Accounting for roaming users on mobile data access: Issues and root causes

Guan Hua Tu, Chunyi Peng, Chi-Yu Li, Xingyu Ma, Hongyi Wang, Tao Wang, Songwu Lu

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

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we study how mobility affects mobile data accounting, which records the usage volume for each roaming user. We find out that, current 2G/3G/4G systems have well-tested mobility support solutions and generally work well. However, under certain biased, less common yet possible scenarios, accounting gap between the operator's log and the user's observation indeed exists. The gap can be as large as 69.6% in our road tests. We further discover that the root causes are diversified. In addition to the no-signal case reported in the prior work [23], they also include handoffs, as well as insufficient coverage of hybrid 2G/3G/4G systems. Inter-system handoffs (that migrate user devices between radio access technologies of 2G, 3G, and 4G) may incur non-negligible accounting discrepancy.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMobiSys 2013 - Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
Pages305-318
Number of pages14
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
Event11th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, MobiSys 2013 - Taipei, Taiwan
Duration: 25 Jun 201328 Jun 2013

Publication series

NameMobiSys 2013 - Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services

Conference

Conference11th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, MobiSys 2013
Country/TerritoryTaiwan
CityTaipei
Period25/06/1328/06/13

Keywords

  • Cellular Networks
  • Data Accounting
  • Mobile Data Services

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