Access Pricing Of Interconnection In Network Industries

Access pricing of network interconnection in telecommunications industries and networks industrise is one of the most important issues facing our industrial economics. Since the 80s of the 20th century, in the telecommunications industries, developed countries have successively relaxed price regulation, introduced competition to break the monopoly, and promoted regulatory reform.Although every country has their unparalleled economic environment, such as its respective history, culture and legal system, all countries have the common objective in the telecommunications regulatory reform:promoting competition in the telecommunications industries, and breaking the monopoly. In fact, developing a reasonable access pricing has been the key to design incentive regulation for the telecommunications industries.However, because of the complexity of the telecommunications network infrastructure, the uncertainty of business process path and the diversity of product cost, it is hard to find a universal pricing scheme.In this paper, I research the influence of access prices in interconnection industries on the market structure. At the same time, under several different assumptions, one-way access pricing, two-way access pricing and corresponding product pricing are studied which are involved to both the incumbent enterprises and access enterprises. The last part of the dissertation is relevant measures.The paper consists of four aspects. First, taking into account the externalities of network industries, in the view of interconnection, I establish some models by introducing the access pricing to the market structure, to analyze the influence of access prices on social welfare and market structure. It is shown that access price's impact on social welfare and market monopoly power depends on the size of enterprise who changes access prices.Secondly, the influence of government regulation is analyzed. When there is incentive regulation, I study one-way access pricing and corresponding product pricing of incumbent enterprises and access enterprises in the two conditions of monopoly and competition. I find that it is necessary to consider the costs of enterprises, but also to consider the enterprises'monopoly power, when the government makes transfer payments to enterprises. And it is pointed that improving network externalities is effective method to lower price by market mechanism.Thirdly, based on China's telecommunications industry regulatory system, on the condition of one-way access, I analyze the influences of incentive mechanism and regulation captures on one-way access pricing and corresponding product pricing of incumbent enterprises and access enterprises. I find that when there may be regulation captures, the greater the probability of the regulatory agencies'telling the truth is, the higher the product prices of regulated enterprise will be. And the critical probability value is given to whether regulation captures will happen. It is also shown that pricing structure and access pricing structure are not affected directly by regulation captures, but affected indirectly by regulation captures through product prices and demand.Fourthly, based on the special structure of China's fixed-line telecommunications and mobile communications services, on the condition of two-way access, using regional duopoly two-step game model and duopoly game model of price fixing, I study the level of access prices'influence on the producer profits, social welfare and collusion of producers, and give the conditions of market failure.In this paper, the main features and innovative part include four points. In the first place, analyzing the telecommunications industries'market structure and effective competition, I introduce access pricing of interconnections to pricing model, and research access price's influence on profits, social welfare and market structure.In the second place, on the basis of previous research, because the access price is not an exogenous variable, but is decided by the access number, I establish a theoretical model from the perspective of government regulation. At the same time, analyzing the effect of marginal government transfer payments on product pricing of regulated enterprises in the monopoly fields, for the first time, I study from the two aspects of both cost-effectiveness and monopoly power. And then I analyze the impact of the advances in technology, network externalities on product pricing of regulated enterprises in the competitive fields. Thirdly, based on China's current fixed-line's "North Netcom South Telecom" business model, in the views of two fields of both fixed phones and mobile, using regional duopoly two-step game model and duopoly game model of price fixing, I study the level of access prices'influence on the producer profits and social welfare.At the last, combined with the existing system of China's telecommunications industry, I study the features and impacts of regulation captures, and design an incentive mechanism to solve the question of regulation captures, and analyze the question of both access pricing and product pricing, strive for the Chinese telecom industry interconnection access pricing regulation to make meaningful suggestions..