Content Sponsoring with Inter-ISP Transit Cost

Abstract

As sponsored data gains popularity in industry, it is essential to understand its impact on the Internet service market. We investigate the interplay among Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Content Provider (CP) and End User (EU), where each player is selfish and wants to maximize its own profit. In particular, we consider multi-ISP scenarios, in which the network connectivity between the CP and the EU is jointly provided by multiple ISPs. We model the non-cooperative interaction between the players as a four-stage Stackelberg game, and derive the optimal behaviors of each player in equilibrium. Taking into account the transit price at intermediate ISP, we provide in-depth understanding on the sponsoring strategies of CP, and verify our results through numerical simulations.