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Bridging the broadband digital divide between urban and rural areas in Europe is one of the main targets stated in the Digital Agenda for Europe. Though many solutions are proposed in literature, satellite communication has been identified as the only possible solution for remote rural areas, due to its global coverage. However, deploying an end-to-end satellite solution might be in some cases not cost-effective. In this paper, we propose a converged solution that combines satellite communication as a backhaul network with 4G as a fronthaul network to bring enhanced broadband connectivity to European rural areas. Therefore, a techno-economic model is proposed to analyze the viability of this integration. The model is based on a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model for 5 years, taking into account both the capital and the operational expenditures, designed for converged networks. This model aims to calculate the TCO as well as the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for the studied scenarios. We evaluate the suggested model by simulating a hypothetical use case for two scenarios. The first scenario is based on a radio access network connecting to the 4G core network via a satellite link. Results for this scenario show high operational costs. In order to reduce these costs, we propose a second scenario, consisting of caching the popular content on the edge to reduce the traffic carried over the satellite link. This scenario demonstrates a significant operational cost decrease (more than 57%), which also means a significant ARPU decrease.

Summary The demand for mobile broadband services is increasing exponentially alongside with user expectations regarding the reachability of these services and their prices. This paper presents an integrated satellite and fifth generation (5G) network for providing inflight connectivity and evaluates the economic viability of offering broadband connectivity to passengers on commercial airplanes by the development of a techno‐economic framework, which considers both capital and operational expenditures to compute the total cost of ownership (TCO) and an average cost per user and per Megabyte. Results show high operational costs mainly due to satellite bandwidth usage. Therefore, caching popular content on the network onboard is beneficial to reduce the traffic carried over the satellite link, thus lowering the operational costs as well. Furthermore, the framework is used to compare the identified business models for Inflight Entertainment and Connectivity offerings and their pricing strategies, alongside a benchmark against the current inflight connectivity pricing. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is elaborated in order to mitigate the uncertainty of inputs (e.g., rate of caching) used to feed the TCO model. Following concrete recommendations are the main result of this research: (1) Providing inflight broadband services with a 2–5 Mbps throughput per user is feasible if satellite communications is integrated into the 5G network. (2) Caching popular data reduces the operational costs and hence the average cost per user (from 25% to 32% depending on the caching rate adopted). (3) This framework allows to provide recommendations on the best suited business models and related pricing schemes.

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In this paper, we present a techno-economic analysis of providing a Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) use case, namely Cooperative Lane Merging (CLM), in a specific cross-border environment. Multiple network deployment scenarios are proposed to provide Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) connectivity with respect to PC5 Mode 4 -enabled RSUs. Total cost of Ownership (TCO) model together with four revenue models are developed to assess the viability of providing CCAM services in the studied settings. Results show that the higher the number of simultaneous connected cars, the higher the TCO of the required deployment needs to be to meet the defined KPIs and especially for the green field deployment where no existing fibre cable or electricity facilities. Another important insight from this analysis is that only with a high fleet penetration rate of connected vehicles we can have a viable business case.