| Title | On the Guifi.net community network economics |
| Publication Type | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | 2020 |
| Authors | Cerdà-Alabern, L, Baig, R, Navarro, L |
| Journal | Computer Networks |
| Volume | 168 |
| Pagination | 107067 |
| ISSN | 1389-1286 |
| Keywords | community networks, Cost sharing, Economics, Internet access cost, Shapley value |
| Abstract | How costs are distributed among the participants is a key question in the management and viability of shared resources. Although all cost-sharing mechanisms are subjective and thus it is eventually up to the participants to accept one or another, some general criteria seem desirable, such as being budget-balanced and that, in any case, a participant pays more when not cooperating with anyone else. In this paper, we analyse the cost-sharing mechanism that the Guifi.net community network has developed and put in practice to split the transit costs among their more than 20 participants for almost a decade. Our results show that the Guifi.net’s cost-sharing mechanism of the external connectivity, which comprises an equal membership fee for each participant plus a proportional distribution of the remaining costs according to the resource consumption, yields a cost assignment similar to the Shapley value. Our analysis also shows that any alternative to the coalition of all participants entails significant total cost increases and detrimental widespread cost allocation.
|
| URL | https://dsg.ac.upc.edu/sites/default/files/dsg/Guifi_net_Economics.pdf |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.comnet.2019.107067 |
