London Banter - View Single Post - Dual SIM phones was:Worker killed by Southern train was covering for brother

Someone Somewhere · July 22nd 19, 07:52 AM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london

On 21/07/2019 21:32, wrote:
On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 19:55:40 +0100
Someone Somewhere wrote:

Ok Mr Telecoms Expert, exactly how much disk space does all the relevant
information about a single cellular phone number take up then? Obviously you
have the figures to hand so please share them.

Nah - whilst I do know the exact figure (or more to the point I could
look it up), it's getting more and more amusing to see you getting
irate when you seem to truly believe that the only cost is the disk
space - something that if it makes up 0.01% of the cost would surprise me.

If the number belongs to a real network not a virtual one, what are the
other costs then? Unless its used up its entire allocation of numbers it
won't be losing any money so tell me what I've missed. You and Perry are very
good at being supercilious, a bit less hot on supplying actual information.

If I had exact answers I couldn't supply them as I'd clearly be privvy
to contracts between suppliers and networks. If I had other information
I'd also have to be careful about supplying it as it may have been
supplied to me in commercial confidence.

However, what I can say is that you're fundamentally wrong in how you
see costs.

You seem to think you buy an entire network and then add disk space to
hold more subscribers.

Network dimensioning is done on several variables, not just disk storage
(which as I said above is something I don't believe anyone cares about
unless it runs out at the wrong moment).

Networks also consist of lots of components which are bought from lots
of suppliers and each of which is subject to a probably unique agreement
and licensed separately.

So if a network operator goes to Ericsson/Nokia/Siemens/ZTE/Huawei etc
to buy an HLR/HSS (one of the key components in terms of holding
subscribers) then they will not sell you a platform that you can just
chuck more disks in and expand the capacity - it will often be licensed
on an annual basis on various parameters including subscribers -
instantly giving you a per subscriber price.

You may not think that is fair or reasonable, but that's how the market
works (often it's the operators who prefer opex rather than capex
pricing because it better reflects their revenue streams).

And in terms of subscribers it doesn't stop at the HLR/HSS, chuck in the
AuC/AAA, EIR, OCS, CRM, Voicemail, VoLTE AS, IMS core etc etc, each of
which has a vendor who gets their per subscriber piece....

And that's before you get into the scarcity of numbers and the problems
of managing them (telcos got profligate with them and complacently just
used ranges when they could and then allowed those ranges to get sparse
over time, rather than properly reclaiming and reusing them).