| Abstract: | In the search for new revenue streams, wireless network operators are considering the business model of multi-sided platforms. As a multi-sided platform, an operator brings content providers on board through offering them a "sponsored content" service, and enables transactions between his users and the content providers. When the content is sponsored, the content providers pay for the data transmitted instead of the users. We study the pricing problem faced by the operator who deals with multiple content providers. We consider a sequential setting for deciding the sponsored content in advance of a fixed time period (e.g. a month). The operator first sets prices for sponsoring. The content providers then react by deciding how much content to sponsor. Finally the end users react by accessing content depending on what has been sponsored. We derive mechanisms that should be followed by the service provider for pricing their sponsored content offerings. In this setting it is important to consider all content providers in a single optimization since they share a common pool of service provider bandwidth. Our solutions differ depending on whether the demand to each content provider is deterministic or stochastic and on whether the service provider is allowed to set individual prices to the different content providers. We carry out numerical studies with real-world data and discuss the revenue implication of net neutrality in the form of uniform prices. |
| Date: | 29 September 2016 |
| Time: | 11:00am - 12:00noon |
| Speaker: |
Dr Yue Jin Nokia Bell Labs Ireland |
| Venue: | Room 14-222, 14/F, Academic 3 |
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