Factors for wireless operators'''' collusion and competition

This article analyses on why China Mobile and China Unicom have chosen price war rather than tacit collusion these years. On the basis of the analysis on factors that influence tacit collusion, and combined with the facts of wireless communication market, the author suggests that the market asymmetries, cost asymmetries, and product differentiation are the basic factors, which trigger price competition between the Chinese wireless operators. By constructing a game model based on Chum rate, this article discusses how these factors cause a fight between the operators and how vigorous the price competition will be. At last, the author suggests that to keep vigor in this industry, continuous structural adjustment is essential. Besides, the number portability policies may cause tacit collusion.     

移动话音业务的价格竞争与策略建议

基础电信业务的日益同质化以及一定利润空间的存在，使资费调整成为运营商广为采用的一种手段，运营商总是会或主动或被动地卷入价格竞争之中，因而价格策略的运用是否得宜是每个参与竞争的运营商必须慎重考虑的问题。首先结合近期北京移动通信市场价格竞争的实际情况总结了现阶段我国移动语音业务价格竞争的特点，然后着重分析了企业内外部因素如何影响价格策略的制定，最后给出了一些切实可行的价格策略建议。     

The Digital Age of Mobile Cellular Network in Germany and China ：Policies,Technologies and Markets （Part Ⅰ）

The German Postal Reform I in 1989 introduced competition in the mobile cellular market. German cellular operators, DeTeMobil, Mannesmann, E-Plus and VIAG Interkom, built D1-, D2-, E1-and E2-Netze based on GSM standards made in Europe. China Unicom was created in 1994 and China Telecom was separated from MPT in 1995. China Telecom and China Unicom competed in a duopoly from the mid-1990s onwards and the cellular services provided by them also rely on GSM standards. China Telecom additionally deployed XLT technology (PHS) from the late 1990s onwards. While DeTeMobil and Mannesmann conquered approximately 80%-90% of the market throughout the 1990s and were the two dominant market players in Germany, China’s cellular market was mainly controlled by China Mobile. In Germany, prices related to cellular technology continued the downwards trend as a major result of the process of deregulation, liberalisation and competition. In China, price wars had led to significant price reductions in the cellular market. Although network operators in both countries strived to deliver differentiated cellular services, the two national markets in the 1990s were visibly shaped by product homogeneity.     

The Digital Age of Mobile Cellular Network in Germany and China：Policies,Technologies and Markets （Part Ⅱ）

The German Postal Reform I in 1989 introduced competition in the mobile cellular market. German cellular operators, DeTeMobil, Mannesmann, E-Plus and VIAG Interkom, built D1-, D2-, E1-and E2-Netze based on GSM standards made in Europe. China Unicom was created in 1994 and China Telecom was separated from MPT in 1995. China Telecom and China Unicom competed in a duopoly from the mid-1990s onwards and the cellular services provided by them also rely on GSM standards. China Telecom additionally deployed XLT technology (PHS) from the late 1990s onwards. While DeTeMobil and Mannesmann conquered approximately 80%-90% of the market throughout the 1990s and were the two dominant market players in Germany, China's cellular market was mainly controlled by China Mobile. In Germany, prices related to cellular technology continued the downwards trend as a major result of the process of deregulation, liberalisation and competition. In China, price wars had led to significant price reductions in the cellular market. Although network operators in both countries strived to deliver differentiated cellular services, the two national markets in the 1990s were visibly shaped by product homogeneity.     

GSM向WCDMA的演进策略

面对未来3G激烈的市场竞争,已有的GSM运营商如何以较少的投资,快速建成高质量、易扩展的WCDMA网将是一个关注的焦点.针对上面的问题,本文从核心网和无线网方面对GSM向WCDMA的演进做了几点建议,并给出了组网实例.     

Superiority: China Mobile in the competition

The market share between China Mobile and China Unicom has stabilized since 2002.It is found that China Mobile has the superiority in the competition, for example, the scissors movement between its revenue and cost indicates that it has a strong profit generating ability and there is enough room for it to reduce the price.The ratio between its price (marginal income) and marginal cost indicates that there is a very distant limit for it to reduce the price.Its demand is obviously flexible with the price, but it does not use the price weapon abundantly.The reason for the stabilization of the market is that China Mobile withdrew from the competition.     

Impacts of subsidy regulation on the mobile market in Korea : Major provider’s diversification of handset quality

In the mobile service market, operators competitively engage in price discrimination of a bundle of handset and service over customers who have their switching costs and are locked-in under a long-term contract in return for subsidizing the handset. This paper is motivated by a recent legislation enacted in Korea (Mobile Device Distribution Improvement Act) that bans price discrimination with handset subsidy. We study the impacts of subsidy regulation on equilibrium prices, profit, and average revenue per user (ARPU) in a game approach. We set up an integrated model of price and quality competition under a duopoly structure. By comparative static and dynamic analysis, we configure the equilibrium of price and quality competition when two MNOs are differentiated in terms of handset quality, marginal cost, and market share. Our results are as follows. When two operators are randomly differentiated in quality and market share, the regulation induces only the minor operator to lower its incumbent price with adjusting quality and cost (dis)advantages. Although the regulation can lead to a drop in ARPU as the regulator wishes, it is achieved at the cost of the minor operators loss of profit if the market structure is significantly asymmetric. If two operators can choose their quality of service in the long run and if marginal costs are dependent on the quality level, quality differentiation is more likely to happen with the regulation. As subsidies are banned, the major operator now targets customers who are less sensitive to quality by degrading its quality, thus charging a lower price. When the marginal cost is independent of quality level, both operators go for the top quality. Our findings propose that the market structure, financial status of operators, channel and cost of distributing handsets before the subsidy regulation is introduced be considered fully.     

我国光接入网发展影响因素分析及广电对策思考

本文阐述了光接入网、当前主流及下一代无源光网络技术。同时,基于国内外光接入网及FTTH发展情况,分析了影响我国光接入网发展的主要因素,提出了广电如何发展光接入网的几点对策建议。     

电信竞争三部曲

随着国内电信产业竞争日益加剧，电信运营企业的竞争方式正在潜移默化地发生着并且将要发生本质上的变化。电信市场的竞争方式从价格竞争开端，演变为质量竞争，最终将升级为全新的价值竞争阶段，从而形成了电信竞争的三部曲，本通过对电信市场竞争，用户满意和两种价值链的分析，阐述了电信竞争由价格竞争，质量竞争过渡到价值竞争的内在必然性，同时也对电信运营企业在新形势下成功地开展价值竞争提出了新的思路和建议。     

What drives impulse buying behaviors in a mobile auction? The perspective of the Stimulus-Organism-Response model

The prevalence of smart devices and wireless networks has steered online traders toward mobile devices, which has promoted the rapid development of auction platforms in the mobile commerce market. Past studies have shown that about 40% of all online expenditures are impulse purchases, and that this proportion may have increased as mobile commerce has become more prevalent. However, only a few researchers have used the context of mobile auctions to explore the impulsive buying behaviors of consumers. Therefore, our study selects the mobile auction platform to explore how situational factors affect impulsive buying behavior. We integrate the S-O-R model, impulsivity traits and other external variables to establish our research model and hypotheses. Our results show that the personality factors of an impulsive buying tendency, normative evaluation, and positive affect are key determinants of impulse buying, while ubiquity, ease of use, information exchange, discounted price, and scarcity are important precursors. In addition, gender and platform categorizations are also used to classify the sample to determine the differences between groups defined by these classifications. Our results are useful to both researchers and mobile auction operators.     

User QoE Influenced Spectrum Trade,Resource Allocation,and Network Selection

In future wireless networks, we envision more dynamic telecommunication paradigm, where the dynamics may be translated into dynamic service offerings and user profiles etc. We further expect that the wireless communication market will be influenced when the user-centric network selection vision is realized. By the user-centric network selection vision, we mean that users will be free to select any available network operator or service provider on short term contractual basis. This dictates that operators will compete for their share of a common user pool on much smaller time quanta when compared with the current long term user contacts with the operators. One intuitive strategy of operators will be to incentivize users by offering different QoS and service price offers. As the operators’ offers are influenced by their incurring costs. This necessitates to study the market behavior at different levels and investigate the operator and user behavior at these level. In this paper, we categorize and position the communication players and model the interaction between players at different levels. We introduce the learning aspects in the interaction and investigate the equilibrium strategies of involved stake-holders i.e., users and operators. We also model the utility functions of all the involved stake-holders. We also examine the risk-sensitive utility functions in order to cover both risk-seeking and risk-averse in the user QoEs. We implement the user-centric approach and compare it against our proposed network-centric resource utilization and call blocking.     

The emergence of national champions in global telecommunications

Former state-owned companies are preparing for domestic and international competition. A common argument is that in order to compete effectively in the global market public telecom operators (PTOs) must be strong at home and should link up with a few international strategic alliances to survive intense global competition. However, what does being strong at home mean? And how important are these global linkages to increasing a company's and its home nation's competitiveness? In the formation of these international alliances and in negotiating access to foreign markets, is support from the home government still important? In this article, we outline four different approaches to domestic restructuring to accommodate the new conditions in the global market. We argue that despite these differences, each country seeks to create a national champion in liberalised telecommunications markets.     

3G时代有线宽带和无线宽带的协同共进

2009年是中国的3G元年,中国电信、中国移动、中国联通三大运营商在无线宽带市场展开角逐,无线宽带上网体验有了质的飞跃.本文从客户需求、竞争形势、国外经验等多个角度,讨论了在目前市场环境下,固网优势运营商和移动优势运营商的有线宽带和无线宽带如何协同发展.     

An examination of factors contributing to South Korea’s global leadership in broadband adoption

The present study explores the economic and public policy factors that have contributed South Korea’s global leadership in broadband adoption. In particular, the authors explore the economic and public policy factors shaping telecommunication development in South Korea, employing a conceptual framework that explicates a triangular relationship between the government, service providers, and users.

Data used in the study are based on government statistics, company-published information, and secondary sources. Our analysis suggests that (1) the Korean government’s cyber vision plan has provided an open market that encourages competition, as the dramatic growth of the broadband market in Korea is the culmination of appropriate government policy, growing demand, and fierce market competition based on responsive supply, and (2) operators can benefit from consolidation as well as multiple revenue sources generated by new services in order to remain competitive.     

显示屏行业价格与市场竞争的微观经济学分析和探讨

文章从微观经济理论探讨了显示屏行业的价格与市场竞争问题,并提出了过去的显示屏行业属于完全竞争行业、市场决定显示屏的价格、产品的价格就是行业的平均成本等观点,同时提出显示屏市场将进入垄断竞争阶段,分析了完全竞争和垄断竞争市场下的显示屏行业的价格与市场竞争。     

IEEE 802.11s: WLAN mesh standardization and high performance extensions

In recent years, remarkable market competition and economy of scale has resulted in the price erosion of wireless devices for consumer electronics. Especially for wireless data networks, IEEE project 802 provides the standards for mass markets. With ever-growing usage, the demand for ubiquitous wireless networks increases. However, the achievable data rates decrease with the increasing distance of client devices from the infrastructure, and a sufficiently dense deployment of infrastructure devices is required to fulfill the customers' demand for broadband access. Today, these infrastructure devices rely on a wired backbone for background services; however, to reduce their costly deployment, they should interconnect wirelessly. In this case, devices mutually serve as wireless relays that forward and route packets over multiple wireless hops, and wireless mesh networks come into existence. In this article we provide an overview of wireless mesh networking and provide insights into the related standardization efforts in IEEE 802. For a more in-depth analysis, we focus on the draft WLAN mesh standard IEEE 802.11s and identify challenges for medium access control in multihop communication. Derived from our proposal to 802.1 Is, the current draft incorporates an optional medium access scheme that circumvents a performance gap. By means of simulations, we compare the performance of both solutions and provide an outlook for future 802 wireless systems that will be more reliable.     

把握机遇开拓电话新市场：我国市话无线接入的市场前瞻

随着我国电信市场竞争局面的出现，如何挖掘市场、改善服务、提高竞争能力是每个运营公司都面临的问题。本文从市场、技术、投资等几个方面综合分析了市话无线接入的发展可行性和必要性，指出我国无线市话技术在我国具有广阔的发展前景，值得各运营公司认真重视。     

移动通信业务套餐设计原则探讨

针对当前移动通信行业业务套餐设计中存在的问题(如缺乏充分市场细分、没有突出品牌概念、停滞于恶性竞争状态、影响企业整体形象)。以广东移动通信市场为例进行了分析，提出了遵循双赢、有效区隔、协调平衡和注重品牌等4个基本原则。     

AT＆T无线被收购掀起美国移动通信市场的并购热潮

2004年2月17日，美国第二大移动通信运营商Cingular无线以410亿美元的出价击败对手沃达丰，成功收购AT＆T无线公司。AT＆T无线被收购后，美国的移动市场竞争激烈的局面可略有缓解，运营商可以得到一定的喘息空间，来提高网络服务质量，调整服务价格以及增强公司的创新能力。但AT＆T无线的消失也使美国移动通信领域的竞争减弱，客户们可能会面对移动业务价格上涨的趋势。而AT＆T无线的收购更会在美国无线市场掀起一腔新的重组热潮。     

一种新的无线技术ZigBee

随着通信技术的不断发展,短距离无线通信技术已成为无线通信技术的新热点。未来的无线互连设备将具有低价格、近距离、低功率的特点,作为IEEE802.15.4标准的ZigBee技术正好具备上述优点,因而ZigBee将成为极具竞争力的新兴技术。文中首先介绍了ZigBee技术的发展状况、协议栈模型、相应的技术特点及其应用前景,然后把ZigBee技术与其他无线通信技术(如蓝牙技术、超宽带技术和NFC技术)做了性能对比,通过比较,分析和论证了ZigBee的技术优势。