Abstract
Pricing of data communication services has been studied, but primarily in a monopolistic setting. We study the price competition in packet-switching networks with a quality-of-service (QoS) guarantee in terms of an expected per-packet delay. We propose a general framework in which service providers offering multi-class priority-based services compete to maximize their profits, while satisfying the expected delay guarantee in each class. We first examine the price competition with fixed delay guarantees and then extend it to the situation where providers compete in quality of service as well as price. In each case, we compare the duopoly pricing scheme with the case when two service providers merge to become a monopoly provider.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 871-886 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | European Journal of Operational Research |
Volume | 187 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 16 2008 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Congestion-based pricing
- Data network pricing
- Network externality
- Price competition
- Priority pricing
- Quality of service
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Computer Science
- Modeling and Simulation
- Management Science and Operations Research
- Information Systems and Management