"Word-of-Mouth" in Radio Access Markets

Opening up interoperability between wide and local area networks seems to be a very promising solution for delivering improved user experience while reducing overall service costs. In a scenario, where a single operator owns different types of networks, QoS provision can be achieved by introducing complex multi-system resource management. On the contrary, if local area networks are deployed by different entities, due to the lack of both coordination and centralized RRM management, the experienced QoS may drastically fluctuate, ranging from SLAs in wide area, to only "best effort" expectations in local area networks. In order for "nomadic" terminal agents to perform "informed" access selection decisions, we propose the adoption of "word-of-mouth" (WoM), a novel scheme for sharing, in a peer-to-peer fashion, information about the service quality experienced with different networks. The performances of our proposed WoM scheme have been evaluated for a file pre-fetching service, considering information characterized by various degrees of time criticality, when different RRM strategies are implemented in the local area networks. The results show that if a critical mass of terminal agents exchange experienced QoS information, the overall network selection decision is improved: terminal agents can estimate, on beforehand, which type of performances to expect with different candidate networks, and avoid to select those not satisfying service requirements. This, in turn brings two main positive effects: on one hand, user perceived performance is improved, and, on the other hand, the adoption of RRM strategies providing some degree QoS is incentivated