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A lot of recent research has been focused on developing network mobility management to support the movement of a mobile network consisting of several mobile nodes. The IETF NEMO working group proposed the NEMO basic support protocol that defines a methodology for supporting such network mobility using bi‐directional tunneling between the home agent and the mobile router. However, this protocol has been found to suffer from the so‐called ‘dog‐leg problem’, and despite alternative research efforts to solve this problem, there are still limitations in the efficiency of real time data transmission and intra‐domain communication. Accordingly, the current paper proposes a new route optimization methodology that uses unidirectional tunneling and a tree‐based intra‐domain routing mechanism. As such, the proposed scheme can provide faster signaling and data transmission and be easily extended to support micro‐mobility without any additional extensions. The performance of the proposed scheme is also evaluated to demonstrate its efficiency.

Recent smart mobile devices are capable of letting users produce various digital content, and share/upload the content to many social network services (SNS) directly via wireless network connections. The phenomenon has increased the number of people using mobile SNS applications. Although the applications have become more popular, mobile users have been restricted in the virtual communities of online SNS and are not aware of the social opportunities available to them in real-time surrounding. While they spend most of their time accessing online SNS, they have missed many opportunities to interact with others for new friendships, business opportunities or information sharing. Consequently, a new breed of mobile social network (MSN) system has arisen to assist mobile users to interact with proximal people and perform various social activities. Such a proximal-based MSN environment is termed a Mobile Social Network in Proximity (MSNP).

Developing an MSNP system needs to address a number of issues and challenges, such as heterogeneity, content/service discovery, privacy and trust, resource management, and so on. This paper identifies and describes these challenges, and reviews a number of related solutions from existing literature. In the follow up, this paper addresses a number of open challenges in the MSNP domain.

Although various works have been proposed to enable and overcome challenges in MSNP, there are still many unsolved open challenges in terms of identification, content management, social-aware discovery, trust in public environment, adaptation, quality of service and the development of MSNP. We have addressed these challenges in this paper as future research directions in the MSNP domain.

This paper provides an original literature review in MSNP and identifies a number of open challenges as research direction in the MSNP domain.

Collecting and analysing data on mobile service usage is increasingly complex as usage diverges between different types of devices and networks. The purpose of this paper is to suggest and apply a holistic framework that helps in designing mobile service usage research as well as in communicating, positioning, and comparing research results.

The framework was constructed based on longitudinal and cross‐sectional mobile service usage measurements carried out in Finland annually in 2005‐2008, covering 80‐90 percent of all mobile users and service usage. Broad use of multiple data collection methods and measurement points enabled data and method triangulation, as well as analysis and comparison of their scopes and limitations.

The paper suggests a holistic framework for analysing mobile services, relying on service science approach. For measurements and analysis, mobile services are decomposed into four technical components: devices, applications, networks, and content. The paper further presents classifications for each component and discusses their relationships with possible measurement points. The framework is applied to mobile browsing usage studies.

Future work includes adding an actors dimension to the framework in order to analyse their roles in the value networks providing mobile services. Extending the framework to Internet services more generally is also possible.

The paper presents an original, broadly applicable framework for designing mobile service usage research, and communicating, positioning, and comparing research results. The framework helps academics and practitioners to design and to recognise the limitations of mobile service usage studies, and to avoid misinterpretations based on insufficient data.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how technological and strategic developments enable new billing processes for mobile content services.

Interviews with practitioners are used as input for designing different archetypical role division models for billing and process models. The potential of these process models to reshape the mobile industry is evaluated on three criteria: convenience for the end‐user; potential resource barriers; and the fit with strategic interests of the actors involved.

Both technological advances and the introduction of new roles and strategies in the mobile domain enable the emergence of alternative billing methods. While network operator‐centric models remain relevant in the short term, in the longer term they will co‐exist with other models in which the customer transaction is owned by the content aggregator, the content provider, the ISP or the payment provider.

The research demonstrates the relevance of analysis at the process level in assessing the feasibility of new role division models at the value creation level.

The emergence of alternative billing providers is expected to change the power balance in the value network and assist in opening up the “walled garden”.

The analysis extends beyond existing discussions on billing in the mobile industry, which typically focus on the value network level, as the process level and the related resources are included. Moreover, the empirical data from the interviews with practitioners at various organizations provide new insights into the feasibility of these models in practice.

The study is designed to explore the drivers of customer satisfaction of leading mobile network providers in a high‐growth market like Kolkata a metropolitan city in India.

A framework was developed based on earlier study of eminent researchers pertinent to customer satisfaction of mobile network providers in Germany, France, Korea, Canada, the USA and Greece. The construct flexibility was considered as a new determinant for customer satisfaction. For this data were collected from 277 respondents and pertinent analysis were made using multivariate techniques.

The study finds that generic requirements, price, and flexibility are major drivers of customer satisfaction of mobile network providers and brand wise relevance of these key determinants.

The fixed line telephone directory was the sampling frame, and all the respondents considered in the survey had a fixed line but there are situations where customer subscribes only to mobile phones. It is also necessary to study other metropolitan cities of India to validate the results we have obtained for Kolkata. Originality/value – The current research has taken into account new driver of customer satisfaction in a high‐growth market and this is the first study on drivers of customer satisfaction of leading mobile network providers in the city of Kolkata, India.

This paper investigates the main trends and uncertainties that will define fourth generation mobile systems and services (4G) in Europe. It outlines two divergent visions on 4G: the so‐called “immediate” 4G vision, consisting of wireless local area networks (WLANs) combined with other wireless access technologies, competing with 3G in the short term, and the so‐called “linear” 4G vision, in which the 3G standard is not replaced until the end of its life cycle by an ultra‐high speed broadband wireless network. Which of these visions will materialise, and what this means for the competitiveness of the main 4G stakeholders in Europe, will be to a large extent determined by which business models are feasible for 4G.

A longitudinal case study of the diffusion and change of mobile telephony in Sweden highlights the effects on service distribution against the background of rapid technological development and deregulations in the telecommunications industry. The descriptive and explorative study advances a contextual‐historical and interorganizational network perspective on service channel change and retail evolution. Explores the service distribution consequences of the emerging, increased technological integration within telecommunications, between fixed and mobile telephony, and between telecommunications and information and computer technology. Argues that these technological changes and the move towards convergence of telecommunications and information technology functions are connected to important structural changes in the distribution channels for these services. Builds on a case study of the Swedish distribution network for mobile telephony and identifies a number of significant structural channel changes. Discusses the distribution network consequences of technological convergence, in terms of new emerging patterns of channel relations and in terms of new roles and role sets. Elaborates on some general business implications of the convergence of former independent telephone, cable and information technology services.

This paper aims to propose a system for automatically forming ad hoc networks using mobile phones and battery-powered wireless routers for emergency situations. The system also provides functions to send emergency messages and identify the location of victims based on the network topology information.

Optimized link state routing protocol is used to instantly form an ad hoc emergency network based on WiFi signals from mobile phones of the victims, backup battery-powered wireless routers preinstalled in buildings and mobile devices deployed by search and rescue teams. The proposed system is also designed to recover from partial crash of network and nodes lost.

Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system in terms of battery life, transmission distance and noises.

A novel message routing schedule is proposed for conserving battery life. A novel function to estimate the location of a mobile device which sent an emergency message is proposed in this paper.

The rapid proliferation of mobile context aware applications has resulted in an increased research interest towards developing specialized context data management strategies for mobile entities. The purpose of this paper is to aim to develop a new way to model mobile entities and manage their contexts accordingly.

This paper proposes the concept of “Mobile Space” to model mobile entities and presents strategies to manage the various contexts associated therein. To handle availability related issues, two system services are designed: the “Availability Updating Service” which is an identifier based mechanism and is designed to keep track of mobile objects and handle availability related issues, and the “Application Callback Service” which is a publish/subscribe based mechanism to handle application disruptions and interruptions arising due to mobility.

The paper presents a detailed study of the proposed framework and a description of the underlying services and the components therein to validate the framework. Experimental results carried out in WiFi and 3G environments indicate that the proposed techniques can support mobile applications and minimize application disruptions with minimal overhead.

The proposed context management framework is generic in nature and is not designed for a specific class of applications. Any mobile context aware application can leverage on the framework and utilize the provided functionalities to manage application disruptions. Also, the decoupling of mobile application layer and the underlying context data management layer renders context data management layer transparent to the application design.