On incentives in global wireless communities

Abstract

The wireless community networking paradigm shows great promise in achieving a global status. However, both user participation and support from traditional Internet Service Providers (ISPs) play key roles in creating worldwide coverage; for this end a viable incentive system is essential. In this paper we study the economic interactions between users, ISPs and community providers. Our main contribution is threefold. First, we propose a model of the global wireless community concept as a Stackelberg game of two levels and construct the respective payoff functions of each player. Second, we show how both users and ISPs may fail to join the community in equilibrium. Third, we explore the parameter space of the mechanism designer and show how the technology diffusion process and expected payoffs can be controlled by adjusting roaming prices and revenue shares.