Blockchain Technology for Telecommunication: Applications and Rationale

Overview

Industry overview

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  Tower Sharing Management

  Today we see the global telecommunication market transform towards a digital, interconnected and shared economy. Telecom infrastructure is one of the prime enabler and also a barrier for the expansion of telecom services. Therefore, sharing of infrastructure by the telecom operators has become the need of hour as operators try to lower their respective investments. The intent of regulators also is to increase the mobile network coverage area within the geography and optimize the utilization of telecommunication infrastructure.

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  Roaming Management

  Mobile roaming allows mobile users to continue to avail their mobile services like voice calls, text messages, and the internet while visiting another country. Roaming extends the telecom coverage of the home operator’s seamless services by a roaming agreement between the mobile user’s home operator and the visited mobile operator. The roaming agreement comprises of the technical and commercial terms & conditions. Roaming agreements are required to be set up with every other operator in the world. Such roaming agreements and intermediaries like clearing houses increase the cost of operations that are eventually passed on to the subscriber. These agreements could be replaced with automated Smart Contracts. Based on the Smart Contract rules, the charges and payment terms & conditions are set.

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  Number Portability

  Number portability (NP) is a classic example of how operators across the world depend upon third party NP service provides. NP is achieved through a complex process and every country has taken a specific approach to implementation. Most countries use a centralized database model. Few countries have implemented the distributed database model. The primary challenge in NP is that there are no international standards. In number portability operations, information exchange was possible between CSPs directly or via an intermediary but financial transactions or value exchange was not possible or easy.