THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR

Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

The focus of this chapter is examine the development of mobile communications globally and in South Africa, to examine the prior research that has taken place with regard to the adoption of mobile services and the frameworks used to explain the adoption of mobile services. It concludes with a scan of the recent research which has been conducted regarding these topics.

 INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE REVIEW

To develop a framework regarding the adoption of services in a market, entails examining the many factors which can have an effect on the adoption of a particular mobile service. This chapter consists of four sections.
The literature review was conducted with the following four aims in mind. The first aim was to define the mobile telecommunications industry, highlight the development of the industry and elaborate on its evolution from a technology developed exclusively for voice transmission to a technology designed to carry large amounts of data at high bandwidths and with voice transmission now a data application. It also gives an overview of the current status of the mobile telecommunications market in South Africa, key factors affecting the market and the South African market in relation to the rest of the world.
The second aim was to develop an overview of all the different frameworks that have been used to try and forecast or explain the adoption of ICT services in general and mobile services in particular. It also highlights the development of the frameworks as their focus changes from explaining the adoption of a business orientated technology to that of the individual based technology. An additional benefit of this section is that it highlights all the possible factors which have been recognised in affecting the adoption of ICT services.
The third aim is to understand the way and to what extent factors identified in the second part of the review affect the adoption of mobile and other ICT services. It also identifies which factors would possibly affect the adoption in South Africa.
The fourth and final aim was to carry out a high level scan of the research regarding to the adoption of mobile services, which was published between March 2017 and February 2018, and to scan for any trends or clues which indicate where the research is heading.

THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR

This section will commence by defining what is meant by a telecommunications sector and the different sub-sectors that constitute the sector. It will then define what is meant by the mobile telecommunications sub-sector and provide an overview of the development of this sub-sector.

What is the telecommunications sector

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry as “The production (goods and services) of a candidate industry [that] must primarily be intended to fulfil or enable the function of information processing and communication by electronic means, including transmission and display” (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2007). It then lists 5 separate sectors in the services market, namely; Software Publishing; Telecommunications; Computer programming, Consultancy and related activities; Data processing, Hosting and related activities and Web portals; Repair of computers and communication equipment (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2007a). The OECD further breaks the Telecommunications sector down into 4 sub-sectors with the four ISIC codes, namely:
Code 6110 Wired Telecommunications Activities
Code 6120 Wireless Telecommunication Activities
Code 6130 Satellite Telecommunication Activities
Code 6190 Other Telecommunication Activities (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2007)
Newton’s Telecom Dictionary (Newton, 1997: 640), defines ‘telecommunications’ as “the art and science of ‘communicating’ over a distance by telephone, telegraph and radio.” So the telecommunications sector is the subsector of the ICT industry involved with the actual transmitting and receiving of electronic information. The three basic transmission methods are wired (copper, fibre optic and powerline), wireless (mobile, microwave, WiFi) and satellite. The types of products transmitted are, voice, data, internet, image, video, fax and music to name just a few (Gartner, 2014). This research will concentrate on the wireless communication sub-sector, specifically data services offered on a mobile communications network.

 What are Cellular Mobile Telecommunications?

A cellular network is a radio network consisting of numerous individual cells distributed over a large area with a fixed radio receiver/ transceiver in each cell and together these cells provide radio coverage over a large area. The network uses small portable devices such as mobile phones, and is able to maintain communication even if the equipment is moving through and across different cells during transmission (Shepard, 2005; Ghetie, 2009).
According to Shepard (2005) there are four key design principles that make the cellular mobile networks different from other wireless networks and permit these networks to handle the large amount of subscribers that currently reside on them. These principles are;
Cellular structure:
The network is designed in a honeycomb of hexagonal cells with a low power radio transmitter and receiver within each cell allowing the network to handle many more simultaneous calls than a single monolithic transmitter (Shepard, 2005). Figure: 2-1 shows an illustration of the concept of the honeycomb structure.
Frequency re-use:
This is a very important concept as there are only a limited number of frequencies available for use in radio networks so the more often a frequency can be re-used, the greater the number of simultaneous conversations on that same frequency can be handled by the network. The problem with using the same frequency for simultaneous calls is that the calls will interfere with each other if they are too close so by keeping the power down and having at least one other cell between cells using the same frequency, frequencies can be reused.
When a cell becomes congested on a regular basis, that is all available frequencies are utilised, there are two options available to increase the capacity of the cell, cell-splitting and cell sectoring (Ghosh, 2017). Cell-splitting is when a second or more transmitters, operating on a different frequency to the original, are placed in the cell and the cell is split into two or more cells increasing the capacity the cell. In cell-sectoring, the cell is either split into three or six equal sectors and each of these sectors has its own transmitters and frequencies, thereby increasing the number of calls that can be handled in relation to the additional number of sectors that are added (Shepard, 2005; Ghosh, 2017).
Hand-offs between cells:
This is the unique part of the network that makes it mobile. In all wireless networks the user logs on to the transmitter in a particular cell, and in fixed wireless networks the user must log off and log onto the new transmitter if they change cells, while in mobile networks the user is seamlessly handed over to the transmitter in the new cell if they move cells without the user being aware of the change (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Shepard, 2005; Clark, 2012; Ghosh, 2017).
There are two other principles, which although are not unique to mobile networks, that make mobile networks as effective as they are in handling the large amounts of traffic. The first is that mobile networks employ a full duplex telephony system (duplex telephony means that different frequencies are used for the out-going and incoming signals) which allows the handset to receive and transmit signals simultaneously. This is what differentiates mobile telephony from radio phones (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Shepard, 2005; Clark, 2012).
The second principle is a concept called trunking. When it is applied it means that each cell can have transmitters that operate on multiple frequencies, so many calls can be handled simultaneously by a single transmitter with each call on a different frequency and in its own channel or ‘trunk’ (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Shepard, 2005; Clark, 2012).
These six key principles are what have led to the exponential growth in mobile communications in that they allow networks to grow seamlessly as the number of users increases while at the same time maintaining the desired Quality of Service (QoS).

Development of Mobile Networks

This section will look at the development of mobile networks from three angles. The first is to look at the development from a technical point of view and how these dedicated voice networks that had a small data capability, which was added on as almost an after-thought, migrated into high speed data networks that provide voice services as an application among many data services. The second will examine five developments that had a significant impact in creating this global communications market. The third will examine the development of the global mobile communications market while the development of the South African Market will be examined in section 2.2.4.

Technical Development of Mobile Networks

This first section examines the technical developments which took place to develop the mobile telecommunications market from its humble beginnings from a voice network to a high-speed data network.
 1G: First Generation Mobile Networks
The first cellular telephone call was made between Martin Cooper, of Motorola in the United States, and Bell Laboratories in 1973 (International Telecommunications Union, 2006), and a new industry was born. The first commercial networks were radios for cars which weighed around 45Kg (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Clark, 2012). However, in 1979, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched the first mobile network in the metropolitan area of Tokyo and within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan (International Telecommunications Union, 2018).
In 1983 AT&T released the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS)2 system in Chicago, again a duplex analogue voice system (Tipper, no date).
 2G: Second Generation Mobile Networks
By the middle of the 1980’s there were at least 7 different cellular radio standards in existence each competing globally (Tipper, no date; Temple, 2018). In 1987 a pan-European mobile telecommunications standard that came to be known as the Global System for Mobile Communications, originally Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM), was proposed. This standard had three revolutionary ideas, namely: the adoption of one standard internationally; the use of digital technology using of silicone chips; and the greater spectrum efficiency and its re-usability (Temple, 2018). These three ideas combined resulted in networks that were standard across numerous countries, used the same handsets, networks that could be economically expanded to take millions of subscribers without a corresponding decrease in the Quality of Service. This brought into existence the cost effective communication networks that were affordable and available to the average man in the street (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Shepard, 2005; Clark, 2012; Ghosh, 2017; Temple, 2018).
The first GSM call was made in Finland on July 1, 1991 by the former Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri who called Kaarina Suonio (mayor of the city of Tampere) using a network built by Telenokia and Siemens and operated by Radiolinja, a subsidiary of Elisa, the Finnish Telecommunications company (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Temple, 2018).
The GSM system was built using a Time-division multiple access system (TDM)3 and had a Digital Access system (handsets and base stations) while the core or switching system was a circuit switched system4. This meant that the network could be used for low speed data transmission, with the first Short Message (SMS) a data service, being sent in 1992 (Temple, 2018). However, the growth in personal PC’s and the beginnings of the roll out of the World Wide Web brought about a requirement for data on the network and the GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution, or EGPRS) data systems were created (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Temple, 2018).
3G: Third Generation Mobile Networks
The need for a European wide high speed network based on fibre optical networks with a mobile data component was envisioned by European scientists and in 1987 the RACE (Research and Development in Advanced Communications Technologies in Europe) program was set up. This resulted in the development of the 3rd Generation mobile system called the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) (Ericsson Telecom and Telia, 1998; Temple, 2018; International Telecommunications Union, 2018). The vision for this UMTS network is captured in Figure: 2-2. It is interesting to note at this stage that the World Wide Web had not been invented but the developers of the system not only foresaw the need for a high rate data channel to connect to computers and data centres, but they also foresaw that by 2003, 50% of phone calls would be between people and not places (Temple, 2018).

CHAPTER ONE  INTRODUCTION
1.1 OVERVIEW
1.2 BACKGROUND
1.4 AIMS, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH
1.5 PERSONAL RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH
1.6 OVERALL RESEARCH DESIGN, STRATEGY OF INQUIRY AND METHODOLOGY
1.7 SCOPE, ASSUMPTIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH
1.8 POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THIS RESEARCH
1.9 OUTLINE OF THE RESEARCH
CHAPTER TWO  LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE REVIEW
2.2 THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR
2.3 ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT FRAMEWORKS USED IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS MODELLING
2.4 ICT AND THE INDIVIDUAL
2.5 SUMMARY OF LITERATURE REVIEW
CHAPTER THREE  OVERALL METHODOLOGY AND EXECUTION OF PHASE 1
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 DESCRIPTION OF STRATEGY OF INQUIRY
3.3 ANALYSIS OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
3.4 ASSESSING AND DEMONSTRATING THE QUALITY AND RIGOUR OF THE PHASE 1 RESEARCH DESIGN
CHAPTER FOUR  PHASE 1: ANALYSIS OF DATA OBTAINED IN THE INTERVIEW PROCESS AND DEVELOPMENT OF A PRELIMINARY FRAMEWORK
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 DETAILED DATA ANALYSIS
4.3 DEFINING AND NAMING THE THEMES
4.4 DEVELOPMENT OF PRELIMINARY FRAMEWORK
CHAPTER FIVE  OVERALL METHODOLOGY AND EXECUTION OF PHASE 2
5.1 DESCRIPTION OF STRATEGY OF INQUIRY OF PHASE 2
5.2 THE SURVEY INSTRUMENT
5.3 METHODOLOGY FOR PHASE 2
5.4 ASSESSING AND DEMONSTRATING THE QUALITY AND RIGOUR OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH DESIGN
5.5 SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER SIX  EVALUATION OF FRAMEWORK AND FACTORS
6.1 INTRODUCTION
6.2 DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF THE PARTICIPANTS
6.3 STATISTICAL EQUATIONAL MODELLING TO DETERMINE THE FINAL FRAMEWORK
6.4 CONSTRUCTING THE FRAMEWORK
6.5 ANALYSIS OF MODERATING FACTORS ON THE FRAMEWORK
6.6 MEDIATING FACTORS
6.7 USAGE
CHAPTER SEVEN  CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
7.1 INTRODUCTION
7.2 FINAL FRAMEWORK
7.3 USAGE OF MOBILE SERVICES, PARTICULARLY DATA SERVICES IN SOUTH AFRICA
7.4 MODERATING FACTORS
7.5 IMPLICATIONS OF THIS RESEARCH
7.6 LIMITATIONS
7.7 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THIS RESEARCH
7.8 FURTHER RESEARCH
7.9 FINAL REFLECTIONS
LIST OF REFERENCES
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
GET THE COMPLETE PROJECT