Service cost model and cost comparative studies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a service cost model which can be used to evaluate the impact of different management functionalities or network platforms to the service cost.Design/methodology/approach – Following the validation of the importance that OpEx has on the overall TCO, a classification of the costs is proposed, based on their relation to the network. Two main types of costs have been identified: network based costs and service based costs. Both cost types have been modeled as a set of interconnected processes based on the network and service life cycle respectively. Network and service cost models have been integrated into a single framework. These models have been implemented as Markov chains, which include the dynamic behavior of services. Two different methods for the implementation (analytical versus non‐analytical) have been compared from the implementation and computation time point of view. The proposed service model has been used in two case studies: cost comparison o...