TY - GEN
T1 - Contracts as Investment Barriers in Unlicensed Spectrum
AU - Zhu, Yining
AU - Berry, Randall A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by NSF grants TWC-1314620, AST-1343381, AST-1547328 and CNS-1701921.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.
PY - 2018/10/8
Y1 - 2018/10/8
N2 - By not requiring expensive licenses, unlicensed spectrum lowers the barriers for firms to offer wireless services. However, incumbent firms may still try to erect other entry barriers. For example, recent work has highlighted how customer contracts may be used as one such barrier by penalizing customers for switching to a new entrant. However, this work did not account for another potential benefit of unlicensed spectrum, having access to this open resource may incentivize entrants to invest in new and potentially better technology. This paper studies the interaction of contracts and the incentives of firms to invest in developing new technology. We use a game theoretic model to study this and characterize the effect of contracts on economic welfare. The role of subsidies or taxes by a social planner is also considered.
AB - By not requiring expensive licenses, unlicensed spectrum lowers the barriers for firms to offer wireless services. However, incumbent firms may still try to erect other entry barriers. For example, recent work has highlighted how customer contracts may be used as one such barrier by penalizing customers for switching to a new entrant. However, this work did not account for another potential benefit of unlicensed spectrum, having access to this open resource may incentivize entrants to invest in new and potentially better technology. This paper studies the interaction of contracts and the incentives of firms to invest in developing new technology. We use a game theoretic model to study this and characterize the effect of contracts on economic welfare. The role of subsidies or taxes by a social planner is also considered.
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U2 - 10.1109/INFOCOM.2018.8485810
DO - 10.1109/INFOCOM.2018.8485810
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85056151895
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE INFOCOM
SP - 1925
EP - 1933
BT - INFOCOM 2018 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2018 IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, INFOCOM 2018
Y2 - 15 April 2018 through 19 April 2018
ER -