考量網路服務品質下電信商與內容提供者之合作模式研究

Abstract

隨著全球行動網路數據流量不斷成長，網路壅塞發生的發生頻率增加，造成服務品質下降，大眾不斷要求電信商擴建網路設備以因應需求，卻也同時讓提供使用者內容服務之內容提供者受到矚目，本研究在考慮服務品質下，討論設備維護成本的成本分配合約對於電信商與內容提供者雙方效益的影響。 本研究以斯塔克柏格賽局模型為基礎，首先建立電信商與內容提供者合作前之數學模型，作為雙方合作後結果之比較基準，利用逆向歸納法求得電信商最適設備規模與內容提供者最適內容訂閱價之解析解。接著討論電信商與內容提供者在分別擁有不同決策權力的多種合作情境下將如何制定決策，而其決策將如何影響其餘相關參數。 當內容提供者協助負擔網路設備維護成本時，將提供電信商誘因擴建網路設備規模。雙方合作後能讓更多使用者使用內容，服務品質亦可提升。而在內容提供者合作後會改變內容訂閱價的情境下，內容提供者不會將其所需負擔的成本轉嫁至使用者上，反而會調降內容訂閱價，此時能有更多使用者以較低的價格體驗到更好的服務品質。透過成本分配合約，電信商可在不影響內容提供者效益的前提下追求自身利益，同時為大眾帶來益處。

With the popularity of smart devices and the convenience of the internet, global mobile data keeps growing. As network congestion occurs more frequently, users experience internet service with lower quality and start complaining of internet providers. Internet service provider will have higher reputation if service quality is improved, but the maintenance cost of network infrastructure will increase as well. However, content provider will gain more benefits without paying additional cost after infrastructure expansion. Therefore, internet service provider has no incentive to expand the scale of capacity. In this research, we consider a cost-sharing contract between internet service provider and content provider, and analyze the problem by backward induction. In basic model, content provider decides the subscription price of content after internet service provider decides the scale of capacity provided to users for connecting to the internet. This research considers different cooperation scenario, in which content provider and internet service provider are able to make different decisions, that is, the scale of capacity or the proportion of maintenance cost shared by content provider. Through numerical analysis, we show that internet service provider will have incentive to expand the scale of infrastructure capacity without sacrificing content provider’s utility through cost-sharing contract, and more users can experience internet service with better quality at the same time.