In transitioning to 5G, the high infrastructure cost, the need for fast rollout of new services, and the frequent technology/system upgrades triggered wireless operators to consider adopting the cost-effective network infrastructure sharing (NIS), even among competitors, to gain technology and market access. NIS is a bargaining mechanism whose terms and conditions must be carefully determined based on mutual benefits in a market with uncertainties. In this work, we propose a strategic NIS framework for contractual backup reservation between a small/local network operator with limited resources and uncertain demands, and a more resourceful operator with excessive capacity. The backup reservation agreement requires the local operator (say, operator A) to reserve a certain amount of resources (e.g., spectrum) for future sharing from the resource-owning operator (say, operator B). In return, operator B guarantees availability of its reserved resources to meet the need of operator A. We characterize the bargaining between the operators in terms of the optimal reservation prices and quantities with and without consideration of their competitions in market share, respectively. The conditions under which competing operators have incentive to cooperate are explored. The impact of competition intensity and redundant capacity on performance under backup reservation are also investigated. Our study shows that NIS through backup reservation improves both resource utilization and profits of operators, with the potential to support higher target service levels for end users. We also find that, under certain conditions, operator B may still have the incentive to share its resources even at the risk of impinging on its own users.

中文翻译：

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战略性网络基础设施共享的经济学：备份保留方法

在过渡到5G时，高昂的基础架构成本，快速推出新服务的需求以及频繁的技术/系统升级，促使无线运营商甚至在竞争对手之间也考虑采用具有成本效益的网络基础设施共享（NIS）来获取技术。和市场准入。NIS是一种讨价还价的机制，其条款和条件必须根据不确定性市场中的互利关系仔细确定。在这项工作中，我们提出了一个战略性NIS框架，用于资源有限且需求不确定的小型/本地网络运营商与容量过大的资源丰富的运营商之间的合同备份保留。备份保留协议要求本地运营商（例如，运营商A）保留一定数量的资源（例如，频谱），以便将来与资源拥有运营商（例如运营商B）共享。作为回报，运营商B保证了其预留资源的可用性，以满足运营商A的需求。我们以最优的保留价格和数量来描述运营商之间的讨价还价，而分别考虑和不考虑他们在市场份额上的竞争。探索了竞争的运营商具有激励合作的条件。还研究了备份预留下竞争强度和冗余容量对性能的影响。我们的研究表明，通过备份预留的NIS可以提高资源利用率和运营商的利润，并有可能为最终用户提供更高的目标服务水平。我们还发现，在某些条件下，