Economics of Multi-Operator Network Slicing

Network slicing allows Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to partition their physical infrastructure into multiple virtual logical networks, enabling the simultaneous servicing of applications with diverse Quality of Service characteristics. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate economic models and policies for the provisioning, across multiple MNOs, of network slice services to Application Providers. We introduce a Network-Slice-as-a-Service model that maps the service offered by a network slice to requirements on virtualized resources. The placement of virtualized resources over the physical infrastructure of MNOs is determined by an embedding problem, formulated as a Mixed Integer Program. We investigate the embedding under: (i) centralized approaches, where a central Broker determines the embedding for all network slice requests, and (ii) peer-to-peer approaches, where each MNO determines the embedding for the sub-set of network slice requests coming from its own customers. We introduce policies for cooperative modes, with the objective of total profit maximization, and for “coopetitive” (cooperative competition) modes, where MNOs aim to maximize their individual profits. The numerical results reveal that MNOs can maximize their aggregate and individual profits under any approach or mode, if they comply with the proposed policies.