The telecommunications industry has evolved from voice-centric to provisioning of broadband data services. As witnessed in countries around the world, the industry has an oligopoly market structure with a few operators providing services. The services offered by the operators differ in both price and quality of service. On the other hand, consumers differ in their preferences over price and quality with some displaying sensitivity towards price and others towards quality. In this paper, we provide the standard microeconomic framework of supply and demand for telecom services and derive equilibria under varying supply and demand conditions. In particular, we analyse the strategies of new entrants vis-à-vis incumbents in offering service plans over varying price and quality dimensions. We also analyse the equilibria for varying elasticities of demand of consumers. We then validate the analytical results by simulation using an agent-based model with operator and consumer agents. Our results show that new entrants ought to target relatively elastic consumers as their market entry strategy, by offering a combination of low price, high-quality service plans to gain market share. On the other hand, incumbent operators ought to continue to target relatively inelastic consumers who have loyalty towards them due to larger network effects and associated higher switching costs. Our simulation results also confirm the analytical results. Telecom regulators can use the study results in assessing and regulating (i) market power dynamics of incumbents and new entrants, (ii) tariff plans offered by operators for possible predatory pricing and (iii) quality of service to meet threshold minimum quality of standard levels.

电信行业已经从以语音为中心发展到提供宽带数据服务。正如世界各国所见证的那样，该行业具有寡头垄断的市场结构，只有少数运营商提供服务。运营商提供的服务在价格和服务质量上都不同。另一方面，消费者对价格和质量的偏好有所不同，有些消费者对价格敏感，而另一些消费者对质量敏感。在本文中，我们提供了电信服务供求的标准微观经济框架，并在变化的供求条件下得出了均衡。特别是，我们分析了新进入者相对于现有者在不同价格和质量维度上提供服务计划的策略。我们还分析了消费者需求弹性变化的均衡。然后，我们使用带有操作员和消费者代理的基于代理的模型通过仿真来验证分析结果。我们的结果表明，新进入者应通过提供低价格，高质量的服务计划相结合，以将相对有弹性的消费者作为他们的市场进入策略，以获取市场份额。另一方面，由于更大的网络效应和相关的更高的交换成本，现有运营商应该继续针对那些对他们忠诚的相对缺乏弹性的消费者。我们的仿真结果也证实了分析结果。电信监管机构可以将研究结果用于评估和监管（i）现有者和新进入者的市场力量动态，