Abstract:
Technical standards evolve and enhance compatibility in their respective areas of ICT, creating opportunity in the market for consumption, competition and overall growth. Technological competitions are becoming ever more complex, due to increased numbers of stakeholders, complexity of technology, and large market sizes. Theoretical concepts of network economics from industrial organization can be used to explain dynamics of competitions. Using this as a context the thesis focuses on analyzing dynamics of technology introduction and adoption using network economic theory in the telecommunication domain. This is done specifically by applying a multi-methodological approach to analyze two cases: firstly consumer and Mobile Service Providers (MSPs) making decisions in a Mobile Service Market (MSM), and secondly Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) service deployments. The multimethodological approach was used for developing theoretical frameworks and system development of computational Agent Based Models (ABMs). For the first case the MSM-ABM simulated market dynamics that include both consumers’ decisions and MSPs’ strategic actions revising their commercial offers. The results generated over a period of simulated-time reveal emergent patterns of MSP’s competitive strategies to revise their offers, and consumer market-behavior for preferring value based options while being influenced by their friends. The second case dealt with FTTH service deployments, especially the Ultra-fast Broadband (UFB) project in New Zealand (NZ). The FTTH network is regarded as a two-sided platform that accommodates both end-users and Service Providers (SPs), creating the conditions for the two sides to exploit mutual network effects. Grounded theory was used to produce research frameworks for consumer adoption of UFB access (CAUA), and consumer adoption of UFB content (CAUC) to portray pertinent consumer drivers, barriers and deciding factors for the UFB initiative. The findings show consumer awareness and pricing are main factors that need to be addressed for a successful UFB rollout. Two ABMs were developed first to portray UFB-specific fiber-line subsidization effects on access uptake and the second ABM takes a generic FTTH approach with enhanced consumer decision making processes. Results show that the greater the number of users (end-users or providers) on one side, the more the number of users (provider or end-users) grows on the opposite side. Overall the complexity of the scenarios analyzed deserved an ABM to add value to the topical issues of this research.