Financial Analysis of Network Upgrade

Ever-increasing demand for high-speed internet connections motivates cellular operators to upgrade their incumbent networks to the next-generation networks. In this correspondence paper, we study how an operator dynamically manages the budget flow during network upgrade to maximize the final-stage profit. Considering the time discount effect, we propose dynamic deployment policies for the next-generation network that trade off revenues and costs at each stage, and decide the optimal network expansion for the operator. We show that the time discount factor can have opposite effects to boost or hinder the network deployment, which depends on the depreciation of both the revenues and the costs. Furthermore, we extend our model and analysis to a market with more than one operator, where operators under radio access networks (RANs) sharing agreement jointly deploy the next-generation networks, and share the deployment and operational costs. A well-coordinated network upgrade under RAN sharing will speed up the deployment process and lead to a wider next-generation network coverage.