Game theoretic analysis of users and providers behavior in network under scarce resources

The demand on mobile data usage is exponentially increasing since the introduction of iPhones in 2007. The network became congested as millions of users tried to browse website and social networks, send e-mail, stream multimedia, and transfer file simultaneously. An immediate solution for the providers will be to change their pricing strategy with the goal of slowing down heavy users and decreasing the bandwidth demand. From the users´ standpoint, network providers must constantly upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate new applications and devises. However, upgrading the infrastructure will be costly for the provider. A provider will prefer a minimum investment to upgrade the network while attracting the maximum number of customers. On the other hand, without regular upgrade of the network from the provider, there may be more congestion, more delays, and generally a low QoS at the user´s dissatisfaction. Moreover, users that experience bad connection will be tempted to switch providers. We analyze the dynamic communication market and the users and providers´ interactions in the framework of repeated game theory. We consider noise in user monitoring. We also compare two scenarios: individual and independent actions of users as opposed to the collective actions of users. For a collective action, a database aggregating users´ QoS through a binary vote (good or bad QoS) needs to be implemented. The users keep their provider if and only if their majority reports a good QoS. This research shows that if the users collaborate, their bargaining power is increased.