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About Business Aspects of Broadband Wireless Technologies and Mobile Commerce

This one-day short course gives a detailed description of the business side of broadband wireless and mobile communications technologies with respect of their cost and benefits. The past several years have seen the emergence of numerous technologies all aimed at providing high data rate wireless transmission links. Many are aimed at providing services such as wireless ADSL. We review these technologies from a business point of view. First, we look at the major present wireless technologies, how they came about, and where they are most utilized. A short background of wireless communications and the challenges involved in serving a large number of users in a wireless environment is given. We explain why the major present technologies, such as WCDMA-HSPA, WiMAX, WLAN, TD-CDMA, etc have appeared. Each of these standards is defined with respect to their technical characteristics and relation to the cost of network layout and operation. The issues of fixed and variable cost associated with each technology are discussed. The characteristics of each system in facilitating multi-user shared usage of resources are discussed and compared, leading to a discussion of capacities of each technology and the number of users that can be served. The seminar then addresses the different segments of the market, public mobile systems, hot spot coverage, personal area network, and so on and how/why several technologies are needed to address the needs of these different segments. We then describe how other advanced technologies, such as antennas and multi-user interference reduction can improve the performance of the network in terms of higher transmission rates and capacity, leading to cost savings in network operation. These are followed by wireless network topologies: centralized base stations as used in public mobile communications vs. distributed access points as used in WLAN types, ad-hoc networking and how these affect the mobile telecom business. The focus is on the major present standards: WCDMA-HSPA, WiMAX, WLAN and TD-CDMA and their provision of data communications, a topic that is of great importance in the coming decade.

Throughout the course technologies are compared with reference to the cost of manufacturing, implementation, network design and operation, and end-user devices/handsets. The mobile telecom value chain is discussed to show how each component adds value to the whole. New services delivered over the present 3G and future 4G systems are discussed in particular with how they facilitate mobile commerce.

Course Topics

• Introduction and History of Wireless and Mobile Telecommunications: Fixed-line Broadband Data Communications; Mobile Communications; Broadband Wireless.
• Wireless Communications Technologies and Their Cost Implications: Modulation; Single-carrier and Multi-carrier; System Capacity, Capacity Limit, Coverage, and coverage extension.
• Cellular Topologies: Cell Structure; Distributed Base Stations.
• Cost of Spectrum: Throughput Efficiency for Data and Voice for WCDMA HSPA, WiMAX, TD-CDMA HSPA, WLAN.
• Cost of Devices: Base Station, and Network Nodes Costs; End-user Equipment.
• Network Design and Operation: Design and Planning, and Site Cost; Wholesale Operators — Network-less Operators.
• Services, M-Commerce and Business Scenarios: Market Size, Revenue Flow, and Value Chain: Cash Flow Scenarios; Infotainment, and Location based services.

For further information please contact:
Anne-Marie Eliseo
Industry Education Manager
phone: +61-8-8302-3928
email: industryeducation@nicta.com.au