Cost Models for Telecommunication Networks and Their Application to GSM Systems

Abstract

Currently mobile networks are one of the key issues in the information society. The use of cellular phones has been broadly extended since the middle 1990s, in Europe mainly with the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) system, and in the United States (U.S.) with the IS-54 system. The technologies on which these systems are based, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) are completely developed, the networks are completely deployed and the business models are almost exhausted1 (Garrese, 2003). Therefore, these systems are in the saturation stage if we consider the network life cycle described by Ward, which is shown in Figure 1.