Alternative Networking Architectures Pricing, Policy and Competition

Abstract

Access policy has evolved over the past ten years in an environment pressured by competitive carriers and now with innovative technologies. A third dimension driven by new and innovative services will also effect the change in access. This paper reviews the issues of access and uses specific case studies to demonstrate the effects that access can have on the development of new and innovative telecommunications infrastructures. The primary focus is on the developments in Personal Communications Services, PCS, a new wireless service offering in the 1.8 to 2.0 GHz bands. The paper develops a set of detailed Microeconomic models for the new infrastructure and shows that access can have a dominant role to play on its rapid acceptance. The paper demonstrates that the infrastructure has limited scale and scope in its economies and that access fees and policy present potential bottlenecks to competing service providers. The paper concludes with a set of policy options that are a natural result of the detailed economic analysis of the new service.