Towards multiservice personal communications: Perspectives for a sector structure evolution

Telecommunications Policy

Volumn 20, Issue 7, 1996, Pages 481-496

  Lera, Emilio ^a  

^a Ing y Gestión de Redes   (Spain)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

IMAGE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; LAWS AND LEGISLATION; MARKETING; MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS; TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES; VOICE/DATA COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS;

MARKET DRIVEN INTERAGENT RELATIONS; MARKET STRUCTURE; MULTISERVICE PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS;

PERSONAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS;

EID: 0030217196     PISSN: 03085961     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/0308-5961(96)00031-6     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. The large bandwidth required to support multimedia services is very difficult to provide by telephone cellular systems, but these services should also require other technological developments like information coding algorithms, transmission protocols, information flow controls, etc to be commercially feasible. Manufacturers are investigating how to support these services from the actual mobile networks. See 'Wireless Multimedia via GSM on Display', Discovery, Vol. 39, October 1995.
2. The large bandwidth required to support multimedia services is very difficult to provide by telephone cellular systems, but these services should also require other technological developments like information coding algorithms, transmission protocols, information flow controls, etc to be commercially feasible. Manufacturers are investigating how to support these services from the actual mobile networks. See 'Wireless Multimedia via GSM on Display', Discovery, Vol. 39, October 1995.
3. Chia, S 'The universal mobile telecommunication system' IEEE Communications 1992 30 (12); Cox DC 'Wireless network access for personal communications' IEEE Communications 1992 30 (12).
4. Chia, S 'The universal mobile telecommunication system' IEEE Communications 1992 30 (12); Cox DC 'Wireless network access for personal communications' IEEE Communications 1992 30 (12).
5. Mobile computing application support is one of the actual cellular network's weaknesses, being required to develop advanced protocols to support, for instance, data base access, e-mail, on-line information access, groupware, etc. See 'Killer applications buck the trend', Mobile Europe, January 1996.
6. The US regulatory change of allowing any operator to have other services licenses, like mobile or cable networks and services, could favour the networks' or facilities' integration objective. Operators buying other agents' businesses shall multiply, and the networks' evolution planning should likely be a corporate function. In Europe, the situation is not as clear as the PTOs are not restricted to invest in any other sector business (except in the UK, in cable networks), and the EU Commission directives are forcing separation of these business (at least financially, but preferable under juridical independent societies). This situation should change if the regulation were to promote the structural separation of the networks and the services under independent licenses, which could favour the networks' integration and improve the market fairness between the PTOs and the new entrants.
7. Such solutions to provide telephone services to disseminated populations or in areas of difficult orography are applied in Finland, Czech Republic and Spain. See Moreno, J 'Case study. The Telefónica TRAC/ARC wireless local loop system' The Convergence of Fixed and Mobile Services Conference, London, 23, 24 November 1995.
8. Monogioudis, P 'Wide area mobility' Mobile Europe, January 1996.
9. There are many proposed solutions to provide wireless local loops, most of them being in experimentation (more than 12 different WLL radio interfaces have been counted). The selection should depend on the area to be covered, available bandwidth, information types to be carried, system traffic capacity, growing capability, terminal availability and affordability, etc. The operators do not yet have a clear position about the economy of introducing it, but these technologies could be an option for new entrants if they were allowed by the regulators. See: Channing, I 'Where there's a WLL' Communications International, January 1996.
10. There are many proposed solutions to provide wireless local loops, most of them being in experimentation (more than 12 different WLL radio interfaces have been counted). The selection should depend on the area to be covered, available bandwidth, information types to be carried, system traffic capacity, growing capability, terminal availability and affordability, etc. The operators do not yet have a clear position about the economy of introducing it, but these technologies could be an option for new entrants if they were allowed by the regulators. See: Channing, I 'Where there's a WLL' Communications International, January 1996.
11. DECT standard allows higher transmission rates (32 kbps), easily supports other information type services, like packet data, frame relay, etc, and it is intrinsically suitable to be supported by any existing fixed network (PSTN and ISDN). The GSM standard has very important constraints in these aspects.
12. We are including, in the mobility capabilities, the conventional personal and terminal ones and the user personal service profile. If the users changes network, the home network would need to inform the visited network about that user service profile, which could be done by interconnecting the respective IN functions or by using the user terminal as an intermediate storage device. The network technology should determine its possible support of these mobility capabilities.
13. It seems that the personal mobility capability of the GSM SIM card is almost not used; however, a change is expected as soon as the terminals become a commodity (when the terminals are cheap enough so that people could have more than one, or replace it very often), or when the SIM card would find other applications like a cash purse or an identification document. However, there is a risk that, if this change were not produced, the SIM could be built in the terminal, breaking up the actual independence among personal and terminal mobilities.
14. Obviously, interpretation of the relative value-added per-chain link could be different when looking at it from other points of view; for instance, the commercial functionalities would likely be the most important ones for the users.
15. A similar approach has been proposed to liberalize the electricity distribution sector. Up to the present day, the electricity wires arriving at every user's premises are owned by a company, who has a natural monopoly in this infrastructure, and who imposes its services to the users (quality, price (very often regulated), contractual conditions, etc). The EU Commission wants to liberalize the commercialization in such a way that users could buy the energy from the producers they liked, and at the best commercial conditions.
16. Nole that the TOs are the only operators with a license to provide all types of services, some in monopoly, though some of them are being provided by filial companies. They are in the best position to assemble mspc services' attractive packages, more than any other operator. Other presentations of this approach could be found whenever the user's solution includes the supply of local premises' equipment. The dominant operator could use its buying power to establish distribution agreements with the manufacturers, some of them being exclusive, even if it is forbidden by the EU directives, avoiding a market differentiation in the supplies of its competitors. This approach of integrating services and/or users' equipment packages may be already found in the market, distorting the competence in the liberalized markets.
17. Commonly the users who benefit from market distortions do not want to testify against the distorting operator, which makes it almost impossible to demonstrate any unfair behaviour of that operator by any other agent. Only by investigating it would it be possible to demonstrate the existence of such distortions.
18. These desirable positions are very far away from the actual regulator's role, which is used to adopt reactive decisions to any changing event, instead of having a market proactive behaviour promoting itself with the most suitable changes for its state.