• 沒有找到結果。

Several limitations exist in the present study. First, we only study a wireless service market in which both wireless service providers offer homogeneous access services other than service coverage and available bandwidth because of their underlying network media. In fact, these wireless service providers can bundle their access services with differentiated value-added services to turn their infrastructure services into profitable businesses (Geng & Whinston, 2001). However, discussion of value-added services may dilute our efforts to analyze bandwidth sharing and channel collaboration; in addition, our model would be intractable if consumers were heterogeneous to value-added services. In other words, the bundle of access services and value-added services should be considered to be an isolated research question.

Second, we are only interested in the general case where there is demand for both Wi-Fi and WiMAX services; that is, some boundary cases are not explored in this study for the sake of convenience. For example, we did not consider that the Wi-Fi or WiMAX service provider can choose a cutthroat price to repel its competitor from the wireless market. Practically, the findings derived from the boundary cases seem mathematically sensible but contribute less to the wireless industry. In addition, a variety of business models can be further discussed but these are not treated in this research. For example, firms selling fixed lines are absent from our model, and we regard the price of fixed lines as exogenous. Cases can arise in which two or more firms sell fixed lines in a network market where there is less variance in the price of fixed lines because of homogeneous competition.

Third, we differentiate between Wi-Fi and WiMAX from the consumer’s perspective about the disutility of uncertainty bandwidth and service coverage because both technologies show significant differences in the maximal transmis-sion distance and available bandwidth. However, service providers may have an incentive to offer additional services such as online disk and email space to attract consumers. Thus, we may relax the assumption that each consumer has an identical willingness-to-pay for wireless access services and further examine the influence of service differentiation. But relaxing this assumption would create more mathe-matical work because the maximal price the WiMAX service provider can charge would no longer be fixed. Finally, some may raise the point that the WiMAX card is not a standard device in all laptops, however, this issue is not the focus of the study, and the impact of the lack of hardware support to WiMAX services may decrease with time. Subsequently, we summarize the implications for academic researchers and wireless service providers as follows.

Implications for academic researchers

Our primary contribution to academic researchers is that we demonstrate that competing wireless access retailers providing differentiated services (WiMAX and Wi-Fi) in the wireless market can reach a supplier–retailer relationship through hardware integration. If channel collaboration is prohibited by law or these wireless firms cannot reach an agreement to implement information sharing, such hardware integration, instead of channel collaboration, can enhance their profits. Thus, aca-demic researchers can consider whether the concept of hardware integration can be applied into other services because it can slacken the effect of Bertrand com-petition. In addition, our model can also be extended to other scenarios, such as a company selling fixed lines and offering Wi-Fi services at the same time. It is clear that the positions of these wireless firms will significantly affect the results of bandwidth sharing and channel collaboration.

Implications for wireless service providers

The goal of this study was not to compare profits between the four scenarios, since each scenario represents a different degree of integration. In the case of channel collaboration, the total generated profits are the highest because both wireless service providers reach full integration just as in an alliance, sharing the same information and negotiating deals without conflicts of interest. If the two wireless service providers cannot attain channel collaboration, bandwidth sharing is the best alternative because it allows them to decide whether to integrate the infrastructures supporting wireless traffic. Therefore, the comparison in profits among these scenarios is omitted because total profit increases with the degree of integration.

For Wi-Fi service providers, our findings remind them of the pitfalls of investment in service coverage. Before a WiMAX service provider enters the wireless market, a Wi-Fi service provider must invest in expanding service coverage and improving QoS in order to increase profit. However, once a WiMAX service matures, expanding service coverage will lead to a price war because WiMAX takes advantage of service coverage and available bandwidth. Consequently, even if the Wi-Fi service provider can increase the number of hotspots, this strategy may cause a negative effect on its profit because the features of WiMAX outperform those of Wi-Fi from the consumer’s point of view. If a Wi-Fi service provider intends to invest in service coverage, it has to confirm the following two critical points. First, the provider should be able to overcome the question of uncertain bandwidth resulting from the nature of Wi-Fi. Second, the cost of WiMAX capacity must be sufficiently high that the WiMAX service provider would have trouble in a price war.

WiMAX service providers should enhance consumers’ impressions of avail-able bandwidth because there is room for improvement in Wi-Fi service coverage.

However, it is difficult to solve the question of bandwidth uncertainty in Wi-Fi networks because of the limitation of CSMA/CA. In addition, our results indicate that bandwidth sharing is a promising strategy for WiMAX service providers be-cause it not only slackens price competition but also raises the WiMAX service provider’s bargaining power with the firm selling fixed lines. A large wireless

market is beneficial to the performance of bandwidth sharing because a WiMAX service provider’s profit increases with the number of Wi-Fi consumers. Although the strategy of bandwidth sharing seems to have potential for a WiMAX service provider, this strategy still has the problem of applicability under certain condi-tions. For example, a WiMAX service provider has to carefully measure the impact of Wi-Fi coverage on capacity requirement because it has to guarantee available bandwidth for WiMAX consumers.

CONCLUSION

In this study, we considered a wireless service zone in which there are two wireless service providers operating different technologies: Wi-Fi and WiMAX. The aim of the study was to examine the impact of the integration of Wi-Fi and WiMAX on wireless operators’ service strategies. Several emerging studies have focused on the pricing issue of bandwidth sharing between Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks;

however, most have either concentrated on the design of collaborated protocols or have chosen not to consider consumers’ preferences regarding uncertainty in terms of available bandwidth and service coverage. In contrast to prior studies, the present research applies a wholesale price contract to solve the issue of bandwidth sharing between Wi-Fi and WiMAX service providers; thus, our analytical results based on the aspects of enterprise operations and consumer preferences can serve as an important reference for current wireless service providers.

This study has conveyed important insights for wireless service providers, consumers, and academic researchers. First, our analysis reminds Wi-Fi service providers of the pitfalls of overinvestment in service coverage. Aggressively ex-panding Wi-Fi service coverage may reduce a service provider’s profit because WiMAX takes advantage of service coverage and available bandwidth. If a Wi-Fi service provider intends to invest in service coverage, it has to evaluate whether it can overcome the question of uncertain bandwidth resulting from the nature of Wi-Fi and confirm whether the cost of WiMAX capacity creates substantial bar-riers to bandwidth investment for a WiMAX service provider. Second, bandwidth sharing is an important means to enhance the profit of a WiMAX service provider when its capacity expense is not too high. The strategy not only slackens price competition but also raises the WiMAX service provider’s bargaining power

vis-`a-vis fixed line suppliers. In addition, the investment in Wi-Fi service coverage is also beneficial to the WiMAX service provider. However, bandwidth sharing does not benefit wireless subscribers because it leads to higher prices for both access services. Finally, academic researchers can consider how to apply the concept of hardware integration to other services since we have shown that it can slacken the effect of Bertrand competition and can create a profit margin as respectable as that of channel collaboration.

In future research, we can study service differentiation in the wireless indus-try. These wireless service providers can offer different service rates or additional service value to consumers. In addition, we plan to further examine how the bargaining power held by the wireless operator affects bandwidth sharing and service strategies, since the WiMAX service provider in the current study holds the bargaining power such that the Wi-Fi service provider cannot gain substantial

benefit from bandwidth sharing. Moreover, it is an interesting research issue that a Wi-Fi service provider may only partially utilize bandwidth sharing, such that only a subset of hotspots is connected to WiMAX (with a certain price of wireless backhaul), while the other hotspots still connect to T1 lines.

Finally, two popular strategies have recently been adopted by wireless ISPs to extend their service regions. One strategy is that the ISPs increase the number of hotspots by themselves, whereas the other approach is to delegate this task to partners or peers. The latter case can be demonstrated by FON (http://fon.com), one of the largest Wi-Fi communities in the world, which offers two ways of encouraging individuals to install hotspots and share bandwidth. First, users who install their own hotspots and share bandwidth are allowed free access to the community’s FON spots worldwide. Second, FON users who are interested in making money may change their profile to “bill” and enter their PayPal account information so that the users not sharing bandwidth can choose to pay to use their hotspots. Therefore, we can explore the difference between these two strategies in future research.

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