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

The increased use of mobile devices and the introduction of smartphones have 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 stable and robust services, both in everyday life and in crisis. There is also an increasing demand for capacity as new and more mobile broadband challenging services are being used. The society will rely on the mobile networks to provide higher capacity, more coverage and increased robustness in the future to come. This provides new challenges for all actors in the mobile industry, in order to meet the increasing demands of the society. The thesis is written in collaboration with the Norwegian Communication Authority (Nkom) in order to investigate the future development of the mobile network infrastructure with a techno-economical and regulatory point of view. Through literature studies, the thesis has investigated the offered capacity, coverage, and robustness of mobile networks today, as well as the current market structure and current market shares in the Norwegian mobile market. The thesis has also defined and investigated four different strategies for future development of the mobile network infrastructure. Each strategy has been analyzed and evaluated based on nine selected factors, including coverage, capacity, robustness, and regulation. The strategies investigated are: 1. Continue current development 2. Tighter cooperation between Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) 3. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) 4. A more active government The thesis presents the results of the strategy analysis in a comparison matrix. The matrix provides an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy, based on the factors analyzed. In an overall perspective, the thesis found that a tighter cooperation between Mobile Network Operators seems to be the most beneficial strategy of the strategies investigated