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NAMES: OLATUNDE ISMAILA

STUDENT ID: P1015927

PATHWAY: N.E.T.S

MODULE: TELECOMMUNICATION BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT (TBE)

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Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 3

Task 1: TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE .............................................................................................. 3

Discusing infrastructure and services providers .............................................................................. 3

Categories of telecommunication infrastructure ......................................................................... 4

Advantages of telecommunication Infrastructure ....................................................................... 5

Explaining telecommunication Provisioning ................................................................................ 5

Telecom Infrastructure service providers ................................................................................... 7

BT Service provision and product ............................................................................................... 8

Telecom regulations.................................................................................................................. 9

Task 2: TELECOM RETAILING ....................................................................................................... 10

Describing the retail Industry................................................................................................... 10

Features of retail industry of telecommunication...................................................................... 11

Discuss today’s business environment in which telecommunications retailers are operating.

Particularly relate your discussion to the issues of network accessibility, competition and the trend

to form business partnerships, mergers and take-overs. Support your discussion with appropriate

examples. ............................................................................................................................... 12

Task 3: TELECOM BILLING............................................................................................................ 14

Retailing business strategy and billing structure of TWO organisations and the effectiveness of

their adopted strategies. ......................................................................................................... 14

Network products and components used in telecommunication development ........................... 15

Future trends in telecommunication network components ....................................................... 15

Task 4: QUALITY OF SERVICE ....................................................................................................... 16

Description ............................................................................................................................. 16

Measuring QoS ....................................................................................................................... 16

Roles of Regulatory bodies ...................................................................................................... 17

References ............................................................................................................................. 19

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Introduction This paper sets out to answer specific questions set out in the subject of the business side

of telecommunications. It demonstrates the author understands of the management and

business issues related to the industry. Then the discussion will also focus on

telecommunication billings based on the choice of customers and the national and

international telecommunication governing bodies.

Task 1: TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE

Discusing infrastructure and services providers Telecommunications infrastructure providers are those commercial entities that provide

the infrastructure for the telecommunications (land and/or mobile) services. The

infrastructure in this case would include the physical hardware such as cables, base

stations, wireless stations, receivers, etc. as well as the software required to maintain the

infrastructure. The infrastructure can comprise of more than one independent networks

such as POTS (plain old telephone system) as well as cable networks. BT is perhaps the most

well-known infrastructure provider in the UK. It provides (sells) access to the

telecommunication infrastructure to other commercial entities such as TalkTalk, Orange,

etc.

The service provider as the name suggests provides the service to the end user or

customer. The service is any telecommunications service, such as fixed line or mobile

telephony and Internet facilities. TalkTalk for example is a service provider in the UK;

although it does not own any of the infrastructures, it purchases access of the

infrastructure from BT and sells the telecommunications services to customers. BT on the

other hand, sells both access to the infrastructure as well as services direct to the customer

and hence is actually both, an infrastructure as well as service provider.

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Some of the requirements that make up the telecommunication infrastructure are;

1- Network devices

2- Connection links, e.g cables

3- Cordless links

4- Software tools

Categories of telecommunication infrastructure

Some of the most known categories of telecommunication infrastructures are;

The Internet Infrastructure; which is one of the most widely applicable

infrastructure applicable in the world today and it self-individuals, and companies in

many ways. The internet infrastructure serve individuals and businesses to perform

lot of task such as;

- Web browsing

- Online chats

- Voice over IP for mostly businesses and help in reducing cost for making phone calls.

- Research work, etc

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Cell Phone Infrastructure: These are mobile devices infrastructure that users used

on daily basis with the help of electromagnetic wave (Radio frequency, RF). Mobile

phones generate revenue at the point of sale, and provide continuous revenue in the

form of service charges throughout their use.

Advantages of telecommunication Infrastructure

As such, telecommunication infrastructures have helped in so many ways and have

benefited the world at large such as;

It has facilitated the growth of information technology particularly in software and

many other technologies like the GSM and CDMA.

It has helped in designing long optical fibre cabling at various locations and buildings.

Explaining telecommunication Provisioning

The provisioning of telecommunications is changing due to the convergence of networks,

services and devices that is taking place. There is a greater variety of devices on the market

today, which results in new service capabilities, such as mobile broadband, messaging, etc.

These new services however have added complexity and cost. The new services allow a

wider range of consumers to be targeted, however this can also be confusing. Service

providers often resort to bundling to overcome this problem. New applications have sprung

up offering new services which compete with the traditional services offered, such as Skype

and Face time calls instead of the traditional mobile phone calls over the carrier.

This undermined the relationship of the carrier with the customer. The new applications

were also data hungry, leading to increased demand for mobile data communication

network bandwidth. The various applications also created multiple tiers of service in the

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network; not all IP packets needed equal priority and hence telecommunications service

providers had to discriminate and prioritise between different services and customers. As

the devices became more important, the balance of power also shifted; the device

manufacturers become more powerful. The telecommunications service providers also

realised that they were sitting on the data goldmine; they had access to data that would

have many applications such as customer usage patterns, profiles, history, etc.

The convergence is exemplified by the horizontal and vertical movements of the major

players in the market. Google for example, although having begun its life as a service

(search engine) on a website, is now a mobile device software provider (Android); Apple,

which was once a computer giant, is now well known as a mobile phone manufacturer.

Thus the landscape has changed, with a greater variety of service providers, greater

complexity of services and overlapping nature of services.

Other changes have also been taking place in the background. The telecommunications

networks themselves are migrating from proprietary protocols and controls to open

protocols; this lowers the barriers of entry and new players are able to enter the market.

Increased regulations, particularly governing competition to ensure that monopolies or

oligopolies do not dominate the market also serve to make life difficult for the traditional

service and infrastructure providers. Overall it can be said that the value chain is changing;

the convergence and complexity of new technologies is making the value chain morph. In

particular network convergence, where the traditional cabled network and the wireless and

satellite networks, as well as the piggybacked networks such as 4G LTE has meant that

telecommunications network provisioning has become more complex, and a key part of the

value chain for any player in the industry.

(Bamforth and Longbottom, 2010)

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Telecom Infrastructure service providers

Below are list of services that the available telecommunication infrastructure provides and

they provide them to individuals and to small scale companies. Example of this services

offered are;

- Optical fibre deployment

- Phones equipment installation

- Data network installation

- Installing and testing radio antennas

Some of the telecommunication infrastructure providers are;

Satellite infrastructure

Mobile phones infrastructure

Internet infrastructure

Below is a list of public and private telecommunication companies that provides the

Internet, cabling, satellite, mobile and fixed phone services to individuals and businesses.

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BT Service provision and product

The table shows all the available services and products that the British Telecom (BT)

provides to its customers and businesses.

Product Package

Broadband/Internet

product

Voice Products - Cloud-hosted systems

- On-premise systems

- Phone lines and numbers

- ISDN lines

- Premium calling features

- BT payphones and calling cards

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- Business phones

- SIM only

- Mobile business solutions

BT Services Packages

Networks - BT managed WAN

- Lease lines

- Ethernet point-to-point

- Ethernet VPN

- Ethernet IP connect

Business Services

Telecom regulations

These are regulations the govern the telecommunication companies towards their services,

products and customers and this regulations are set out by an independent body of every

country coupled with the regulations of the International telecommunication union the ITU.

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The regulatory norms of the UK telecommunication are done by the OfCom (Office for

communication) and play the following roles in seeing that the business industry is

successful.

Task 2: TELECOM RETAILING

Describing the retail Industry

The telecommunications retail industry can be said to comprise of fixed and mobile

telecommunications. The size of the mobile sector however dwarfs the fixed sector; there

are over seven billion mobile users and only approximately 650 million fixed users.

The mobile sector is growing, whereas demand for the traditional fixed line has been static.

Emerging markets such as India and Africa as these countries have growing populations and

lack the fixed infrastructure. Another key characteristic of the mobile sector is that the

demand for mobile data connection has grown on account of the proliferation of mobile

devices.

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Features of retail industry of telecommunication

The features of the telecommunication retail industry are scoped within the following;

1) Technology Driven; which depends on the growing technology of the industry

according to customers demand. Customers plays a very great role in seeing that

there is technology driven based on their demands as in recent years, mos t

customers demand for latest telecom products with great features.

2) Market Competition: Which depends on the sale volume of a particular

telecommunication industry as competition in the industry today boost the telecom

market as customers will like to have latest product.

3) Price Reduction: Base on the prices as well, customers will like to deal with telecom

companies that offer their products at very cheaper rates and in the UK the cost rate

for telecom product is lower compare to the past years.

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Discuss today’s business environment in which telecommunications

retailers are operating. Particularly relate your discussion to the issues of

network accessibility, competition and the trend to form business

partnerships, mergers and take-overs. Support your discussion with

appropriate examples.

Telecom Partners Telecom Mergers Telecom Take-overs

- Nokia –

Siemens

- Nokia –

Microsoft

- Sony – Ericson

- T-Mobile and Orange

This merging takes place for the following reasons;

- To expand their network.

- To easily reach their customer.

- To provide faster services to customers.

- BT take over EE

The traditional source of revenue in the mobile telecommunications sector is calls and

text. Mobile data is the growing sector, and it is expected to continue to grow with the

increasing applications that use the Internet on mobile devices.

Increasing convergence has meant that mobile, fixed and even TV services have come to be

delivered over the same infrastructure, further increasing the demand for data networks.

This has led to the development of newer network infrastructures that can help deliver

higher data rates, such as cable and fibre.

Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) therefore face a highly competitive environment;

Regulation has freed up the infrastructure to create a competitive market, and therefore in

each market generally a few mobile network operators can be found; often there would also

be a number of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). The former actually owns

and/or maintains some physical network infrastructure whereas the MVNOs rent capacity

from MVO to sell on to their customers. Other companies may offer alternative services

such as VoIP (for e.g Skype)

The key factor to note is that providing telecommunications services, especially in the

infrastructure size, is expensive. The players in the market have to be large enough, and be

able to cope with the expanding networks and constant technological evolution. Many

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physical components have to be regularly replaced, software updated, etc. Big companies

that own large segments of the infrastructure and stronger because they are less reliant on

other companies to route their customers’ calls whereas the MVNOs typically must pay for

interconnection of the networks to support their customers’ needs. Therefore this leads to

mergers (where two or more companies merge for strategic reasons, for example to

become a suitably strong competitor to another larger firm in the market), acquisitions

where some technology owned by a smaller company bestows some competitive

advantage, etc.

In the UK alone the mergers and acquisitions are mind boggling. Vodafone is ranked third

in UK; it has however acquired many other telecommunications companies around Europe.

In the UK Orange and EE have teamed up to share their network to create a rival O2 and

Vodafone, called Everything Everywhere. BT is seeking to takeover O2 to enter the mobile

market.

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Task 3: TELECOM BILLING

Retailing business strategy and billing structure of TWO organisations and

the effectiveness of their adopted strategies.

This is the process of charging consumers of their products by collecting usage, aggregating

it, applying required charges and produce invoices for customers to make their required

payments and on due dates. This telecommunication industries charge for rental and

usages.

1) Giffgaff – Sim only and pay monthly contracts, with the smallest plan starting from

£7.50 for 250 minutes and 500 MB Internet to £18 for 1000 minutes and 5 GB

Internet

2) Three network

Overall the billing structure and retail strategies of the two organisations are rather

similar. The main difference between the retail strategies of the two companies are that

three (3) offers unlimited data plans whereas Giffgaff does not and Three offers contracts

with new phones whereas Giffgaff does not sell the handsets. Giffgaff is clearly targeted to

customers who already have phones whereas three (3) targets both types of customers.

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Network products and components used in telecommunication

development

Future trends in telecommunication network components

The future trends of telecommunication are based on the following;

Components Description

Hubs and Switches Switches were replaced by Hubs due to their numerous disadvantages

and today we can see the great work that switches offers compare to

Hubs.

Modem and Router Modems too came with ability to modulate and de-modulate a signal

but due to it lower speed; routers were invented which now helps in

routing data packets on the network.

Layer 2 and Layer 3 Switch Layer 2 switches were seen working at the layer 2 of the OSI model for

connecting network devices together and uses MAC address but later the

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layer 3 switch was invented that have the capability of understanding the

MAC and IP address. Likewise, it works at the layer 2 and layer 3 of the

OSI model.

Wired and Wireless

Devices

At first device connectivity were wired and today most devices comes

with wireless features that ease user mobility, flexibility and other great

benefits.

Task 4: QUALITY OF SERVICE

Description

Quality of service is the reliability of the transmission in the network; if a packet is sent,

there should be some guarantees about the time it takes for it to reach its destination, the

probability that it will; this can be expressed as the percentage of packets that reach the

destination (as opposed to being lost in the network) and the time within which a specified

percentage reaches the destination. QoS therefore provides a measure by which the

application can approximate the number of packets that will be received by the recipient

and the time taken for these packets to reach. It allows the application to determine the

strategy for transmission of packets; for example if time is not important, but the packets

should reach the destination, then the application can choose to flood the network with

packets; if the application is time sensitive for example VoIP applications then the QoS is

important to ensure that the user has a good experience.

Some applications can tolerate a higher degree of packet loss, whereas some cannot. The

percentage of packet loss can create a lower quality user experience, for example lower call

or video quality.

Measuring QoS

The key factor in measuring Qos is the service experience of the users. It is defined as the

specific requirements provided by a network to the users in order to achieve the desired

functionality of the application or service. IP networks are generally based on a best effort

service however QoS can be defined in terms of four parameters namely:

Resource availability

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Resource control policies, including Service Level Agreements

QoS requirements of the specific applications such as Jitter, Delay, Packet loss, etc.

Delay is intrinsic to all communications; the information takes time to reach its

destination. Delay is also referred to as latency. Delay increases with network

congestion.

Jitter is variation in delay. It is caused by the variable transmission of packets over

the network.

Packet loss is the failure of packets to reach their destination.

Throughput is the amount of data which a network sends or receives. It is measured in bits

per second

Roles of Regulatory bodies

The main role of regulatory bodies is to ensure that the interest of the consumer is

protected in the market. They work to ensure that there is sufficient competition in the

market such that monopolies are not allowed to flourish. Competition in the market serves

to increase innovation and drive progress in technology.

Like we have the OfCom for UK telecom regulatory body and the International

telecommunication Union (ITU).

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References

Bamforth, R . and Longbottom, C. (2010). Telecoms re-invention–death of the

traditional telco. Quocirca White Paper.

Bunge, M. (2009). Philosophy of Science: From Problem to Theory. Transaction

Publishers.

Dahlman, E., Parkvall, S., & Skold, J. (2013). 4G: LTE/LTE-Advanced for Mobile

Broadband. Academic Press.

Hill, Richard. The New International Telecommunication Regulations And The

Internet. Print.

Sherif, Mostafa Hashem. Managing Projects In Telecommunication Services.

Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2006. Print.