Measuring Roaming in Europe: Infrastructure and Implications on Users QoEShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ISSN 1536-1233, E-ISSN 1558-0660, Vol. 21, no 10, p. 3687-3699Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
"Roam like Home" is the initiative of the European Commission to end the levy of extra charges when roaming within the European region. As a result, people can use data services more freely across Europe. However, the implications of roaming solutions on network performance have not been carefully examined yet. This paper provides an in-depth characterization of the implications of international data roaming within Europe. We build a unique roaming measurement platform using 16 different mobile networks deployed in 6 countries across Europe. Using this platform, we measure different aspects of international roaming in 4G networks in Europe, including mobile network configuration, performance characteristics, and quality of experience. We find that operators adopt a common approach to implement roaming called Home-routed roaming. This results in additional latency penalties of 60 ms or more, depending on geographical distance. This leads to worse browsing performance, with an increase in the metrics related to Quality of Experience (QoE) of users (Page Load time and Speed Index) in the order of 15-20%. We further analyze the impact of latency on QoE metrics in isolation and find that the penalty imposed by Home Routing leads to degradation on QoE metrics up to 150% in case of intercontinental roaming. We make our dataset public to allow reproducing the results.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2021. Vol. 21, no 10, p. 3687-3699
Keywords [en]
Europe, Home automation, IP networks, Mobile computing, Mobile nodes, Quality of experience, Servers, Mobile telecommunication systems, Quality of service, Wireless networks, Data services, European Commission, European regions, International roaming, Network configuration, Performance characteristics, Quality of experience (QoE), Roaming solutions, 4G mobile communication systems
National Category
Computer Sciences Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Probability Theory and Statistics Energy Engineering
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-83803DOI: 10.1109/TMC.2021.3058787ISI: 000848239200017Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85100948387OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-83803DiVA, id: diva2:1547204
Funder
European Commission, 6443992021-04-262021-04-262025-02-05Bibliographically approved