Two-Way Interconnection with Partial Consumer Participation

This paper incorporates partial consumer participation in a model of competition between telecommunications networks with two-way interconnection. It is shown, in contrast to the results of similar models with full participation, that the firms' equilibrium profits depend on the level of a reciprocal access charge under two-part retail pricing. Under some simplifying assumptions, it is shown that firms prefer the access charge be set equal to the marginal cost of termination, which coincides with the social optimum. Without these additional assumptions the model is analytically complex and simulation results are presented that suggest firms prefer the access charge to be less than marginal cost, while the socially optimal access charge may be above or below cost depending on the differentiation of the firms.