Use of Sharing principle
In modern life, to satisfy
commercial viability requirements, sharing resources has grown to become one of
the major problem solving principles used in varieties of business areas.
Telecommunication
Network sharing
Nowadays most of the communication
you carry out in daily life is of “far” nature—communication using or with
resources located far away from you geographically. That is Tele–Communication.
You don’t talk to people near you as much as you use the Internet, Mobile, TV
or the land-line put together.
Many decades ago, by
telecommunication we understood talking long distance over wired phone or
sending telegraph message. Now we speak and carry out virtually all the tasks
in daily life using phone and Internet services. Telecommunication networks are
all interconnected and shared for giving you the magical facility to talk from
your mobile handset to your dear one sitting on the opposite side of the globe.
To reach her your speech may have to span a large number of different networks
each belonging to a different telecom service provider. They are called Telco
in short.
Same thing happens when you surf
the Net. The text, pictures and video that you see on your computer screen come
from all kinds of Web-Servers that use services from all kinds of Internet
Service Providers (or ISPs in short) spread across the globe.
If these networks remained
separated, the services would have remained localized and highly limited in
service scope and variety. Connecting globally only meets your true
communication requirements.
The telecommunication charge that
you pay monthly or periodically is collected by your local telecom service
provider. It carries your call, if it is speech, up to its own network boundary
and then hands it over to the next network towards the destination of the
speech content. This point onwards works the principle of sharing.
Telcos have network sharing
agreements between themselves by which they not only share their network
resources but also share the revenues generated.
Sharing mechanism makes
telecommunication possible in practice. Imagine the power of sharing!
What really does happen here in
abstract?
In abstract means: identifying
the crux of the process—the crucial aspects of the process without mention of
the special nature of the agents or entities involved in the process. This is
the mechanism of abstraction—one of the most powerful mechanisms for
learning and problem solving.
Abstraction of the mechanism of sharing between two telecom networks for carrying speech or data information:
For data communication:
Scene: you are surfing the Net
a.
Your network A hands over the data requested
information to the next network B towards the destination of data requested
(for Internet, the data packets can take practically any route, but still each
packet contains the IP address of data request source and data request
destination).
b.
Now it is the responsibility of the network B
to route the data received towards the destination. Possibly it hands over to a
third network C. It goes on in this way.
c.
Finally when a network (say network N)
identifies the data requested destination address to be in its own pool of
addresses, it routes the data requested information to the identified Web
Server.
d.
The Web server responds to the request and
generates the requested data packets and packages these with destination
address as the address of the sender or requester.
e.
The answer data now flows back to the network
A in a similar (but not necessarily following the same route) mechanism; and
your computer screen finally displays the information you had asked for.
Clearly specified sharing
agreements and data carrying protocols understood by all players in this
process make this apparently highly complex process a routine, rugged and
commercially viable mechanism.
If we
abstract still further:
i.
An active agent in the process has clearly
specified tasks.
ii.
An active agent may have to deal with home
generated task item or foreign task item.
iii.
The organization owning an active agent will
earn revenue share according to what type of task item its active agent deals
with—home generated or foreign.
Abstracting
once more we may have something like:
Core sharing
mechanism A: benefit sharing:
A service owner earns revenue share
according to what kind of work load it caters to: for its own work load it
earns more, for others’ workload it earns a smaller previously agreed to share.
In this case, benefits are shared according to contribution towards a service
request fulfillment.
In this mechanism,
i.
Work load owner share is significantly higher
than other service providers.
ii.
Each service provider has to look after
managing all its assets and functional requirements.
iii.
Some special types of services required for
carrying out the business as a whole are served by a few special service
providers. These are again paid by all other service providers according to the
common workload they serve.
iv.
In fine, in this kind of sharing mechanism,
largely each works for its own gains except for the responsibilities required
for the services to sustain as a whole.
For speech communication the
process is not much different.
All kinds of business resource
sharing follow similar type A core sharing mechanism.
Telecommunication
Mobile infrastructure sharing
When we started rolling out or
managing mobile services in a virgin field, number of customers was not large,
networks were small with small number of BTSs (Base Transceiver Stations) and
accordingly requirement of buildings to house the BTSs was also minimal.
To give you an idea, in early
stages of mobile service maturity (assuming that when one grows old, one gains
maturity), number of BTSs in Kolkata was in two digits (less than 100). Now,
nearly at saturation point the number is reaching 3000, an increase of 3000%
(30 times) over a period of nearly two decades.
For installing a new BTS where can
we get a suitable house now! It has become next to impossible for a mobile
service provider (all mobile service providers would desire to roll out as many
BTSs as its competitors, and there are at least four such major mobile service
providers at Kolkata at any point of time now) to find a suitable building to
house its new BTS all on its own.
Out of this severe constraint (constraints
or barriers are useful: in generating new ideas and solutions: some methods
deliberately create constraints), were born the common Infrastructure
Service Providers.
These organizations acquire,
prepare, sell rights of use of part infra resources and also manage a large number
of BTS buildings across the city. They specialize in infrastructure. The mobile
service providers hire these infra resources from the Infra service providers
and share a roof for antennae, rooms for equipment housing and also share the
common power supply of the building. All these resources are managed by the
infrastructure service provider in lieu of hiring charges. It has to bear all
the headache of managing the infra resources. The mobile service providers need
to worry about only their own specialized functions.
This is not only sharing, but also
principle of specialization at work.
Principle of specialization:
In a large scoped operational or
project environment, not every person will do all kinds of jobs. Tasks will
have to be analyzed according to requirements, task carrying out agents
specialized in doing a particular type of task need to be identified and
allotted their specific tasks and all of the active agents need to be
coordinated and managed together (like a master conductor of an orchestra
performance) to move towards a high level of overall task fulfillment
satisfaction.
So as a mobile service provider,
you share a building with three or four other competitors for locating your BTS
and transfer the worry of managing the infra to the infra service provider. If
the infra service provider were not there, one of the competitors would have
acquired a particularly good building first (BTS locations are specific in an
area, technically recommended by a complex software), and all subsequent service
providers would have had to forego the specific location, thus leaving a hole
in their networks.
As no service provider can hope to
be the first one in acquiring all good buildings, sharing a good building with
other service providers becomes the only feasible practical choice.
This is kind of: enemies at war
sharing a bed!
Telecommunication
Mobile Exchange
A mobile
telephone exchange is a highly complex combination of modules of software and
hardware. Each software module is specialized for a specific set of tasks and
carries out these tasks for ALL the task loads (for all mobile calls) absorbed
by the exchange. In other words, All Calls share a specific hardware or
software module for part fulfillment of their requirements.
Don’t you
think this is sharing?
Levels of Sharing
A.
Global network sharing happens at global level. All
players in the global domain get benefited and total gain in this case is
maximal.
B.
Infra sharing for BTS housing happens at local
level. All players in the local city domain get benefited and gains limited to
the local domain.
C.
Software module service sharing by all calls in a
mobile exchange happens at the micro level and enables a specific mobile
telecom exchange to perform satisfactorily.
A
solution to a problem can be addressed at various levels. The following figure represents the concept.
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| Levels of Sharing |
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