Always Best Connected - Access Network Discovery and Selection

With the increased number of access networks available at different locations complementing each other as throughput, the mobile devices have to be able to automatically connect to the best access network in terms of momentary QoS available and costs.

OpenEPC provides the means for access network discovery and selection either through the assistance of the operator or directly from the mobile device.

In this scenario a user is connected to the OpenEPC platform through one access network. When the momentary preferences of the operator are modified from the network side (through ANDSF GUI) or the location of the mobile device has changed, a new set of inter-system mobility policies and discovery information is transmitted to the UE which in its turn evaluates the information and if other accesses have higher priority, it executes automatically the access network selection to that access.

The selection scenario is tightly coupled with the seamless vertical handover. As to perceive the effects of the access network selection mechanism the OpenEPC real-time applications can be activated in parallel to the here described scenario.