A Large-scale Examination of "Socioeconomic" Fairness in Mobile Networks

Abstract

Internet access is a special resource of which needs has become universal across the public whereas the service is operated in the private sector. Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) put efforts for management, planning, and optimization; however, they do not link such activities to socioeconomic fairness. In this paper, we make a first step towards understanding the relation between socioeconomic status of customers and network performance, and investigate potential discrimination in network deployment and management. The scope of our study spans various aspects, including urban geography, network resource deployment, data consumption, and device distribution. A novel methodology that enables a geo-socioeconomic perspective to mobile network is developed for the study. The results are based on an actual infrastructure in multiple cities, covering millions of users densely covering the socioeconomic scale. We report a thorough examination of the fairness status, its relationship with various structural factors, and potential class specific solutions.