%0 Journal Article
%T Game Theoretic Modeling of NGANs: Impact of Retail and Wholesale Services Price Variation
%A JoŁżo Paulo R. Pereira
%A Pedro Ferreira
%J ISRN Communications and Networking
%D 2012
%R 10.5402/2012/714506
%X The increasing demand for broadband access leads operators to upgrade the existing access infrastructures (or building new access network). Broadband access networks require higher investments (especially passive infrastructures such as trenches/ducts and base station towers/masts), and before making any decision it is important to analyze all solutions. The selection of the best solution requires understanding the technical possibilities and limitations of the different access technologies, as well as understanding the costs of building and operating the networks. This study analyzes the effect of asymmetric retail and wholesale prices on operatorsĄŻ NPV, profit, consumer surplus, welfare, retail market, wholesale market, and so on. For that, we propose a techno-economic model complemented by a theoretic-game model. This tool identifies all the essential costs of building (and operating) access networks and performs a detailed analysis and comparison of the different solutions in various scenarios. Communities, operators/service providers, and regulators can use this tool to compare different technological solutions, forecast deployment costs, compare different scenarios, and so on, and help them in making deployment (or regulatory) decisions. The game-theory analyses give a better understanding of the competition and its effect on the business case scenariosĄŻ economic results. 1. Introduction Service providers, network operators, and Internet access providers are faced with the challenge of providing higher-capacity access to the end user and offering wider services [1]. Consequently, new Internet infrastructure and technologies that are capable of providing high-speed and high-quality services are needed to accommodate multimedia applications with diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements. Until a few years ago, Internet access for residential users was almost exclusively provided via public switched telephone networks (PSTN) over the twisted copper pair [2]. The new quadruple play services (i.e., voice, video, data, and mobility), which require high-speed broadband access, created new challenges for the modern broadband wireless/wired access networks [3]. The new services led to both the development of several different last-mile solutions to make the access network capable of supporting the requirements and a stronger integration of optical and wireless access networks. The move toward next-generation networks (NGNs) has significant implications for the technical architecture and design of access network infrastructure, as well as the value
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.communications.networking/2012/714506/