Bandcoin: Using Smart Contracts to Automate Mobile Network Bandwidth Roaming Agreements

TL;DR

This paper introduces a blockchain-based smart contract system for automating spectrum sharing and roaming agreements in mobile networks, enhancing efficiency and transaction performance.

Contribution

It presents a novel smart contract framework for spectrum sharing, with implementation details on Hyperledger Sawtooth and performance improvements over traditional methods.

Findings

Transaction performance improved by up to four orders of magnitude.

Supports advanced features like bulk purchases and auction mechanisms.

Enables fully automated and fine-grained roaming agreements.

Abstract

We propose a new way to share licensed spectrum bandwidth capacity in mobile networks between operators, service providers and consumers using blockchain-based smart contracts. We discuss the foundational building blocks in the contract as well as various extensions to support more advanced features such as bulk purchases, future reservations, and various auction mechanisms. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the system can be implemented with an open-source, permissioned Enterprise blockchain, Hyperledger Sawtooth. We show that our smart contract implementation can improve blockchain transaction performance, by approximately four orders of magnitude compared to serial transactions and one order of magnitude compared to parallell transactions, using PKI-driven bulk purchases of mobile access grants, paving the way for fully automated, efficient, and fine-grained roaming agreements.