The Pricing Decision Theory And Method Of Telecommunication Service

The telecommunication industry plays an important role in the development of the economy of a nation. China's telecommunication industry has entered a stage of monoplistic competition, where hot issues concerning deregulating and introducing competition, encouraging effective competition and removing monoply, economic return and social welfare have increasingly complicated the decision making in telecommunication industry. Meanwhile, the out-of-date theories and their intrinsic limitations have undoubtedly exacerbated the uncertainty for decision making and increased the difficulty in management. Viewing at the micro-level, telecommunication service pricing is a typical systemmatic decision problem which involves a multitude of constraints and factors and is closely related with the industry's operational performance, consumers'welfare, and governmental regulation. Therefore, telecommunication service pricing issue has naturally become a hot spot of concern in social life and a focus in relevant theoretic studies.However, the prevailing theories and methods for telecommunication service pricing are essentially inapplicable in pricing practice in China. First, the problems involved in telecommunication service pricing and the various factors influencing service pricing have not been deeply analyzed; specifically, these are among the problems which are yet to be solved for an applicable theory and methodology for telecommunication service pricing: the adaptation problem of telecommunication service rates to the conditions of China's development; the intransparency of the cost for regulatory pricing; the collusion of the regulatory department and the pricing enterprise; the accomplishment of universal service; and the determination of the boundary of regulatory pricing, etc. Second, the theories for telecommunication service pricing have yet to be systematized. Thirdly, current research findings lack applicability.This dissertation aimed at solving the aforesaid problems, and attempted to bring some original perspectives in those aspects. On the basis of inquiries into the technological and economic features of the telecommunication industry, the concept of the telecommunication service, the characteristics of the telecommunication service, and the primary factors influencing the pricing of telecommunication services, this paper determined the agent of service pricing, and proposed a systemmatic research framework for telecommunication service pricing.After a review of the relevant theories in industrial organization, welfare economics, price management, this dissertation explored the formulation and the implementation of telecommunication service pricing strategies under monopolistic operation or certain telecommunication services with a monopolistic nature. The unified price problem in telecommunication service price discrimination, i.e., the first level price discrimination problem, was incorporated into this research, and the operation objective-based pricing techniques were developed. In the meantime, the research on pricing strategies was expanded and deepened in this dissertation by exploring the pricing strategies of the telecommunication service provider's second-level price discrimination, third-level price discrimination and mixed price discrimination on the basis of the dual-portion pricing system. In exploring the formulation and the implementation of the telecommunication service pricing strategies under competitive conditions, the empirical evidences showed that the critical problem of telecommunication service competition is the market share, and the implementation of all the strategies for competition first reflected in the considerations of the market share. In this part, the pricing strategies for the telecommunication service were formulated and some important findings were presented.As to the research on the strategies for regulatory pricing, the model was constructed with a full consideration of realistic problems, such as service quality, technology, universal service, etc. Through analysis, this dissertation developed regulatory pricing techniques, and provided an effective solutions to problems such as the regulatory boundary, etc.Lastly, it is worthwhile to point out that the findings of this research can be applied in other network industries.