Efficient coverage through inter-operator infrastructure sharing in mobile networks

Herein, we study efficient coverage provisioning in mobile networks under an inter-operator infrastructure sharing regime which we call Networks without Borders. For the purpose of the study, we derive general formulations of the full and partial coverage provisioning problem. Based on these formulations, we assess the efficiency of coverage provisioning over shared multi-operator infrastructure for two datasets: randomly generated deployment and a real network deployment from Poland. In the paper we report over 90% cost efficiency between shared and non-shared networks for dense deployments with both homogeneous and heterogeneous power allocations, and a divergence in the efficiency between real and random deployments for low deployment density case.We consider this work as a first tractable attempt to describe large-scale inter-operator infrastructure sharing which may be the key to enabling appropriate coverage in currently under-served areas, with effects on the digital divide.