On the Economic Effects of User-Oriented Delayed Wi-Fi Offloading

Both users and mobile network providers increasingly suffer from explosive growth of mobile traffic. We study so-called delayed Wi-Fi offloading that has been recently proposed as a low-cost solution of alleviating mobile data explosion. Delayed Wi-Fi offloading is a technology that offloads traffic from cellular to Wi-Fi by persuading users into delaying their delay-tolerant traffic and thus enlarging users’ chance to meet Wi-Fi. In this paper, we study the economic effects of such user-oriented delayed Wi-Fi offloading in two market models: 1) monopoly and 2) duopoly with one multiservice provider. First, in the monopoly market with a single provider, we model a two-stage game, where the provider selects an Wi-Fi usage price for which users are the price-takers. Second, in the duopoly market with one multiservice provider, we consider a situation that both providers, say A and B, offer cellular service and only A launches a delayed Wi-Fi offloading service as a separate service from the original cellular service, thus allowing the users in B to subscribe to the offloading service from A, but with some incurring dual subscription cost. In those two markets, we study how the Wi-Fi usage price at an equilibrium changes depending on other system parameters such as cellular cost, Wi-Fi density, and the number of subscribers by analytically computing the Nash equilibria and conducting extensive numerical computations under various parameter changes. Our results give us useful insights into how economically viable user-oriented delayed Wi-Fi offloading is.