Network Sharing and Standard Essential Patents in EU Competition Law Abstract This diploma thesis deals with two issues which are closely linked to telecommunications and its specific features - network sharing and standard essential patents. Actually, these issues are very topical and come out at the forefront of EU competition authorities. The goal of this diploma thesis is to familiar the reader with particular issues and then analyse individual decisions of Commission and CJEU regarding aforementioned topics from the perspective of consumer welfare as one of the main objectives of EU competition law. Therefore, the first part of the thesis provides definition of consumer welfare standard so that the analysis of particular decisions could be performed. The second part of this thesis deals with network sharing. Given the complicacy of this topic, there are defined the individual models and presented some actual cases of network sharing in EU at the beginning of this part. Subsequently, the thesis deals with the interrelationship between telecom mergers and network sharing. After these introductory remarks, the individual decisions of Commission are analyzed. This part is finally concluded with a partial conclusion which summarizing the main outputs arising from performed analysis. The third part of the...

Notre travail se situe dans le contexte de partage de réseau mobile actif, ou un nombre d'opérateurs partagent leur accès radio, afin de former un système multi-technologie multi-opérateur. Le but de notre étude est de montrer les avantages de la coopération entre les opérateurs, principalement en ce qui concerne les revenus. De plus, nous cherchons des stratégies pour surpasser les conséquences négatives du partage des ressources, surtout celles touchant la performance des réseaux des opérateurs coopérants. Nous avons montré que les bénéfices de la coopération dépendent fortement du choix de partenaires, la tarification de service ( cout de transfert) entre les partenaires, et combien un opérateur partage de ses ressources. Notre travail consiste, en premier temps, à proposer un algorithme de sélection d'accès applicable dans un réseau multi-opérateurs. Cet algorithme devrait garantir la satisfaction en QoS de l'utilisateur et celle en profit de son opérateur d'accès à l'Internet. Ainsi, un algorithme adoptant une décision hybride, NP-BPA (Nearest Performance and Best Profit Algorithm), est proposé. En deuxième temps, nous étudions la tarification de service entre les opérateurs partenaires, précisément le coût de transfert d'un utilisateur. Ce dernier paye juste le prix du service que son opérateur d'accès à l'Internet détermine, il est inconscient du transfert. Les modèles de tarification proposés relient le coût de transfert d'un opérateur au prix adopté pour le service des clients. Le premier modèle, ACAG (As Client As Guest), suggère que le coût de transfert d'un opérateur soit égal à son prix de service. Le deuxième modèle, MIWC (Maximum Income When Cooperating), suggère que les coûts de transfert des opérateurs coopérants soient identiques, et égaux au prix de service le plus élevé des partenaires. Et, le troisième modèle, MCWC (Minimum Cost When Cooperating), suggère que les coûts de transfert des opérateurs coopérants soient identiques et égaux au plus petit prix de service des partenaires. La décision du meilleur modèle à adopter lors de la coopération, intervient une interaction entre les différents partenaires. Nous avons modélisé cette interaction à l'aide de la théorie de jeux. Nous avons exploité un jeu Stackelberg à deux niveaux, TPA (Transaction Pricing and Access Selection), où les opérateurs de service agissent comme Leaders et les opérateurs d'accès à l'Internet des utilisateurs à transférer agissent comme Followers. Finalement, nous avons considéré le mode d'accès hybride pour la coopération. Ce mode d'accès est proposé comme solution surtout pour les opérateurs partageant la plus grande capacité. La performance du réseau de ces opérateurs est relativement affaiblie suite à la coopération. Nous avons vérifié que le pourcentage de blocage diminue quand l'opérateur, ayant une capacité élevée, réduit le pourcentage de ressources partagées. Pour un même pourcentage de partage, le profit d'un opérateur diffère avec le modèle de tarification adopté. Ainsi, une bonne décision doit être prise, concernant le pourcentage de partage et le modèle de tarification, tout en tenant compte de l'effet de cette décision sur les autres partenaires du système. C'est pourquoi que nous avons proposé un nouvel jeu séquentiel à deux niveaux, afin de modéliser l'interaction entre les opérateurs, pour le partage de ressources et la tarification du coût de transfert. / We consider a roaming-based infrastructure sharing system, where multiple operators share their radio access in a multi-operator environment. Indeed, when the home operator of a user is unable to satisfy its constraints, because of lack of resources or QoS, a transaction event is triggered. It consists in transferring the considered user to another operator in order to access the service. Moreover, when there are more than two operators sharing their access, the user transfer process includes an access selection decision in order to choose the best operator for service. Furthermore, when a user is transferred, its home operator must pay some transaction cost as cooperation fees for the new service operator. This transaction is seamless to the user. Therefore, the inter-operators sharing agreement set for cooperation must include three important issues: the selection decision algorithm, the transaction cost pricing scenario, and the percentage of resources shared by each operator. In the first part, we introduce our selection decision algorithm in a multi-operator environment, NP-BPA (Nearest Performance and Best Profit Algorithm). It is based on a multi-criteria cost function which groups the different parameters that enable a satisfying selection decision, for the operators and users. In the second part, we study the transaction cost. We find rational that an operator sets its transaction cost as a function of its service price. We consider a sharing system of three partners, interacting to decide the best transaction cost. Taking into account that the service of a guest user may affect the probability of acceptance of a client, an operator looks for preserving the expected revenue from its client. Therefore, we propose the first pricing scenario, ACAG (As Client As Guest) that aims to set the transaction cost of an operator equal to its service price. However, every operator seeks to maximize its revenue; therefore it is expected to set a higher transaction cost. How much higher? This must respect the sharing agreement between different partners and the service prices they adopt. To be optimistic, we propose a second pricing scenario MIWC (Max In When Cooperating). With this scenario all partners agree to have a transaction cost equal to the highest service price announced in the system. But, this scenario may cause losses in some cases where an operator setting a low service price performs a lot of transactions. To be fair, we propose a third pricing scenario MCWC (Min Cost When Cooperating). With this scenario all partners agree to have a transaction cost equal to the lowest service price announced in the system. In order to decide the best pricing scenario to adopt in the sharing system, a two stage Stackelberg game, TPA (Transaction Pricing and Access Selection) game, is formulated. In this game, the operators are the players; the service operators are the leaders and the home operator of a transferred user is a follower. In the third part, we consider a three operator sharing system with hybrid access mode. In this system partners decide to share a restricted amount of their capacity. We show how the sharing factor affects the blocking rates and affect the global profits. Further, the achieved profit does not depend only on the sharing factor, but also on the adopted pricing scenario. Therefore an economic framework based on game theoretical analysis is proposed. It models the interaction between the sharing system operators for resource sharing and pricing, in addition to the access selection. A sequential game is formulated, where the players are the operators. In the first stage, the sharing partners decide the proportion of resources they will share and the transaction pricing scenario in order to maximize their own profits. In the second stage, the home operator of a transferred user selects the suitable service operator. A bi-level optimization problem is solved and equilibrium is found.

A computação em nuvem é um paradigma que tem atraído uma grande quantidade de clientes por meio do oferecimento de recursos computacionais através de um modelo de pagamento pelo uso. Entretanto, o compartilhamento da rede interna da nuvem por todos os locatários possibilita que usuários utilizem de forma egoísta ou maliciosa os recursos da rede, ocasionando ataques contra a privacidade e a integridade dos dados e a disponibilidade dos recursos. Os algoritmos de alocação atuais não impedem que a disponibilidade dos recursos de rede seja afetada por ataques ou resultam em subutilização de recursos. Nessa dissertação, é proposta uma estratégia para a alocação de recursos que aumenta a segurança no compartilhamento da rede da nuvem entre as aplicações de locatários. Esse objetivo é alcançado por meio do agrupamento de aplicações provenientes de usuários mutuamente confiáveis em domínios logicamente isolados, compostos por um conjunto de máquinas virtuais interconectadas por uma rede virtual (infraestruturas virtuais – VIs), além de considerar-se a quantidade de tráfego gerada pela comunicação entre VMs da mesma aplicação. Devido à complexidade do problema de alocação de recursos em nuvens computacionais, a estratégia é decomposta em duas etapas. Na primeira, dado um conjunto pre-estabelecido de VIs, alocam-se as mesmas no substrato físico, enquanto a segunda distribui e mapeia as aplicações no conjunto de infraestruturas virtuais. O uso de VIs provê um maior nível de isolamento entre locatários e, consequentemente, maior segurança. Contudo, o agrupamento pode resultar em fragmentação e afetar negativamente o grau de utilização dos recursos. Dessa forma, estuda-se esse compromisso e a factibilidade da abordagem proposta. Os resultados mostram os benefícios da estratégia de alocação proposta, que oferece maior proteção aos recursos de rede com baixo custo extra. Em particular, a segurança aumenta logaritmicamente de acordo com o número de VIs, enquanto a fragmentação de recursos cresce linearmente de acordo com o aumento do número de VIs oferecidas pelo provedor. / Cloud computing can offer virtually unlimited resources without any upfront capital investment through a pay-per-use pricing model. However, the shared nature of multi-tenant cloud datacenter networks enables unfair or malicious use of the intra-cloud network by tenants, allowing attacks against the privacy and integrity of data and the availability of resources. Recent research has proposed resource allocation algorithms that cannot protect tenants against attacks in the network or result in underutilization of resources. In this thesis, we introduce a resource allocation strategy that increases the security of network resource sharing among tenant applications. This is achieved by grouping applications from mutually trusting users into logically isolated domains composed of a set of virtual machines as well as the virtual network interconnecting them (virtual infrastructures - VIs), while considering the amount of traffic generated by the communication between VMs from the same application. Due to the hardness of the cloud resource allocation problem, we decompose the strategy in two steps. The first one allocates a given set of VIs onto the physical substrate, while the second distributes and maps applications into the set of virtual infrastructures. The use of VIs provides some level of isolation and higher security. However, groups may lead to fragmentation and negatively affect resource utilization. Therefore, we study the associated trade-off and feasibility of the proposed approach. Evaluation results show the benefits of our strategy, which is able to offer better network resource protection against attacks with low additional cost. In particular, the security can be logarithmically increased according to the number of VIs, while internal resource fragmentation linearly grows as the number of VIs offered by the provider increases.

A computação em nuvem é um paradigma que tem atraído uma grande quantidade de clientes por meio do oferecimento de recursos computacionais através de um modelo de pagamento pelo uso. Entretanto, o compartilhamento da rede interna da nuvem por todos os locatários possibilita que usuários utilizem de forma egoísta ou maliciosa os recursos da rede, ocasionando ataques contra a privacidade e a integridade dos dados e a disponibilidade dos recursos. Os algoritmos de alocação atuais não impedem que a disponibilidade dos recursos de rede seja afetada por ataques ou resultam em subutilização de recursos. Nessa dissertação, é proposta uma estratégia para a alocação de recursos que aumenta a segurança no compartilhamento da rede da nuvem entre as aplicações de locatários. Esse objetivo é alcançado por meio do agrupamento de aplicações provenientes de usuários mutuamente confiáveis em domínios logicamente isolados, compostos por um conjunto de máquinas virtuais interconectadas por uma rede virtual (infraestruturas virtuais – VIs), além de considerar-se a quantidade de tráfego gerada pela comunicação entre VMs da mesma aplicação. Devido à complexidade do problema de alocação de recursos em nuvens computacionais, a estratégia é decomposta em duas etapas. Na primeira, dado um conjunto pre-estabelecido de VIs, alocam-se as mesmas no substrato físico, enquanto a segunda distribui e mapeia as aplicações no conjunto de infraestruturas virtuais. O uso de VIs provê um maior nível de isolamento entre locatários e, consequentemente, maior segurança. Contudo, o agrupamento pode resultar em fragmentação e afetar negativamente o grau de utilização dos recursos. Dessa forma, estuda-se esse compromisso e a factibilidade da abordagem proposta. Os resultados mostram os benefícios da estratégia de alocação proposta, que oferece maior proteção aos recursos de rede com baixo custo extra. Em particular, a segurança aumenta logaritmicamente de acordo com o número de VIs, enquanto a fragmentação de recursos cresce linearmente de acordo com o aumento do número de VIs oferecidas pelo provedor. / Cloud computing can offer virtually unlimited resources without any upfront capital investment through a pay-per-use pricing model. However, the shared nature of multi-tenant cloud datacenter networks enables unfair or malicious use of the intra-cloud network by tenants, allowing attacks against the privacy and integrity of data and the availability of resources. Recent research has proposed resource allocation algorithms that cannot protect tenants against attacks in the network or result in underutilization of resources. In this thesis, we introduce a resource allocation strategy that increases the security of network resource sharing among tenant applications. This is achieved by grouping applications from mutually trusting users into logically isolated domains composed of a set of virtual machines as well as the virtual network interconnecting them (virtual infrastructures - VIs), while considering the amount of traffic generated by the communication between VMs from the same application. Due to the hardness of the cloud resource allocation problem, we decompose the strategy in two steps. The first one allocates a given set of VIs onto the physical substrate, while the second distributes and maps applications into the set of virtual infrastructures. The use of VIs provides some level of isolation and higher security. However, groups may lead to fragmentation and negatively affect resource utilization. Therefore, we study the associated trade-off and feasibility of the proposed approach. Evaluation results show the benefits of our strategy, which is able to offer better network resource protection against attacks with low additional cost. In particular, the security can be logarithmically increased according to the number of VIs, while internal resource fragmentation linearly grows as the number of VIs offered by the provider increases.

A computação em nuvem é um paradigma que tem atraído uma grande quantidade de clientes por meio do oferecimento de recursos computacionais através de um modelo de pagamento pelo uso. Entretanto, o compartilhamento da rede interna da nuvem por todos os locatários possibilita que usuários utilizem de forma egoísta ou maliciosa os recursos da rede, ocasionando ataques contra a privacidade e a integridade dos dados e a disponibilidade dos recursos. Os algoritmos de alocação atuais não impedem que a disponibilidade dos recursos de rede seja afetada por ataques ou resultam em subutilização de recursos. Nessa dissertação, é proposta uma estratégia para a alocação de recursos que aumenta a segurança no compartilhamento da rede da nuvem entre as aplicações de locatários. Esse objetivo é alcançado por meio do agrupamento de aplicações provenientes de usuários mutuamente confiáveis em domínios logicamente isolados, compostos por um conjunto de máquinas virtuais interconectadas por uma rede virtual (infraestruturas virtuais – VIs), além de considerar-se a quantidade de tráfego gerada pela comunicação entre VMs da mesma aplicação. Devido à complexidade do problema de alocação de recursos em nuvens computacionais, a estratégia é decomposta em duas etapas. Na primeira, dado um conjunto pre-estabelecido de VIs, alocam-se as mesmas no substrato físico, enquanto a segunda distribui e mapeia as aplicações no conjunto de infraestruturas virtuais. O uso de VIs provê um maior nível de isolamento entre locatários e, consequentemente, maior segurança. Contudo, o agrupamento pode resultar em fragmentação e afetar negativamente o grau de utilização dos recursos. Dessa forma, estuda-se esse compromisso e a factibilidade da abordagem proposta. Os resultados mostram os benefícios da estratégia de alocação proposta, que oferece maior proteção aos recursos de rede com baixo custo extra. Em particular, a segurança aumenta logaritmicamente de acordo com o número de VIs, enquanto a fragmentação de recursos cresce linearmente de acordo com o aumento do número de VIs oferecidas pelo provedor. / Cloud computing can offer virtually unlimited resources without any upfront capital investment through a pay-per-use pricing model. However, the shared nature of multi-tenant cloud datacenter networks enables unfair or malicious use of the intra-cloud network by tenants, allowing attacks against the privacy and integrity of data and the availability of resources. Recent research has proposed resource allocation algorithms that cannot protect tenants against attacks in the network or result in underutilization of resources. In this thesis, we introduce a resource allocation strategy that increases the security of network resource sharing among tenant applications. This is achieved by grouping applications from mutually trusting users into logically isolated domains composed of a set of virtual machines as well as the virtual network interconnecting them (virtual infrastructures - VIs), while considering the amount of traffic generated by the communication between VMs from the same application. Due to the hardness of the cloud resource allocation problem, we decompose the strategy in two steps. The first one allocates a given set of VIs onto the physical substrate, while the second distributes and maps applications into the set of virtual infrastructures. The use of VIs provides some level of isolation and higher security. However, groups may lead to fragmentation and negatively affect resource utilization. Therefore, we study the associated trade-off and feasibility of the proposed approach. Evaluation results show the benefits of our strategy, which is able to offer better network resource protection against attacks with low additional cost. In particular, the security can be logarithmically increased according to the number of VIs, while internal resource fragmentation linearly grows as the number of VIs offered by the provider increases.

The content of my work has been chosen on the basis that I have spent most of my career working as a regulatory lawyer in telecommunications. I started my career as a lawyer at the Czech Telecommunications Office and after few years I moved to the Ministry of Transport, which was then also responsible for telecommunications, and its strategy and legislation. Finally I joined Radiomobil (now T-Mobile Czech Republic) where I have spent 15 years to date. The development of technologies in the last 20 years is without a doubt fascinating. It is exciting to observe the sector regulation trying to catch up with the fast moving technological developments, and often aiming at attempting to regulate what cannot be regulated. At the same time we can witness the overregulated European telecommunications market gasping for air in comparison with other regions as it becomes less and less attractive to investments and investors, which is evidenced by the major European companies leaving the European markets and moving their activities into the less regulated regions of the world. A direct consequence of that is the consolidation of the European telecommunications markets. At the same time there are very high expectations on the part of both regulatory bodies and customers in the field of broadband development...