Experience: Implications of roaming in Europe

Anna Maria Mandalari, Andra Lutu, Ana Custura, Ali Safari Khatouni, Özgü Alay, Marcelo Bagnulo, Vaibhav Bajpai, Anna Brunstrom, Jörg Ott, Marco Mellia, Gorry Fairhurst

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

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

"Roam like Home" is the initiative of the European Commission (EC) to end the levy of extra charges when roaming within the European region. As a result, people are able to use data services more freely across Europe. However, the implications roaming solutions have on performance have not been carefully examined. 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 six countries across Europe. Using this platform, we measure different aspects of international roaming in 3G and 4G networks, including mobile network configuration, performance characteristics, and content discrimination. We find that operators adopt common approaches to implementing roaming, resulting in additional latency penalties of-60 ms or more, depending on geographical distance. Considering content accessibility, roaming poses additional constraints that leads to only minimal deviations when accessing content in the original country. However, geographical restrictions in the visited country make the picture more complicated and less intuitive.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMobiCom 2018 - Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages179-189
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9781450359030
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Oct 2018
Event24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, MobiCom 2018 - New Delhi, India
Duration: 29 Oct 20182 Nov 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, MOBICOM

Conference

Conference24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, MobiCom 2018
Country/TerritoryIndia
CityNew Delhi
Period29/10/182/11/18

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