Operator Collusion and Market Regulation Policies for Wireless Spectrum Management

Abstract

The liberalization of wireless communication services markets and the subsequent competition among network operators, is expected to foster optimal utilization of the scarce wireless spectrum and ensure the provision of cost-efficient services to users. However, such markets may function inefficiently due to collusion of operators which yields a de-facto monopoly. Although it is illegal and detrimental to the users, creation of such cartels arises often in the form of implicit price fixing. In this paper, we consider a general such market where a set of operators sell communication services to a large population of users. We use an evolutionary game model to capture the user dynamics in sele..