Abstract
With the rapid development of broadband wireless
access technologies, multiple wireless service provider (WSPs)
operating on various wireless access technologies may coexist
in one service area to compete for users, leading to a highly
competitive environment for the WSPs. In such a competitive
heterogeneous wireless access market, different wireless access
technologies used by different WSPs have different bandwidth
capacities with various costs. In this paper, we set up a noncooperative
game model to study how the cost asymmetry and
capacity asymmetry among WSPs affect the competition in this
market. We first model such a competitive heterogeneous wireless
access market as an oligopolistic price competition, in which
multiple WSPs compete for a group of price- and delay-sensitive
users through their prices, under cost and capacity asymmetries,
to maximize their own profits. Then, we develop an analytical
framework to investigate whether or not a Nash equilibrium can
be achieved among the WSPs in the presence of the cost and
capacity asymmetries, how the asymmetries of cost and capacity
affect their equilibrium prices and what impact a new WSP with
a cost and capacity advantage entering the market has on the
equilibrium achieved among existing WSPs.