Economic Tussles in the Public Mobile Access Market

Abstract

The convergence of different wireless and fixed access systems into a common seamless access platform has accelerated the conflict of economic interests between players in traditionally separate market sectors. Whereas technology systems have predictable and desirable behaviour — and therefore evolution — the players in the converging market sectors have not. This paper argues that, in its original vision, the systems specifying the business interactions between mobile users and access providers (the business interface) have not been designed to take into account the unpredictability of the outcome of economic tussles. The mobile industry encoded in its designs the result of past contentions, not allowing for their variation. Because the market currently does not capture the business opportunities created by the convergence of heterogeneous access networks, the designs of the business interface should now be reconsidered to accommodate such convergence and allow for evolution. We have therefore formulated a set of principles for the design of the business interface. The application of these principles highlighted specific limitations of the current interface. On the basis of this study, we conclude that the future business interface should allow providers to disseminate their offers to customers (possibly not end users) in an automated way; and customers to select offers in an automated and intelligent way, and then dynamically establish ad hoc business relationships with providers. In addition, end users should be able to hold, at the same time, more than one business relationship with different providers, without experiencing any switching barriers. Finally, providers should be able to dynamically reconfigure their metering capabilities on visited networks' systems without having adjacent providers to necessarily support their charging capabilities.