, cooperation among datacenter providers (DCPs) and carriers is crucial to provide failure/disaster resilience to today’s cloud services. However, such cooperation is more challenging since DCPs and carriers, being different entities, may not disclose confidential information, e.g., detailed resource availability. Hence, we introduce a solution to enhance the resilience of such multi-entity ecosystems through cooperation between DCPs and carriers without violating confidentiality.

Sponsored Data: Cooperative Pricing and Subsidizing Strategies of Mobile Telecom Carriers and Internet Content Providers

Sponsored Data: Cooperative Pricing and Subsidizing Strategies of Mobile Telecom Carriers and Internet Content Providers

PRIVATISATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF POWER HOLDING COMPANY (PHCN) OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES

The study examines impact of privatization and commercialization of PHCN on Nigeria people. The paper utilized both primary and secondary sources of data and data collected were descriptively analyzed with a view to seeking answers to the broad question of the effect of privatization and commercialization of government-owned enterprises in Nigeria with reference to Power Holdings Company of Nigeria (PHCN), Benin Zone. The study engaged one hundred and fifty-four (154) respondents randomly selected from the five departments of PHCN, Benin. The findings revealed that PHCN has to contend with internal and external environmental hostilities and constraints such as poor funding of the enterprise, corruption, excessive control by the Federal Government, vandalization of its equipment by hoodlums, fraud, shady dealings, poor maintenance, erosion, and debts owed it and irregular rainfall. Government should examine and select the competent people who will handle private enterprises and not people of questionable character. Capturing the confidence of labour, building more power plants, staff training and motivation, monitoring of the privatization processes, transparency and accountability will check corruption, Government interference and recruitment by patronage. The paper concluded that electricity is the bedrock of socioeconomic development of any nation hence priority must be set for its full privatization and commercialization as it did to the national telecommunication carrier, NITEL, so than Nigerians can grow and develop like other nations such as Malaysia, Indonesia and India, which have almost same characteristics like Nigeria. Private-sector driven economy is key to this development and government must create this sector in Nigeria if it must grow and develop industrially, socially and politically.

Modeling the Causes of Power-Related Network Outages Using Discrete-Time Markov Chains

In this paper, we model the causes of power-related network outages in Ghana using discrete-time Markov chains. We used data consisting of 2,756 small-scale carrier telecommunications outages occurring in Ghana, with accompanying root causes over a period of 5 years and 8 months, from August 2015 to April 2021. The results indicate that the majority (n = 1,404) of the network outages were caused by the generators while the least number (18) of outages were caused by a communication equipment. However, longer network outages were caused by fuel issues with an average outage time of 1,027.82 min over the study period. The transition probability matrix obtained from the data revealed that regardless of the present cause of the network outage, the probability that the next network outage will be caused by the generators is higher than the probability that the outage will be attributable to any other cause. The steady-state distribution indicates that in the long run (n ≥ 16), 51% of the network outages will be caused by the “Generators” while 10.8% of the network outages will be caused by the “Batteries.” We also checked and simulated the probabilities of a network outage caused by any of the 12 possible root causes for 12 steps. It seemed apparent from the simulations that generators are the most likely cause of network outages from Step 1 up to Step 7, irrespective of what the initial cause of the network outage is. With these findings, players in the telecommunications industry can clearly plan better to reduce future network outages.

Optimizing Churn Identification in Telecommunications Using Natural Language Processing and XG Boost Machine Learning Paradigm

With the increasing competition in the telecom sector, accurate churn prediction has become indispensable for service providers seeking to retain customers. This research paper introduces a novel approach that combines Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) and specifically leveraging the XGBoost algorithm, to enhance the precision and efficiency of churn prediction in the telecom industry. The integration of NLP enables the extraction of meaningful insights from diverse data sources, while XGBoost, a powerful gradient boosting algorithm, is employed to build a robust predictive model for identifying potential churners. A machine learning method called the XGBoost churn prediction model is utilized in the telecom industry to forecast client churn. To construct a predictive model that can precisely identify consumers prone to churn, XGBoost is essentially an ensemble method based on gradient-enhanced trees. Several telecom carriers have used this model to understand their consumers better and identify issues that can contribute to churn. It has been used to predict churn in the telecom sector accurately. The model has been tested for accuracy and effectiveness in identifying factors and forecasting customer attrition. These evaluations' findings indicate that the XGBoost model is a trustworthy and precise method for forecasting customer attrition in the telecom industry.

When Should Competing Mobile Telecom Carriers Provide Sponsored Data Plans Under Cross-Side Network Effects?

ABSTRACT The competition among mobile telecom carriers, serving as two-sided market platforms, is becoming more intensive in recent years. To gain additional profits from Internet content providers, mobile telecom carriers charge subsidization fees to Internet content providers by providing sponsored data plans wherein end users are subsidized by Internet content providers for the cost of data traffic consumption. This study employs a game-theoretical model to investigate the optimal strategies of competing mobile telecom carriers on providing sponsored data plans under cross-side network effects. We find that both mobile telecom carriers (only one mobile telecom carrier, neither mobile telecom carrier) will provide sponsored data plans in Nash equilibrium when the cross-side network effects are weak (moderate, strong). Also, considering the effect of sponsored data plan in terms of the increment in both the total number of end users and the average amount of data traffic each end user consumes, we find that both mobile telecom carriers (only one mobile telecom carrier) will provide sponsored data plans in Nash equilibrium when the effect of sponsored data plan is weak or strong (moderate). Moreover, in the scenario wherein a proportion of end users multi-home to mobile telecom carriers, we verify that end users’ multi-homing will conditionally benefit or hurt mobile telecom carriers, which is also a novel finding different from prior studies. In the scenario wherein end users are partially subsidized, when the cross-side network effects are not too large, the larger mobile telecom carrier will always totally subsidize end users while the smaller mobile telecom carrier may choose to totally, partially, or not subsidize end users.

A Study Of The Factors Influencing The Acquisition And Retention Of Customers In The Indian Telecommunications Industry: Systematic Analysis Using The SPSS Model

The purpose of this article is to discover the important factors that influence the acquisition and retention of clients of Indian telecommunications carriers. The survey has been conducted to 54 respondents across Delhi NCR in line with the objective of the study has been conducted from 31 variables identified from various literature reviews. The 31 variables have been categorized into six factors such as service, support, CRM, price, network, and regulatory. Survey-based questionnaires were used to collect data for 54 respondents using Google Form. The study finds out that value added services, reliability of service factor, commitment of support factor, call rates and offers of pricing factor, network quality of network factor and telecom policy of regulatory factor significantly influencing customer acquisition and retention of Indian telecom companies. This study is of great benefit to university researchers, managers, and telecommunications practitioners.

Network Effects and Multinetwork Sellers’ Dynamic Pricing in the U.S. Smartphone Market

Although the literature on network effects has focused on single-network firms, many industries feature multinetwork firms that play more complex dynamic pricing games. In this paper, we estimate the network effect at the smartphone operating system (OS) level and study multi-OS telecommunication carriers’ dynamic pricing strategies in an oligopolistic setting, using data on the U.S. smartphone industry. We find a positive OS network effect. Counterfactual analysis indicates that if the carriers were single-OS sellers, they would increase the phone prices of large OSs and lower the prices of small OSs, which reduces the consumer surplus by $6.99 billion. Further analyses show that the multi-OS carriers choose lower prices for large OSs than for small OSs because of their preference for OS concentration. This paper was accepted by Eric Anderson, marketing. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72203217, 71803205, and 72192803] and the fund for building world-class universities (disciplines) of Renmin University of China. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4530 .

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD): Legal Protection of The Employee in Malaysia

Due to the portability of the devices and the broad coverage of the Internet access provided by the telecommunication carrier, the usage of mobile devices is not only limited to personal matters but has also been used to perform work-related tasks. The practice has led to the emergence of Bring Your Own Device ("BYOD") practice. BYOD has become popular because the companies can extend their confidence and trust in the employee, leading to an efficient team of human resources. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has driven millions of employees to change their working practice from being physically in the office to adapting Work from Home ("WFH") practice. Unfortunately, BYOD has shown its bias toward the employees when there is a violation of employees' rights on working hours and privacy issues. Employees believe that the current legal system in Malaysia is insufficient to safeguard them against unfair BYOD practices. This study investigates the BYOD practice of using employees' personal mobile devices for work purposes and the worry regarding the employee's data stored on the devices when used for work and personal purposes. This report also suggests introducing Malaysian binding guidelines or policies to include a device definition and standardise BYOD practice in the workplace. This strategy is critical for protecting both employers and employees when introducing a BYOD policy at work.

Live Migration of Virtualized Carrier Grade SIP Server

The concept of network virtualization, such as network functions virtualization, has attracted considerable attention from telecom carriers and a live migration technique is a key feature of virtualization technology. However, there are some challenges associated with applying server virtualization technology including live migration to a SIP server. Previous work has not dealt with the performance or behavior of a SIP server during live migration. Neither has it targeted a carrier grade SIP server for live migration. In this paper we present a virtualized carrier grade SIP server running on a virtual machine, which is configured with Carrier Grade Linux, HA middleware and SIP-AS application. We also assess its performance to investigate the impact of throughput degradation and suspension on a SIP layer and HA cluster configuration.

The Charismatic Organization: Vision 2000 and Corporate Change in a State-Owned Organization

British Telecom’s 1984 partial privatization set in motion the privatization and deregulation of many international state-owned telecommunications carriers. Most previous research on the privatization and deregulation of state-owned telecommunications carriers has focused on the economic outcomes. However, this was also a time of changes in managerial practice and thinking influenced by organizational theory. This article presents an analysis of the use of the prescriptions of Rosabeth Kanter in the attempted reform of the organizational culture of Australia’s largest business in the 1980s: the government-owned telecommunications monopoly Telecom Australia (now Telstra). It details the attempt to transform Telecom under the incipient threat of the introduction of competition to the telecommunications market and demonstrates how the country’s largest change management program, Vision 2000, represented an alternative approach to telecommunications reform.

Should subscription-revenue internet content providers adopt sponsored data plans by mobile telecom carriers in duopoly market?

• This study investigates novel mobile online-content service involving ICPs & MTCs. • A game-theoretic model is developed to analyze subscription-revenue ICPs' strategy. • Two-dimensional effect of sponsored data plan (SDPs) is defined and verified. • When one ICP adopts SDPs, the competing ICP can become better off or worse off. • Both ICPs may get to the "win-win" equilibrium, or a prisoner's dilemma game. • Only when the effect of SPDs is strong enough will an MTC provide SPDs. Internet content providers (ICPs) adopt sponsored data plans provided by mobile telecom carriers (MTCs) to allow end users (EUs) to browse online content without counting towards their monthly data caps. The revenues of ICPs from subscriptions increase rapidly, and more web-based content or service sites turn to subscription-based business models. In this study, we develop a game-theoretic model to analyze competing subscription-revenue ICPs’ strategies on setting subscription fees and adopting sponsored data plans provided by an MTC. We find that each dimension of the two-dimensional effect of sponsored data plan, that is, the growth rate of the number of EUs and the growth rate of the average data traffic consumed per EU, has opposite impacts on optimal strategies of ICPs regarding whether to adopt sponsored data plans or not, which is significantly different from prior studies focused on advertisement-revenue ICPs. Particularly, when only one ICP adopts the sponsored data plan, the competing ICP can become either better off or worse off, or even be pushed out of the market. When both ICPs adopt sponsored data plans, they may get to the “win–win” equilibrium, or fall into a prisoner’s dilemma game. We also find that the average consumer surplus does not always increase under a sponsored data plan. In Extensions, regarding the strategies of an MTC on providing sponsored data plans to two competing ICPs, we find that only when the effect of sponsored data plan is strong enough will an MTC provide sponsored data plans. From the perspective of the system comprising an ICP and an MTC, the ICP can increase its competitive advantage by investing in or merging with an MTC, while the competing ICP becomes worse off. At last, when ICPs fix their subscription fees under sponsored data plans, it is optimal for the two ICPs to choose the same strategy, both adopting or rejecting the sponsored data plans.

Digital self-harm: an empirical analysis of the effects of broadband adoption on suicide

PurposePast literature offered competing predictions of the effect of broadband Internet on suicide. The Internet facilitates suicide by providing suicide-related information and ruining mental health. In contrast, Internet prevents suicide by offering social interaction and online mental treatment. This study aims to solve this tension by empirically examining the effect of broadband Internet on suicide with large-scale panel set.Design/methodology/approachThis study takes instrument approach with the US county-level panel set for the period 2013–17. This study uses the number of household broadband Internet subscriptions as the measure of broadband and leverages the number of telecommunication carriers as an instrument to address concern for endogenous relationship.FindingsThere exists a positive and significant association between broadband Internet adoption and suicide on average. This study provides empirical evidence that this association is attributable to the Internet's role in leading to a general decline in the mental well-being and in providing suicide-relevant information. This association is more evident in areas with high poverty and low social capital.Originality/valueThis study contributes to literatures that address the dark side of information systems in general and that address how Internet adoption can influence public health and well-being in particular. Results of underlying mechanisms why Internet affects suicide, and heterogeneous effect of Internet by poverty and social capital provide insight for governments to enact proactive regulations to address continuing rise of suicide.

Analysis of the Efficiency of Various Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment’s Collection Routes: A Case Study Focusing on Collection Route for Waste Mobile Phones in the Tohoku Area of Japan

Each year, more than 5 million Waste Mobile Phones (WMP) is generated in Japan. Since WMPs contain many rare metals and precious metals, it is essential to collect and recycle high-value metal resources from them effectively. Although multiple stakeholders have already developed WMP collection routes, these WMP collection routes’ current status is unclear. Furthermore, some WMP collection routes can only collect a small number of WMP, and so, their resource efficiency is low. This research aims to clarify each WMP collection route’s characteristics and evaluate their resource efficiency by conducting interview research on related stakeholders and the WMP dismantle experiment. The result shows that local government, authorized recyclers, and telecom carriers are the major stakeholders in collecting WMPs in Japan. To improve the WMP collection rate in cities with high population densities, using the local government’s collection route and installing an authorized recycler’s collection station is considered to be more effective. In cities with low population densities, the collection stations built by authorized recyclers are sufficient. The collection stations can also improve recycling behavior by offering points. Furthermore, the telecom carriers are encouraged to participate in the WMP collection business, but they should figure out a way to monitor the flow route of secondhand phones they exported and prompt the proper recycling of exported phones.

Emergency communications policies in Puerto Rico: Interaction between regulatory institutions and telecommunications companies during Hurricane Maria

Extreme infrastructure collapse poses unique challenges to emergency communications. This was the case in Puerto Rico in 2017 after hurricanes Irma and Maria. In this study, we first examined telecommunications carriers representatives' views of the adequateness of emergency communications policies. Their views were contrasted with the perspectives of a selection of telecommunications experts and regulators. Secondly, we conducted a policy analysis to assess the FCC, the Telecommunications Bureau of Puerto Rico, and telecommunications companies' emergency communications processes and outcomes. An electronic questionnaire and in-depth interviews with telecommunications companies' representatives, and secondary data analysis were used. The analysis revealed that most participants considered favorably the 2017 Wireless Resiliency Cooperative Framework but did not look favorably upon various state-level emergency communications policies. The policy analysis points to ineffective state emergency communications policies due to the impact of external factors and the lack of coordination of the state government electrical power provider and private telecommunications companies. The results also revealed that between 2017 and 2019, policy makers and the application of policy tools in regard to emergency communications were largely reactive and relied on vigorous state level intervention through a prescriptive regulatory approach. The analysis includes policy recommendations for emergency communications.

Zero-Touch Multi-Service Provisioning With Pluggable Module-Type OLT in Access Network Virtualization Testbed

This paper investigates a multi-service activation procedure for telecommunications carriers’ zero-touch provisioning workflows using access network virtualization technologies in an optical access network. We examine a procedure in which one network function or a set of functions is initiated depending on the services to be activated after a line is automatically opened in response to a customer’s action. The feasibility of this procedure is experimentally verified in a joint testbed environment between three Asia-Pacific telecommunications carriers. The results showed that even when 32 customers simultaneously request service activation, it takes less than 30 seconds for all of the customers’ requests to be completed. In addition, we discuss potential implementations for activating various multi-service provisioning in response to customer requirements and network isolation in terms of virtualized resources and infrastructure. We also propose an implementation that utilizes network resources shared by various services more efficiently than that presented in our previous conference report, and we experimentally verify its feasibility. In addition, the experimental configurations briefly described in the previous report are described in detail in this paper.

FCC votes to designate 988 as new MH crisis hotline

The Federal Communications Commission on July 16 adopted rules to establish 988 as the new, nationwide, three‐digit phone number for Americans in crisis to connect with suicide prevention and mental health crisis counselors, according to an FCC press release. The rules require all phone service providers to direct all 988 calls to the existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1‐800‐273‐TALK, or 1‐800‐273‐8255) by July 16, 2022. The new rules will apply to all telecommunications carriers as well as all interconnected and one‐way voice over Internet Protocol service providers. During the two‐year transition to 988, Americans who need help should continue to contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling and through online chats. To ensure that calls to 988 reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, all covered providers will be required to implement 10‐digit dialing in areas that both use seven‐digit dialing and use 988 as the first three numbers in seven‐digit phone numbers.

The Influence of Product Quality Differentiation on Telecom Carriers' Collusion

The telecom industry is a typical oligopolistic industry, so telecom carriers are easy to conspire in the course of operation. This article analyzes the influence of product quality differentiation on telecom carrier collusion by constructing a game model. The results show that the critical discount factor that keeps telecom carriers persisting in collusion increases with the decrease of product quality differentiation, that is, the smaller the product quality differentiation is, the harder it is for telecom carriers to adhere to long-term collusion. Conversely, the greater the product quality differentiation is, the greater the risk of a large number of users leaving the network can be when telecom carriers betray the collusion, so they will not easily betray it. Therefore, the product quality differentiation is conducive to the realization and maintenance of telecom carrier collusion. At the same time, telecom carriers that provide different quality products have different incentives for collusion, among which those providing low-quality products are more likely to persist in collusion. What is more, this article also finds that China's telecom industry has great product quality differentiation in the full-service operation, so when telecom carriers pursue the differentiation development of product quality, the government should take corresponding measures to prevent their collusion.