The STEM newsletter is a quarterly bulletin designed to keep you informed of the latest developments in STEM: interesting applications, the latest features and a series of how-does-it-work articles, together with news of forthcoming events.
In legacy systems, interconnection is provided on a best-efforts basis, but NGN technology makes it possible to provide interconnection services that support several different levels, or classes, of quality of service (QoS). A STEM model examines the cost benefits for a European ISP of replacing best-effort with QoS-supporting interconnection.
The STEM User Group Meeting on 5–6 October 2010 at King's College in Cambridge, UK, will features a series of capex and opex modelling workshops where our consultants will ‘work out’ solutions to tricky implementation-cost problems with live input and questions from the audience.
We illustrate how the STEM resource concept is used in conjunction with task estimates from installation-rate and annual fault-rate transformations to forecast headcount and capture activity costs. A new incremental output basis may help this work seamlessly in a shorter time-period context.
For a large scale infrastructure project in the Asia-Pacific, STEM 7.2a introduces a separation between initial capex (and its associated depreciation), and replacement costs arising before the project is complete, making it easier to identify the total cumulative capex for the initial roll-out.
STEM 7.2 was released on 14 October 2009 and is available for licensed users to download from our website. New features making the software more intuitive to learn and easier to use day-to-day include new connection and text-box tools, a results export wizard for Excel, and a time-saving auto-column format option for aggregate results such as traffic volume, revenue, capex and opex.
The 14th Annual STEM User Group Meeting was held in September at King's College, Cambridge. 18 delegates enjoyed an interesting mix of consulting presentations, STEM applications, the launch of the new STEM version 7.2, and our vision for a hosted online system. The consulting track covered LTE evolution, mobile broadband, and duct sharing, while the application track covered HSPA upgrade modelling, activity-based costing, and bandwidth aggregation for fixed networks. All of the presentations are available for download now.
