The Way Towards a Robust, Cost-Effective, and Future Proof National Mobile Network Infrastructure

摘要

The increased use of mobile devices and the introduction of smartphoneshave changed the way people communicate. Over the last decade,mobile networks have become a critical infrastructure. Private individuals,governments and businesses rely on mobile networks to provide stableand robust services, both in everyday life and in crisis. There is alsoan increasing demand for capacity as new and more mobile broadbandchallenging services are being used. The society will rely on the mobilenetworks to provide higher capacity, more coverage and increased robustnessin the future to come. This provides new challenges for all actorsin the mobile industry, in order to meet the increasing demands of thesociety.The thesis is written in collaboration with the Norwegian CommunicationAuthority (Nkom) in order to investigate the future development ofthe mobile network infrastructure with a techno-economical and regulatorypoint of view. Through literature studies, the thesis has investigatedthe offered capacity, coverage, and robustness of mobile networks today,as well as the current market structure and current market shares in theNorwegian mobile market. The thesis has also defined and investigatedfour different strategies for future development of the mobile networkinfrastructure. Each strategy has been analyzed and evaluated basedon nine selected factors, including coverage, capacity, robustness, andregulation. The strategies investigated are:1. Continue current development2. Tighter cooperation between Mobile Network Operators (MNOs)3. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)4. A more active governmentThe thesis presents the results of the strategy analysis in a comparisonmatrix. The matrix provides an overview of the advantages anddisadvantages of each strategy, based on the factors analyzed. In anoverall perspective, the thesis found that a tighter cooperation betweenMobile Network Operators seems to be the most beneficial strategy ofthe strategies investigated.