BOOK CHAPTER: User-centric Convergence in Telecom Networks
Abstract
The realization of a user-centric paradigm in future telecommunication networks, which implies free and automatic choice among different available wireless and mobile access networks, will revolutionize the Future Internet. For this innovative concept to materialize, a paradigm shift is required from contract-based mobile service delivery to an open, dynamic service delivery environment. This chapter presents an overview of the user-centric open networking paradigm for future telecommunications and a distributed Quality of Experience framework that enables user-centric, application-specific network selection and handover decisions on the user terminal. Furthermore, a formal modeling of cooperation and resource sharing among operators in this setting is provided, where the QoE framework also acts as an enabler for inter-operator mediation. Specifically, the QoE distribution component is demonstrated to make the truth revealing a dominant strategy for the operators. The interaction between resource sharing operations can be developed with full state information disclosure assumption.