A Study About The Impact Of Number Portability To Mobile Telecommunications Operators's Competition And Cooperation

The implementation of Number Portability is a general trend, Chinese government is gradually implementing the policy of Number Portability. The experience from developed countries shows that the policy will strengthen the competition between operators, Number Portability have an important impact on the competitive operators'production and operation, however , Chinese telecommunications industry is in the initial stage , which need to carry out strategic cooperation between operators, because the cooperation can avoid duplication,improve the quality and service level,and cultivate the emerging telecommunications market. Then what effect would happen to the operator of competition and cooperation if Number Portability is carried out, which will be a significant issue. This paper focuses on the impact of competition and cooperation ,which is made by Number Portability among telecommunications operators, and explore how the telecommunications operators to carry out effective competition and cooperation.In this paper, we make a study of competition and cooperation among telecommunications operators, and use the competitive kinetic model, game models, switching costs theory and mechanism design theory to make a study framework to ananlyse the competition and cooperation among telecommunications operators. The study focuses on the effects of Number Portability to the competition market,quality and price competitive strategy,the effect of Number Portability to the network sharing,the impact of the interests game in cooperation of public service platform. Then a cooperative mechanisms is designed to promote effective competition and cooperation among the operators.We make a discussion about the impact of Number Portability to the market, we establish a micro-conceptual model to describe the customers'transfering from a network to the other, and shows a customer transfering rules. Then estabilsh a dynamics model to depicts the changes of the production, prices, operators profit and social welfare, which are caused by two-way number portability and one-way number portability policy. The results show that: number portability can eliminate the switching costs of consumers, promote consumer flows between operators, promote competition among operators, and change the market structure, change the operator's revenue, change the operator's competitive behavior, increasee social welfare. Way to bring the policy number, if the strength of operators is considerable , the competition leads various operators to increase market share simultaneously, form a pattern of effective competition; and if strength is not considerable, a competition among operators will lead to monopoly, which is a non-effective competition. One-way bring numbers can effectively prevent a monopoly. A properly implemented number portability can promote the operators to increase investment, improve service levels, improve the quality, rather than engage in price collusion, through the invasion and occupation of the consumer surplus to obtain more profits.We make a further discuss about the effect of quality and price competition in Number Portability policies, use a new product diffusion model to establish a model to analysis the quality and price competition. The results show that: telecommunications operators must maintain the ratio between quality and consumer price as the same, otherwise they will be eliminated. Existence of switching costs make the actual price ,which is paid by consumers, is equal to the operator's supply price plus the switching costs, when the implementation of number portability policy carry out, the actual price paid by consumers is equal to the operator's supply price. This lead to the changing of the ratio between quality and consumer price, cause a new adjustments between the quality and price level. Carrying Number Portability policies will promote the quality of competition among operators, reducing barriers to competition.This paper then discusses the impact of the policy carrying to network share, and establish a network share game model. Then uses the model to discuss the specific effects on the network share,analyse the effect of the interests of game in for number portability policy. The results show that: number portability policies can promote the network share, the effect of sharing network comes from reducing duplication,reducing waste of resources,reducing the operator's costs, allowing operators to have a space for lower prices. operators can lower prices by indirectly improving the quality, and increase the ratio of quality to demand price, which can increase the operator's profit level, cooperation is conducive to social welfare. The coordination of upgrading the shared network is difficult, which make two operators are unlikely to cooperate together. As the number portability policy can not bring a fundamental coordination, which conflict of interest caused by sharing network. we design punitive mechanisms to promote co-operation in network share. Penalty cost (or tax) is in direct proportion with the number of users (demand),market potential and the shared resources, is inversely proportional to the operator's ability if learning from each other. Punishment mechanisms make the the profit no difference, Whether the operators cooperate or not.which can ensure that each operator to adopt a cooperative attitude to eliminate the waste of social resources.Finally, the paper analyzes the impact of number portability policy to public service platform. We establish competition game model of public service platform, which is based on a switching costs, then use the model to analysis the effect of number portability policy to public service platform. The results show that: the effect of number portability policy to public service platform is uncertainty, when the balance incremental output is greater than the incremental boundary co-operation, the number portability policy promote cooperation; if the balance incremental output is less than the incremental boundary co-operation,then the co-suppression. The incentive compensation (or taxes) for cooperation behavior can ensure that telecommunications operators to report the true average cost, make a cooperation and construction of public business platform.The new ideals are the following:first,we establish a micro-conceptual model to describe the customers'transfering from a network to the other. Second, we give an boundary of co-operation.