Telecom service provider portal: Revenue sharing and outsourcing

Early mobile phones only provided voice transmission, for a fee. They have now evolved into voice and online data portals for providing additional services through 3rd party vendors. These service providers (vendors) are given access to a customer base “owned” by the mobile phone companies, for a fee. Typically customers make two payments: to the mobile phone company for phone services and to the 3rd party vendors for specific services bought from them. Variations to the above business model may involve outsourcing the online portal and/or acquiring customers from other independent portals. For these scenarios, we study how the fees for phone service and customer access are established and how they may relate to the prices of vendor services, and which services should be located on the portal – all in a game-theoretic context. Our results prove that it is possible to reorganize revenue flows through an invoicing process that may benefit the mobile network operator more than the other parties. In addition, we establish optimality in terms of the number of vendors on the portal, and determine a rank-ordering of vendors for their inclusion into the portal.

► Discuss portals as customers’ contact point to range of services and resources with fees for access and services. ► Study network operator owned portals, outsourcing, and acquisition of customers from independent portals. ► Present game-theoretic model to investigate revenue flow, strategic decisions, and interactions. ► Show that invoicing process exists which benefits network operator more than portal owner and vendors. ► Establish optimal number and rank-ordering of vendors for inclusion into the portal.