1. 1
NAMES: OLATUNDE ISMAILA
STUDENT ID: P1015927
PATHWAY: N.E.T.S
MODULE: TELECOMMUNICATION BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT (TBE)

2. 2
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................3
Task 1: TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE .............................................................................................. 3
Discusinginfrastructure and services providers.............................................................................. 3
Categories of telecommunication infrastructure.........................................................................4
Advantages of telecommunication Infrastructure .......................................................................5
Explaining telecommunication Provisioning................................................................................ 5
Telecom Infrastructure service providers ................................................................................... 7
BT Service provision and product............................................................................................... 8
Telecom regulations.................................................................................................................. 9
Task 2: TELECOM RETAILING ....................................................................................................... 10
Describing the retail Industry................................................................................................... 10
Features of retail industry of telecommunication...................................................................... 11
Discusstoday’sbusinessenvironmentinwhichtelecommunicationsretailersare operating.
Particularlyrelate yourdiscussiontothe issuesof networkaccessibility,competitionandthe trend
to formbusinesspartnerships,mergersandtake-overs.Supportyourdiscussionwithappropriate
examples................................................................................................................................ 12
Task 3: TELECOM BILLING............................................................................................................ 14
Retailingbusinessstrategyandbillingstructure of TWOorganisationsandthe effectivenessof
their adopted strategies.......................................................................................................... 14
Network products and components used in telecommunication development........................... 15
Future trends in telecommunication network components ....................................................... 15
Task 4: QUALITY OF SERVICE ....................................................................................................... 16
Description............................................................................................................................. 16
Measuring QoS....................................................................................................................... 16
Roles of Regulatory bodies...................................................................................................... 17
References ............................................................................................................................. 19

3. 3
Introduction
This paper sets out to answer specific questions set out in the subject of the business side
of telecommunications. It demonstrates the author understands of the management and
business issues related to the industry. Then the discussion will also focus on
telecommunication billings based on the choice of customers and the national and
international telecommunication governing bodies.
Task 1: TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE
Discusing infrastructure and services providers
Telecommunications infrastructure providers are those commercial entities that provide
the infrastructure for the telecommunications (land and/or mobile) services. The
infrastructure in this case would include the physical hardware such as cables, base
stations, wireless stations, receivers, etc. as well as the software required to maintain the
infrastructure. The infrastructure can comprise of more than one independent networks
such as POTS (plain old telephone system) as well as cable networks. BT is perhaps the most
well-known infrastructure provider in the UK. It provides (sells) access to the
telecommunication infrastructure to other commercial entities such as TalkTalk, Orange,
etc.
The service provider as the name suggests provides the service to the end user or
customer. The service is any telecommunications service, such as fixed line or mobile
telephony and Internet facilities. TalkTalk for example is a service provider in the UK;
although it does not own any of the infrastructures, it purchases access of the
infrastructure from BT and sells the telecommunications services to customers. BT on the
other hand, sells both access to the infrastructure as well as services direct to the customer
and hence is actually both, an infrastructure as well as service provider.

4. 4
Some of the requirements that make up the telecommunication infrastructure are;
1- Network devices
2- Connection links, e.g cables
3- Cordless links
4- Software tools
Categories of telecommunication infrastructure
Some of the most known categories of telecommunication infrastructures are;
 The Internet Infrastructure; which is one of the most widely applicable
infrastructure applicable in the world today and it self-individuals, and companies in
many ways. The internet infrastructure serve individuals and businesses to perform
lot of task such as;
- Web browsing
- Online chats
- Voice over IP for mostly businesses and help in reducing cost for making phone calls.
- Research work, etc

5. 5
 Cell Phone Infrastructure: These are mobile devices infrastructure that users used
on daily basis with the help of electromagnetic wave (Radio frequency, RF). Mobile
phones generate revenue at the point of sale, and provide continuous revenue in the
form of service charges throughout their use.
Advantages of telecommunication Infrastructure
As such, telecommunication infrastructures have helped in so many ways and have
benefited the world at large such as;
 It has facilitated the growth of information technology particularly in software and
many other technologies like the GSM and CDMA.
 It has helped in designing long optical fibre cabling at various locations and buildings.
Explaining telecommunication Provisioning
The provisioning of telecommunications is changing due to the convergence of networks,
services and devices that is taking place. There is a greater variety of devices on the market
today, which results in new service capabilities, such as mobile broadband, messaging, etc.
These new services however have added complexity and cost. The new services allow a
wider range of consumers to be targeted, however this can also be confusing. Service
providers often resort to bundling to overcome this problem. New applications have sprung
up offering new services which compete with the traditional services offered, such as Skype
and Face time calls instead of the traditional mobile phone calls over the carrier.
This undermined the relationship of the carrier with the customer. The new applications
were also data hungry, leading to increased demand for mobile data communication
network bandwidth. The various applications also created multiple tiers of service in the

6. 6
network; not all IP packets needed equal priority and hence telecommunications service
providers had to discriminate and prioritise between different services and customers. As
the devices became more important, the balance of power also shifted; the device
manufacturers become more powerful. The telecommunications service providers also
realised that they were sitting on the data goldmine; they had access to data that would
have many applications such as customer usage patterns, profiles, history, etc.
The convergence is exemplified by the horizontal and vertical movements of the major
players in the market. Google for example, although having begun its life as a service
(search engine) on a website, is now a mobile device software provider (Android); Apple,
which was once a computer giant, is now well known as a mobile phone manufacturer.
Thus the landscape has changed, with a greater variety of service providers, greater
complexity of services and overlapping nature of services.
Other changes have also been taking place in the background. The telecommunications
networks themselves are migrating from proprietary protocols and controls to open
protocols; this lowers the barriers of entry and new players are able to enter the market.
Increased regulations, particularly governing competition to ensure that monopolies or
oligopolies do not dominate the market also serve to make life difficult for the traditional
service and infrastructure providers. Overall it can be said that the value chain is changing;
the convergence and complexity of new technologies is making the value chain morph. In
particular network convergence, where the traditional cabled network and the wireless and
satellite networks, as well as the piggybacked networks such as 4G LTE has meant that
telecommunications network provisioning has become more complex, and a key part of the
value chain for any player in the industry.
(Bamforth and Longbottom, 2010)

7. 7
Telecom Infrastructure service providers
Below are list of services that the available telecommunication infrastructure provides and
they provide them to individuals and to small scale companies. Example of this services
offered are;
- Optical fibre deployment
- Phones equipment installation
- Data network installation
- Installing and testing radio antennas
Some of the telecommunication infrastructure providers are;
 Satellite infrastructure
 Mobile phones infrastructure
 Internet infrastructure
Below is a list of public and private telecommunication companies that provides the
Internet, cabling, satellite, mobile and fixed phone services to individuals and businesses.

8. 8
BT Service provision and product
The table shows all the available services and products that the British Telecom (BT)
provides to its customers and businesses.
Product Package
Broadband/Internet
product
Voice Products - Cloud-hosted systems
- On-premise systems
- Phone lines and numbers
- ISDN lines
- Premium calling features
- BT payphones and calling cards

9. 9
- Business phones
- SIM only
- Mobile business solutions
BT Services Packages
Networks - BT managed WAN
- Lease lines
- Ethernet point-to-point
- Ethernet VPN
- Ethernet IP connect
Business Services
Telecom regulations
These are regulations the govern the telecommunication companies towards their services,
products and customers and this regulations are set out by an independent body of every
country coupled with the regulations of the International telecommunication union the ITU.

10. 10
The regulatory norms of the UK telecommunication are done by the OfCom (Office for
communication) and play the following roles in seeing that the business industry is
successful.
Task 2: TELECOM RETAILING
Describing the retail Industry
The telecommunications retail industry can be said to comprise of fixed and mobile
telecommunications. The size of the mobile sector however dwarfs the fixed sector; there
are over seven billion mobile users and only approximately 650 million fixed users.
The mobile sector is growing, whereas demand for the traditional fixed line has been static.
Emerging markets such as India and Africa as these countries have growing populations and
lack the fixed infrastructure. Another key characteristic of the mobile sector is that the
demand for mobile data connection has grown on account of the proliferation of mobile
devices.

11. 11
Features of retail industry of telecommunication
The features of the telecommunication retail industry are scoped within the following;
1) Technology Driven; which depends on the growing technology of the industry
according to customers demand. Customers plays a very great role in seeing that
there is technology driven based on their demands as in recent years, most
customers demand for latest telecom products with great features.
2) Market Competition: Which depends on the sale volume of a particular
telecommunication industry as competition in the industry today boost the telecom
market as customers will like to have latest product.
3) Price Reduction: Base on the prices as well, customers will like to deal with telecom
companies that offer their products at very cheaper rates and in the UK the cost rate
for telecom product is lower compare to the past years.

12. 12
Discuss today’s business environment in which telecommunications
retailers are operating. Particularly relate your discussion to the issues of
network accessibility, competition and the trend to form business
partnerships, mergers and take-overs. Support your discussion with
appropriate examples.
Telecom Partners Telecom Mergers Telecom Take-overs
- Nokia –
Siemens
- Nokia –
Microsoft
- Sony – Ericson
- T-Mobile and Orange
This merging takes place for the following reasons;
- To expand their network.
- To easily reach their customer.
- To provide faster services to customers.
- BT take over EE
The traditional source of revenue in the mobile telecommunications sector is calls and
text. Mobile data is the growing sector, and it is expected to continue to grow with the
increasing applications that use the Internet on mobile devices.
Increasing convergence has meant that mobile, fixed and even TV services have come to be
delivered over the same infrastructure, further increasing the demand for data networks.
This has led to the development of newer network infrastructures that can help deliver
higher data rates, such as cable and fibre.
Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) therefore face a highly competitive environment;
Regulation has freed up the infrastructure to create a competitive market, and therefore in
each market generally a few mobile network operators can be found; often there would also
be a number of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). The former actually owns
and/or maintains some physical network infrastructure whereas the MVNOs rent capacity
from MVO to sell on to their customers. Other companies may offer alternative services
such as VoIP (for e.g Skype)
The key factor to note is that providing telecommunications services, especially in the
infrastructure size, is expensive. The players in the market have to be large enough, and be
able to cope with the expanding networks and constant technological evolution. Many

13. 13
physical components have to be regularly replaced, software updated, etc. Big companies
that own large segments of the infrastructure and stronger because they are less reliant on
other companies to route their customers’ calls whereas the MVNOs typically must pay for
interconnection of the networks to support their customers’ needs. Therefore this leads to
mergers (where two or more companies merge for strategic reasons, for example to
become a suitably strong competitor to another larger firm in the market), acquisitions
where some technology owned by a smaller company bestows some competitive
advantage, etc.
In the UK alone the mergers and acquisitions are mind boggling. Vodafone is ranked third
in UK; it has however acquired many other telecommunications companies around Europe.
In the UK Orange and EE have teamed up to share their network to create a rival O2 and
Vodafone, called Everything Everywhere. BT is seeking to takeover O2 to enter the mobile
market.

14. 14
Task 3: TELECOM BILLING
Retailing business strategy and billing structure of TWO organisations and
the effectiveness of their adopted strategies.
This is the process of charging consumers of their products by collecting usage, aggregating
it, applying required charges and produce invoices for customers to make their required
payments and on due dates. This telecommunication industries charge for rental and
usages.
1) Giffgaff – Sim only and pay monthly contracts, with the smallest plan starting from
£7.50 for 250 minutes and 500 MB Internet to £18 for 1000 minutes and 5 GB
Internet
2) Three network
Overall the billing structure and retail strategies of the two organisations are rather
similar. The main difference between the retail strategies of the two companies are that
three (3) offers unlimited data plans whereas Giffgaff does not and Three offers contracts
with new phones whereas Giffgaff does not sell the handsets. Giffgaff is clearly targeted to
customers who already have phones whereas three (3) targets both types of customers.

15. 15
Network products and components used in telecommunication
development
Future trends in telecommunication network components
The future trends of telecommunication are based on the following;
Components Description
Hubs and Switches Switches were replaced by Hubs due to their numerous disadvantages
and today we can see the great work that switches offers compare to
Hubs.
Modem and Router Modems too came with ability to modulate and de-modulate a signal
but due to it lower speed; routers were invented which now helps in
routing data packets on the network.
Layer 2 and Layer 3 Switch Layer 2 switches were seen working at the layer 2 of the OSI model for
connecting network devices together and uses MAC address but later the

16. 16
layer 3 switch was invented that have the capability of understanding the
MAC and IP address. Likewise, it works at the layer 2 and layer 3 of the
OSI model.
Wired and Wireless
Devices
At first device connectivity were wired and today most devices comes
with wireless features that ease user mobility, flexibility and other great
benefits.
Task 4: QUALITY OF SERVICE
Description
Quality of service is the reliability of the transmission in the network; if a packet is sent,
there should be some guarantees about the time it takes for it to reach its destination, the
probability that it will; this can be expressed as the percentage of packets that reach the
destination (as opposed to being lost in the network) and the time within which a specified
percentage reaches the destination. QoS therefore provides a measure by which the
application can approximate the number of packets that will be received by the recipient
and the time taken for these packets to reach. It allows the application to determine the
strategy for transmission of packets; for example if time is not important, but the packets
should reach the destination, then the application can choose to flood the network with
packets; if the application is time sensitive for example VoIP applications then the QoS is
important to ensure that the user has a good experience.
Some applications can tolerate a higher degree of packet loss, whereas some cannot. The
percentage of packet loss can create a lower quality user experience, for example lower call
or video quality.
Measuring QoS
The key factor in measuring Qos is the service experience of the users. It is defined as the
specific requirements provided by a network to the users in order to achieve the desired
functionality of the application or service. IP networks are generally based on a best effort
service however QoS can be defined in terms of four parameters namely:
 Resource availability

17. 17
 Resource control policies, including Service Level Agreements
 QoS requirements of the specific applications such as Jitter, Delay, Packet loss, etc.
 Delay is intrinsic to all communications; the information takes time to reach its
destination. Delay is also referred to as latency. Delay increases with network
congestion.
 Jitter is variation in delay. It is caused by the variable transmission of packets over
the network.
 Packet loss is the failure of packets to reach their destination.
Throughput is the amount of data which a network sends or receives. It is measured in bits
per second
Roles of Regulatory bodies
The main role of regulatory bodies is to ensure that the interest of the consumer is
protected in the market. They work to ensure that there is sufficient competition in the
market such that monopolies are not allowed to flourish. Competition in the market serves
to increase innovation and drive progress in technology.
Like we have the OfCom for UK telecom regulatory body and the International
telecommunication Union (ITU).

18. 18

19. 19
References
 Bamforth, R . and Longbottom, C. (2010). Telecoms re-invention–death of the
traditional telco. Quocirca White Paper.
 Bunge, M. (2009). Philosophy of Science: From Problem to Theory. Transaction
Publishers.
 Dahlman, E., Parkvall, S., & Skold, J. (2013). 4G: LTE/LTE-Advanced for Mobile
Broadband. Academic Press.
 Hill, Richard. The New International Telecommunication Regulations And The
Internet. Print.
 Sherif, Mostafa Hashem. Managing Projects In Telecommunication Services.
Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2006. Print.