Telecommunication Network Economics

1. Introduction: telecommunications evolution and set of actors: 1.1 The evolution of telecommunications and the associated economic models; 1.2 Need for modeling and analysis; 1.3 Description of actors; 1.4 Goal of the book; 1.5 Outline of the book; 2. Mathematical foundations: optimization, game theory, auctions; 2.1 Basic economic theory; 2.2 Mathematical tools; 2.3 Game theory; 2.4 Mechanism design and auctions; 2.5 Conclusion; 3. Economics of access service providers: 3.1 History and evolution of access pricing models; 3.2 Expectations of users and ISPs, impact on other actors; 3.3 Flat-rate pricing; 3.4 Volume-based pricing; 3.5 Congestion and value-based pricing; 3.6 Economics of bundling; 4. Economics at the content and application level: 4.1 A bit of history; 4.2 Advertising; 4.3 Paid applications versus free applications with advertisement; 4.4 Economics of clouds/grids; 4.5 Economics of peer-to-peer systems; 4.6 Economics of content delivery networks; 5. Interactions among network service providers: 5.1 Introduction; 5.2 Auctions for wireless spectrum; 5.3 Competition between access providers; 5.4 Client but competitor: the (unsustainable?) situation of MVNOs; 5.5 Economics of interconnection; 5.6 Economics of community networks; 6. Interactions among content and application service providers: 6.1 Introduction; 6.2 Competition at the content level; 6.3 A specific case: competition between search engines; 6.4 Economic stakes of network security; 7. Relations between content/application providers and access service providers: 7.1 Evolution of economic relations between content/application and network providers; 7.2 Value chain, vertical integration; 7.3 Network neutrality issue; 7.4 Search neutrality.