Tag Archives: Network

Mobile Virtual Network Operator

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1. What is MVNO?

Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) is a telecom operator, who doesn’t own licensed spectrum or network infrastructure, but provides mobile phone services by buying wholesale airtime from existing operators (MNO) and selling it to end-user.   They are also known as ‘switchless resellers’. 

The Government of India is yet to clear the entry of MVNOs in the country. TRAI has already recommended licencing of MVNOs in 2008. However the final decision is still pending with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).  In India currently Virgin Mobile is operating as a MVNO through a franchisee arrangement with Tata Teleservices.

Telecom operators who lost out in the 3G auction may explore the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) route or franchisee deals with 3G operators. Even operators who won the 3G airwaves will be compelled to enter into such deals to ensure a pan-India rollout of their 3G services

Globally there are more than 350 MVNOs. These MVNOs are different from traditional telecom companies as they develop models around data services, music services, health services, luxury services and devices.  There are also MVNOs targeting certain consumer segments, for example tourists, foreign workers and youth markets. Another niche market has developed via the 3G networks, which provide MVNOs an opportunity to offer data multimedia services in addition to the existing low-cost voice and SMS.

2. TRAI recommendations

On 6th August 2008,TRAI has released recommendations on MVNOenabling the introduction of MVNOs in the Indian Telecom network. Department of Telecommunications (DoT) vide its letter dated 20th March, 2008 has sought TRAI’s recommendations on the need and timing for introduction of MVNO as well as terms and conditions of the license to be granted to such operators. The major recommendations of TRAI are

a. Licensing

MVNO will be treated as a distinct service provider with its own licensing and regulatory framework.  MVNO will be issued a renewable license for 20 years under Indian Telegraph Act. The license service area of MVNO will be same as that of parent MNO.

Any Indian Company having a net worth of Rs. 10 crore for Metro/ Category A, Rs. 5 crore for Category B and Rs. 3 crore for Category C service area and paid up capital of 10% of prescribed net worth and satisfying licence conditions such as FDI, substantial equity etc. are eligible to apply for MVNO licence.

There is no roll out obligations for MVNO. FDI limit is recommended at 74% same as MNO.

b. Agreement with MNO

Before applying for licence, an MVNO should get into an agreement with a MNO. Agreement terms between MNO and MVNO will be decided by market forces. There is no limit on number of MVNOs attached to an MNO. If agreement is terminated after licence is issued, the MVNO will require a fresh licence, for which it may have to sign a fresh agreement with another MNO. An MVNO cannot get attached to more than one MNO in same service area, while an MNO can have as many MVNOs.

c. Licence fee

TRAI has recommended that MVNO needs to pay an entry fee at 10% of an MNO’s entry fee.  MNO to pay the spectrum charges for utilization of spectrum by MVNO. Entry fees for MVNOs will be10% of MNOs subject to a maximum of Rs. 5 crore for Metro/ Category A, Rs. 3 crore for Category B and Rs. 1 crore for Category C service areas.  Annual licence fee will be the same as host MNO. However, the Interconnection charges will be based on commercial negotiation between MNO and MVNO which will be driven by market forces.

d. Business Model

There are three business models recommended by TRAI. An MVNO can offer full or intermediate or thin services. A Thin MVNO would offer services in its own brand without any infrastructure and a full MVNO could set up its own HLR, VLR, IN switches, MSC etc. However an MVNO is not allowed to set up Radio Access Network (RAN).

e. Responsibility of MNO and MVNO

An MVNO is responsible for mandatory activities like Subscriber verification, Customer Management and Service provisioning. The MNO is responsible for spectrum charges, number portability and interconnect agreements.

3.  Advantages of MVNO

MVNOs expand customer reach and generate additional revenue for the MNOs from the use of unused bandwidth. An MVNO can use the additional capacity being created for 3G services which will enhance the productivity and profitability of the MNOs.

The MVNOs serve the niche markets by offering wireless products customized to the end-user lifestyles, thus maximizing the demand for wireless data services.

However the some of the telecom observers are of the opinion that MVNO will not suit the Indian telecom market in view of constantly reducing tariffs, falling ARPU and low margins.

4.  Conclusion

The Government of India is seriously considering allowing the MVNO model in the country and a decision is expected very soon. As per the recent reports, the DoT is planning to permit the introduction of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in the country as one way to bail out the eight new telecom companies that are reeling from low tariffs and intense competition. The new telecom operators were given licences in January 2008, but many have not been able to even roll out their services. MVNO model if approved, will allow foreign and Indian firms to the India’s telecom market without investing money on the expensive spectrum and network roll out. MVNO will be another game changer in the Indian Telecom industry.

Guangzhou Telecom network intelligent building program

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System introduced with the typical meaning of intelligent communication network construction projects in Guangzhou the need for specific project components and implementation.

IP technology with a large number of applications and getting more mature, its used in voice networks, data networks and the advantages of the network becomes more and more video, IP technology, flexible application of the traditional networks richer, personalized, diversified business with solid protection. The traditional fixed-line operators, IP-based NGN technology and based on Mobile The Home Location Register (HLR) the combination of third-generation intelligent network (fixed 3G) are mature.

In China Telecommunications Market Competition Increasingly competitive environment, the diversified and personalized services will be the major difference operators compete for market attention. Therefore, using NGN and other next-generation technologies to upgrade the voice network, the network is more open, flexible, rapid response and other characteristics, to meet the needs of market competition, the traditional fixed-line operators, more pressing and important.

China Telecom Group since 2003 on the “network intelligent” in-depth research, through continuous exploration, that the intelligent network is technically mature, should be combined with the actual situation of each local network to actively promote the use of . The following brief introduction to Guangzhou, intelligent building of telecommunications networks.

Guangzhou Telecom local network to today has been one of the national large local network, is a long-distance level, aggregation layer, end offices layer of three levels, a tandem network. Guangzhou, the local telephone network after years of construction, network size, network capacity across the whole country is leading. As of the end of 2004, total fixed telephone network Switch Installed capacity of more than 5 million, PHS installed capacity has more than 1 million, the local telephone network covers the city of Guangzhou 10 District 2 county-level city. Guangzhou Telecom in August 2005 began to transform the network intelligence, using a well-known domestic manufacturers of communications equipment NGN products to existing fixed telephone network of the tandem layer transformation, in the first quarter of 2006 is expected to allow phone users can enjoy the NGN new business and services.

With the continuous expansion of network scale and the increased demand for network intelligence, Guangzhou Telecom timely introduction of NGN technology to solve the following five questions to the operation of competition in the future, sustained a leading position.

1, Network PSTN Network Optimization PSTN experienced a long period of operation, the voice service revenue in the whole the dominant position, but because of model complexity, and aging equipment has been unable to meet the growing needs of the user’s personalized service, so Implementation of PSTN, intelligent and mobile, which is adapted to the new competition in the marketplace demands.

2, integration of PHS / urban telephone communication network and the PSTN and other networks

PHS network and the PSTN in the businesses have their own intelligence network, billing management platform, business and launched the difficulties are great; users to share resources are not sufficient. In order to give full play to advantages of PSTN and PHS digging and packaging business to gain more customers and increase operational efficiency, we need to have the PSTN and the PHS network integration.

3, timely introduction of Softswitch NGN technologies has become a recognized goal of network evolution by China Telecom for many years Test And test business, technology and equipment that have been mature, the agreement has been basically perfect, the next period of time the traditional carriers will gradually smooth transition from existing PSTN to NGN. NGN’s greatest strength lies in their strengths as well as network integration with network construction operation and maintenance cost reduction advantages. NGN technology with the business operator to provide enhanced capabilities to improve competitiveness. Business network from a single multi-service network integration into the network, can greater reduce the network construction, operation and maintenance costs; and Internet combination to provide more flexibility on Web, multimedia services to customers services; and, NGN service platform to provide a strong customer demand for business easier, the third party can be based on a unified business platform for business development, customer service can be customized based on Web pages. All this gives our customers new, more personalized business environment in which Next Generation Network Business services with unparalleled advantages.

4, broadband communication networks, multimedia With the rapid promotion of broadband network bandwidth, QoS and security technology continues to improve, the broadband network to provide voice, data, video, multimedia business as a whole has become a communications network development.

Telecom operators in order to more fully utilize existing network resources, rich Internet applications, and better serve our customers, they are bound to multi-media business operations as the focus of attention. The market demand for multimedia services only from the early use of video conferencing to today, including video conferencing, two visual communications, and voice terminal interoperability, collaboration and other visual multimedia applications office, a simple video conferencing services have been far from satisfying the needs of users, multimedia services are no longer just a video conference. Diversity, intelligence, collaboration has become the multimedia services of all operators is the key competitive. What kind of network platform used to provide any kind of application, the business is operating is convenient and practical and convenient as operators need to focus on problems.

5, the traditional network and integration of mobile 3G

NGN and mobile operators increasingly concerned about 3G. Traditional carriers have many years of business PSTN, broadband experience, with a considerable number of PSTN and broadband resources. They must consider: how to use existing resources to building and development of mobile 3G mobile 3G network services and users? How are network evolution to NGN and NGN and future 3G networks and mobile convergence? How fixed “enjoy” NGN and mobile 3G business platform? fixed user how to achieve “seamless” transfer network to the NGN and mobile 3G network? mobile 3G network early how to make use of existing fixed-line network edge, improve service quality?

Intelligence in the Guangzhou Telecom NGN Softswitch solution, the reference mobile network user data property management, the introduction of a centralized database SHLR. SHLR initially stored in the user’s physical and logical number of the corresponding number of relations and properties of the user’s smart business to realize the whole network to distribute telephone numbers and intelligent mix of business trigger; follow-up of all the circumstances can be used

IP-based multi-service core ring network solution – soft switching, 3G, networks – telecommunications industry

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I. Introduction With Softswitch and future 3G services launch, the existing packet-based network services is increasingly apparent. ITU-T is also clear that the next generation network NGN is a packet-based bearer networks. The main use of existing data carrying optical fiber directly connected switches or through the MSTP SDH-based approach, there is a lack of 50ms former carrier-class protection and can not provide end to end QoS; the latter need to implement Ethernet to SDH reconciliation package packaging, increased overhead and costs, also increases the delay, not the economy to meet the future NGN bearer network for data services requirements.   Order to adapt to the development of next generation network, or more fundamentally correct the lack of structure and building out the existing metro network model of restraint, the flames of the network according to its own next generation network (NGN) understanding, put forward based on IP MSPP core, multi-service ring network solution. 2, IP-based packet core multi-service platform:
MSPP (Multi-ServiceProvisioningPlatform): multi-service delivery platform, which combines the bearer network and transmission network technology, a platform, and support data, voice and video traffic simultaneously switching and transmission. MSPP can be implemented on different platforms, according to different physical platform, can be classified based on WDM multi-service optical transport platform, based on SONET / SDH in the MSTP platforms, and IP-based packet core platform. War Network F-engineM8000 using RPR / MSR, flexible Ethernet ring technology, is a new generation of IP with MSPP function multi-service packet core platform, mainly located in the metro access and convergence layer, can be achieved: (1) Multi-service load: can support data, TDM and video services integrated bearing and high reliability transmission. (2) with the MSTP function: to provide 50ms ring operating within the capacity of automatic protection switching (APS),-based RPR / MSR technology fair ring bandwidth allocation mechanism to support the ring (single ring and tangent Central) , star, chain and other graphical network topology and automatic topology discovery and management capabilities, support for distributed fault location and performance monitoring. (3) layer packet switching and load: to provide Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, E1, 2.5GbpsRPR/MSR, 10GbpsEthernet other interfaces, to meet customer network management and application business differentiation needs. F-engineM8000 from the business side of the interface, packet processing unit and the line side interface. Among them, the packet processing unit by the packet switch architecture, service identification unit, the business processing unit, packet forwarding engine, TDM emulation and network security protection unit and six other modules; line side of the unit by the automatic protection switching unit and the loop interface unit composition. MSPP specific functions of various parts of the following:
* Business side of the Interface: The main function is to provide service access interfaces;
* Packet switch architecture: hardware-based non-blocking high-speed switching;
* Business Identification Unit: The main function is to distinguish between conduct business;
* Business processing unit: the results based on business identify appropriate queuing and scheduling;
* Packet Forwarding Engine: complete the second floor of the main wire-speed forwarding; * TDM emulation unit: The main business of the completion of TDM emulation over Ethernet;

Designing Corporate Computer Network

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Suppose that you are appointed to lead a project of a computer network design in your organization that contains many sites that need to be integrated into a single corporate private network, what are you going to do? As a team leader, a time-frame project as general needs to be developed first that includes the brainstorming to collect data as much as possible, the blueprint project, budget forecasting, liaising with the third parties and so on.

It’s quite difficult to start a project properly without knowing exactly what the strengths and weaknesses of supporting infrastructure which the system will base on. It is therefore, a computer network design should start by brainstorming to collect data as much as possible.

Assume this computer network design will involve three sites: one main headquarter office in Sydney, one main office in Jakarta, and one remote site – the gold mine in the middle of the Borneo jungle. The principal of the organization would like to have all the sites linked to a single corporate computer network to allow inter-sites communication including data, voice, or probably video conference and off course to allow easy communication with the whole world.

Telecommunication Requirements

The first data for your computer network design that needs to be collected is the telecommunication system requirements. The main question is how to link all of the sites to allow system communication to happen. The following questions can be used to collect the data for the telecommunication requirements.

1. How to arrange the Telecommunication service in remote site? We understand that both the main offices in Sydney and Jakarta are located in the area where you can find lots of communication services. What about the remote site – the site in the middle of the jungle? You should liaise with the third party company that can provide WAN services technology – probably uses the satellite link communication.
2. Collect the information what kinds of communication will be allowed for remote site to the Jakarta office: data only, voice, video, or combination of those. This information is important to help you determine how wide the satellite link bandwidth you need. This will relate to the budget since satellite link is expensive.
3. What kind of WAN technology to link data between Jakarta and Sydney, frame relay, ISDN network, VPN connection? Liaising with the third party – the telecommunication company will help.

You need to dig and find more data that specific to the project. Telecommunication requirements should be sorted out first before you can proceed to collect other infrastructure requirements in this case.

Network Infrastructure Requirements

Second requirement for your computer network design is to collect data regarding the network infrastructure requirements. All related data for both logical and physical infrastructure requirements must be collected as much as possible. The following questions can be used to collect the data.

1. How many hosts will be in each site including workstations, servers, switches, routers, wireless access points, and VoIP. This will help in calculating and designing the IP address requirements.
2. Collect the information with the principal management if they need to host public resources either in Sydney or Jakarta sites. If so, where will all the public resources be located, inside the private network or in the DMZ (perimeter network)? This will help in designing the entry-point security. By hosting public resources, domain name must be designed in a secure manner such as separating the domain naming between internal and public usage.
3. Collect the information regarding the security requirements for internal network. Will particular sections or departments need security boundary? This will help in designing your computer network if the network segmentation within the local network is needed. And also helps in designing how the users are grouped and appropriate policies are developed to comply with the security requirements.
4. Collect the information with the principal management to develop service level agreements regarding the availability of the network resources. How critical the network resources will affect the business continuity if they ever fail to function. This will help you design the requirements of the redundant resources such as the need of clustering, load balancing and so on.
5. Collect the information regarding the location in each sites such as how good the power is, how long the distances between each building that will connect to the network, is it feasible to run the network cabling or wireless connection. If the wireless connection is needed, examine how the attenuation factors will affect the wireless performance.
6. Collect the information if the travelling users or tele-workers will be allowed to access the corporate network resources. This will help you design your VPN requirements and the security requirements regarding the authentication and the authorization for remote connection.
7. And still more diggings needed regarding the infrastructure requirements that is specific to the project. By having the brainstorming data regarding the infrastructure requirements you can make the budget regarding the hardware, software, and consultants requirements for the implementation of your computer network design.

Disaster Management

In your computer network design, the disaster recovery and business continuity planning should be in mind. The what if this fail question should base all the decisions of your design including selecting the location, hardware, software, models, the third party involves and so on. For example in building the server room, it’s a wise decision not to populate all the servers into a single main server room. Another alternate server in different building would be much better to avoid a single point of failure in case of the main server room is totally burned in fire disaster.

The draft diagram of the computer network design should be evaluated precisely. Risk security assessment must be performed to help you design the appropriate control to reduce the possible threats to occur and if the threats ever occur, what actions must be taken to allow the business to run at least in the minimum operational level.

In your computer network design should also consider the easiness in maintaining the system later by the administrators by providing a comprehensive documentation including the operational manuals and disaster recovery planning.

By Ki Grinsing

Frame Network Made Suitable For Wan Applications

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Frame Network functions in WAN facilities that have more secure connection services and greater consistency, making it a lot better compared to the facilities used in the past decades. Frame Relay is catered on the  Layer 2 protocol set, enabling it to provide higher performance and more efficiency in transmission. This makes frame relay appropriate for WAN applications like LAN interconnection. Frame relay is an efficient alternative to a network service that is IP-based. The market of frame relay has been around since the 90′s but there is not much technical innovation then. However, although there is not much technical innovation in frame relay then, there is however a good amount of QoS and the ability to generate higher circuit speed by multiplexing lower circuit speed called multilink. Basically frame relay is a kind of product service.

Frame Network is excellent WAN protocol. Originally, this was designed for ISDN service interfaces. Now it is applied to a range of network interfaces. It is significant to know more about Frame Relay applications for WAN services. It is packet-switched technology that enables its end stations to share the network channel and existing bandwidth. Two techniques are normally applied in packet-switching. These are variable-length packets and statistical multiplexing. Variable packets are utilized for a more efficient transfer of data. The packets switched between various network sections until it reaches the destination. On the other hand, statistical multiplexing controls the network access in packet-switched network. It contains more flexibility in the use of bandwidth, making it an advantage. Many popular LAN networks today are using packet-switched technology.

You might like to ask why an IP-based frame network service is superior. Well because it is wireless. This means you will have permanent circuits from end-to-end or between points. But since it is IP-based, all you have to do is input the IP address for you to obtain connection. However, if there are only few endpoints in a network, it does not matter. For huge numbers of endpoints, there is scalability the factor that works on it. Frame relay is an excellent value. When it comes to cost this is very efficient especially for locations with huge numbers of endpoints. This is especially suitable for a large and stable enterprise with a large network of frame relay. The cost will be minimal, plus a credible application of VoIP.  

In general, frame network is designed for telecommunication services aimed at cost-efficiency in data communication during irregular traffic in local area networks and between end-to-end points in the wide area network. Frame relay is able to place data in variable-units called frame and leaves retransmission of data to end-points, thus speeding up the whole data transmission. Frame Network is available from service providers like AT&T and some carriers. This service complements well with Integrated Services Digital Network, also with bandwidth and ATM, and operates in the same way to basic frame relay functions but at higher speed. It requires strong connection during transmission period and may not be suited for video transmissions as it requires a continuous pour of transmission. Nevertheless, both video and voice transmissions can be used in particular circumstances.

Need A Better Value Network? Licensed Wireless Could Help

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Efficient, high-speed telecommunications are always beneficial to an organisation, but tightening budgets demand value for money right now, not just in the long-term. Find out why licensed wireless is the most cost-effective choice for enterprise networks.

Today more than ever, any major investment decision must be backed by solid cost-benefit analysis and ample proof of value. If you’re considering which technology option is best for your next network installation or upgrade, here’s why you can’t afford to overlook <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://www.airspeed.ie/”>  licensed wireless</a>:

Low installation cost For suburban, rural or other outlying areas, there’s no doubt that laying fibre — with its requirement for extensive groundwork — will always be a more expensive option than licensed wireless networks, which use microwave radio technology to deliver secure, tightly focussed data streams between antenna and receiver. Additionally, licensed wireless equipment is easy to dismantle and relocate if a company needs to move premises. Fibre not only has a significant installation cost — costing between EUR250 and EUR400 per metre to dig — it’s also a sunk cost, literally. Fibre in the ground offers no further value to your organisation if you need to relocate.

An important corollary of the lower installation costs is faster installation time. Especially for new or relocating businesses, productivity and profitability can both be harmed by delays to market due to the logistics of fibre installation, including securing road closure permits, conducting roadworks and completing fibre connectivity. The line-of-site surveys and link design work required for the microwave radio technology behind licensed wireless networks can be completed rapidly, so your telecoms network is ready faster, and can help accelerate your time to market.

Cost effective, even at low speeds SMEs, or enterprises requiring lower capacity networks of no more than 4Mbps, will find that licensed wireless, like DSL, provides cost effective connectivity compared to fibre when lower speeds are needed. But licensed wireless beats DSL for availability. To use DSL, you must be within about 5km of your nearest exchange, and the exchange must be broadband enabled; licensed wireless, meanwhile, can reach anywhere a radio signal can, all across Ireland.

Scale bandwidth up or down Companies whose need for bandwidth varies significantly according to season, business volume or other circumstances often discover that scaling bandwidth up or down with a fixed line network can involve real delays or expense. Bandwidth on licensed wireless networks is easily and quickly turned up or down in increments as small as 2Mb per second, letting you finely tune your network to your business needs, so you’re not paying for bandwidth you don’t need — or left waiting for a much-needed speed increase.

Good value in city and country   Irish companies who traditionally enjoyed the lower cost base associated with premises outside urban centres have been held back due to the lack of choice in broadband service. High-speed licensed wireless connectivity, which is already widely available in cities, is increasingly providing a choice in rural areas, including the Gaeltachts, where for example HEAnet is working with licensed wireless carrier AirSpeed Telecom to deliver extremely high bandwidth telecommunications for local research sites. This network rollout is providing the infrastructure that enables new connectivity options in the region, and allows more Irish companies to consider low-cost suburban and rural locations for their premises.

Whatever option you choose for your telecommunications, don’t forget to look at the whole picture, and be sure you’re happy with the technical expertise and customer service capability of the provider you select. While everyone is looking to improve their bottom line at present, the very cheapest service is likely to have hidden costs if corners are being cut on service or if the provider relies too heavily on third-party contractors. Your telecommunications are what deliver your productivity — and quality telecommunications will always be worth the investment.