Fair decisions in shared multi-operator mobile networks

Mobile operators increasingly share their wireless networks to save cost. Some network parameters in the shared environment are operator-specific whereas others apply globally to all operators so their choice may lead to a disagreement between operators. We suggest that this problem can be solved by a voting system where operators cast weighted votes. We compare two weighting methods, namely the Proportional method and the so-called Penrose method for different operators´ shares and benefits. We observe that the Penrose method performs especially well in cases where the foreseeable benefit of a decision is rather ambiguous for operators (in contrast, the distribution of operators´ shares hardly influences which method is better). Even when operators´ benefits of a decision are biased in one or the other direction according to a binomial distribution, the Penrose method performs better than the Proportional method overall. These findings are particularly relevant for multi-operator self-organizing networks (SON).