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A first look at performance in mobile virtual network operators

  • Fatima Zarinni
  • , Ayon Chakraborty
  • , Vyas Sekar
  • , Samir R. Das
  • , Phillipa Gill
  • Stony Brook University
  • Carnegie Mellon University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent industry trends suggest a new phenomenon in the mobile market: Mobile virtual network operators or MVNOs that operate on top of existing cellular infrastructures. While MVNOs have shown significant growth in the US and elsewhere in the past two years and have been successful in attracting customers, there is anecdotal evidence that users are concerned about cellular performance when choosing MVNOs over traditional cellular operators. In this paper, we present the first systematic measurement study to shed light on this emerging phenomenon. We study the performance of 3 key applications: Web access, video streaming and voice, in 2 popular MVNO families (a total of 8 carriers) in the US, where each MVNO family consists of a major base carrier and 3 MVNOs running on top of it. We observe that some MVNOs do indeed exhibit significant performance degradation and that there are key differences between the two MVNO families.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIMC 2014 - Proceedings of the 2014 ACM
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages165-171
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781450332132
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 5 2014
Event2014 ACM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2014 - Vancouver, Canada
Duration: Nov 5 2014Nov 7 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC

Conference

Conference2014 ACM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2014
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVancouver
Period11/5/1411/7/14

Keywords

  • Applications
  • Cellular measurements
  • Cellular performance
  • Mobile measurements
  • Mobile performance
  • MVNO
  • QoE

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