Building an ecosystem for mobile broadband measurement: Methods and policy challenges

Abstract

Mobile broadband networks constitute essential infrastructure to enable a wide range of innovative services and use cases that will shape the future of the digital economy. As this digital economy evolves, capabilities to collect more fine-grained measurements and generate analytics that deliver insights for real-time network management and localized control are expanding across contexts, technologies, and stakeholders. With broadband value chains becoming increasingly diverse, dynamic, and complex, a robust measurement ecosystem for mobile broadband is necessary to (i) allow service providers to manage and develop their networks, (ii) ensure transparency levels that facilitate informed decisions by end-users and the efficient operation of markets, and (iii) facilitate evidence-based policymaking. As the methods used to collect measurement data are changing, the ecosystem of stakeholders with strategic interests in mobile measurement is growing, posing both new challenges and opportunities for policymakers. This paper explores the evolving measurement requirements and methods and discusses key features of a capable and reliable measurement ecosystem for mobile broadband. We document how the evolving measurement methods are being adopted in several critical broadband policy issues. We find that a healthy measurement ecosystem will need to confront the challenge of reconciling diverse stakeholder perspectives on what measurements should be conducted and how they should be used. Additionally, managing the shared costs of supporting the necessary measurement capabilities and infrastructure represent an additional strategic challenge. Lastly, we explain that governments and telecom regulators have a key role to play as designers, orchestrators disseminators of trustworthy measurement data, and as managers/adjudicators of measurement disputes.