Technical regulation

Technical regulation – Quality of service

13.08.2020

Introduction What is quality of service? People everywhere depend on ICT services. Unless these services are good enough, people need face-to-face contact in order to hold conversations, send and receive messages, obtain news, transfer money, play games, monitor and control machines, take part in markets, meetings, lessons, and entertainment, and so on. The range of services continues to grow. What “good enough” means depends on many factors, such as user feelings and expectations, which themselves vary with applications and environments. To be good enough, services usually have to be not annoying, even if they are not delightful. In the words…

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The relation between quality of service and quality of experience

25.08.2020

Factors influencing the quality of experience Quality of experience (QoE) is now taken to be “the degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or service,” following ITU-T Recommendation P.10/G.100 (ITU-T 2017). Conventionally it is regarded as being determined by “influencing factors” of the following kinds, which are discussed in more detail in Qualinet White Paper (Qualinet 2013): Human-related influencing factors: properties of users, such as gender, age, education, background, expertise, feeling, expectation, hearing, and sight. System-related influencing factors: properties of ICT used, such as power consumption, usability of input and output devices, accuracy of encoding and…

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Basic statistics for quality of service assessment

06.06.2020

Means Quality of service measurements are typically concerned with numbers like: The proportion of call set-ups that are successful. The mean of the times taken by file downloads. To provide the numbers, “events” (such as call set-ups and file downloads) are observed. The “observations” are numerical values of important facts about the events. For instance, in these examples they could be: 1 for a successful call set-up and 0 for an unsuccessful call set-up. The time taken by a file download. In this note observations are also called “measurements” and are used to calculate “measurement results.” Perhaps the commonest measurement…

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The Anatel (Brazil) approach to quality of service monitoring for mobile services

24.08.2020

Basis The regulator monitors the quality of mobile telephony in six parameters. This number has been reduced, most recently from fourteen in 2019. Small operators, which are defined as ones with a national market share of less than 5 per cent in each of their retail markets, are exempt from quality of service monitoring. For each parameter there is a target. The extent to which targets are reached has been rising: it was 79.7 per cent in 2015, 80.9 per cent in 2016, 81.1 per cent in 2017, 83.4 per cent in 2018 and 84.3 per cent in 2019. The…

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Examples of quality of service presentation by regulators

25.08.2020

Uganda Two parameters (both for voice) were measured for four operators in eleven cities (UCC 2019). The numbers of measurements (and the confidence intervals) were not stated. The measurement results are shown below for the voice parameters in the three cities in one region, East. Source: UCC 2019. Source: UCC 2019. Ghana Eight parameters (five for voice and three for data) were measured for four operators in 119 districts of five regions (NCA 2018). The numbers of measurements (and the confidence intervals) were not stated. The measurement results were tabulated separately for each operator. They are shown here for the…

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The ECTEL experience of quality of service regulation

25.08.2020

Introduction The Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) develops model laws and regulations for five countries: Dominica, Grenada, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The models are transposed into national acts and regulations according to national priorities. ECTEL consulted on its draft quality of service regulations, first in 2005 and then in 2006, before adopting them in 2007. Four of the ECTEL countries then transposed the regulations into their national frameworks: Dominica in 2008, Grenada in 2009, Saint Christopher and Nevis in 2008, and Saint Lucia in 2007. ECTEL proposed revisions to the regulations in…

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Crowdsourcing techniques in quality of service assessment

25.08.2020

Crowdsourcing devices for fixed and mobile networks Crowdsourcing for quality of service monitoring involves collecting data as measurements from “data collection devices” on user connections for processing into measurement results by the “data collector.” The data collector provides measurement results to the general public and to other organizations, such as operators, regulators, and consumer groups. The data collection device might be the user terminal or a special device associated with the user terminal. In fact: For fixed networks crowdsourcing the data collection device is often the user terminal. Many regulators suggest or even provide online applications that users can initiate…

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Technical regulation: Numbering, naming, addressing, and identification (NNAI)

13.08.2020

Why do numbering, naming, and addressing matter? Telephone numbers were devised well over a century ago to provide a way of identifying destinations of telephone calls uniquely. They then became used to identify sources of telephone calls, in calling line identification (CLI). They could contain information about tariffs and value-added contents. They are now used much more generally as unique identifiers, in money transfers, over-the-top (OTT) messages, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and so on. In effect “destination” has been expanded to refer to people and things generally. The rotary dials originally used to input numbers have long since disappeared…

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Numbering: valuation of numbers, portability, and emergency and toll-free numbers

02.09.2020

Introduction The evolution of the use of the NNAI resources in the digital age brings new opportunities and challenges to existing and established concepts. The development of both over-the-top (OTT) services and machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, and the access that providers of these capabilities have to NNAI resources, will have an impact on the governance of such resources. This section outlines three such areas of impact: the valuation of numbers, number portability, and the handling of emergency and toll-free numbers. Valuation of numbers The valuation of numbers permits charges to be levied on NNAI resources, and…

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Numbering: NNAI resources in the digital age

03.09.2020

Introduction As technology and services have changed over the past few decades, the use of numbering, naming, addressing, and identification (NNAI) resources have continually evolved. The introduction of direct international dialling, and of mobile communications are the cornerstone of the evolutionary path that now continues into the digital age. Even more influential is the changing environment – the rules of use and the actors within those rules – in which NNAI resources are evolving. The introduction of competition has brought more operators and service providers, and the introduction of regulators[1] has introduced independent oversight of the use of NNAI resources.…

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