Game analysis: Cellular vs. WLAN

To date, the growth of mobile communications has been fuelled almost exclusively by voice calls. However, voice is becoming a saturated market, and with increasing competition forcing lower prices, leading to a trend of declining ARPU, mobile operators are seeking to introduce new services in order to maintain growth. Industry forecasts predict that revenues from data traffic will compensate for the decreasing voice ARPU and will further grow to become an important portion of the overall mobile operator revenue in the future. From a technological perspective mobile operators can leverage their data service offering using cellular data networks such as GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA, wireless access networks such as IEEE 802.11b, or a combination of both wireless and cellular with various degrees of interworking capabilities. This paper investigates mobile operator strategies in adopting wireless vs. cellular technologies for leveraging data services. The main purpose of the paper is to highlight the most relevant parameters that may be used in modeling mobile operator strategies in adopting network technologies enabling data service offering to their subscribers.