Towards Affordable Provisioning Strategies for Local Mobile Services in Dense Urban Areas A Techno-economic Study

Abstract: The future mobile communication networks are expected to cope with growing local usage patterns especially in dense urban areas at more affordable deployment and operation expenses. Beyond leveraging small cell architectures and advanced radio access technologies; more radio spectrum are expected to be required to achieve the desired techno-economic targets. Therefore, the research activity has been directed towards discussing the benefits and needs for more flexible and local spectrum authorization schemes. This thesis work is meant to be a contribution to this ongoing discussion from a techno-economic perspective. In chapter three, the engineering value of the different flexible authorization options are evaluated from the perspective of established mobile network operators using the opportunity cost approach. The main results in chapter three indicate the economic incentives to deploy more small cells based on flexible spectrum authorization options are subject to the potential saving in the deployment and operation costs. Nonetheless; high engineering value can be anticipated when the density of small cells is equal or larger than the active mobile subscribers’ density. While in chapter four, the possible local business models around different flexible authorization options are investigated from the perspective of emerging actors with limited or ’no’ licensed spectrum resources. In this context, dependent or independent local business can be identified according to surrounding spectrum regulations. On possible independent local business models for those emerging actors is to exploit the different flexible spectrum authorization options to provision tailored local mobile services. Other viable dependent local business models rest with the possibility to enter into different cooperation agreements to deploy and operate dedicated local mobile infrastructure on behalf established mobile network operators.