Page 20 - Sphere No.28 (Mar 2011)

18 Sphere
3G T rends
Sharing the benefits
Forward-looking mobile and fixed-line telecom operators are turning to network sharing
as a creative way to bring better services more economically to their customers
By Jorge Felicidad
With the expenses involved in building,
upgrading, operating and maintaining telecommunications
networks continuing to escalate over the past decade, it could
only be a matter of time before carriers found more creative
ways to fulfill their development agenda at lower cost.
One of those ways has been the development of infra-
structure-sharing arrangements implemented by a growing
number of forward-looking mobile and fixed-line network
operators.
In a report, management consulting firm Booz Allen
Hamilton said network sharing was first implemented in
2001. “With the hype of 3G licensing in Europe and the big
investments made in licence acquisition, many operators
were under pressure to share deployment costs and thus
share infrastructure,” Booz Allen Hamilton said.
Anticipating the rapid growth of mobile internet data
usage, operators 3 UK and T-Mobile pooled their 3G
infrastructure in December 2001 in a 50-50 joint venture
company called Mobile Broadband Network Ltd (MBNL).
The purpose was to create Britain’s best 3G network more
rapidly and more efficiently than either party could do alone.
The resulting shared network requires fewer masts, consumes
less energy and provides customers with superior mobile
broadband service.
MBNL awarded Nokia Siemens Networks a GBP400 mil-
lion (USD600 million) contract that included the provision of
3G radio network infrastructure, mobile network planning,
implementation, optimisation and maintenance. The joint
network infrastructure programme was slated for completion
at the end of last year.
“The growth in mobile broadband usage clearly provides
challenges for networks,” Emin Gurdenli, technical director
at T-Mobile UK, said. “These are challenges we have antici-
pated.”
In August 2004, Hutchison 3G Australia and Telstra Cor-
poration committed to jointly own and operate a 2100-mega-
hertz 3G network. Hutchison 3G later merged with Vodafone
Australia to establish Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA).