TY - JOUR
KW - community networks
KW - Cost sharing
KW - Economics
KW - Internet access cost
KW - Shapley value
AU - Llorenç Cerdà-Alabern
AU - Roger Baig
AU - Leandro Navarro
AB - 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.
BT - Computer Networks
DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2019.107067
N2 - 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.
PY - 2020
EP - 107067
T2 - Computer Networks
TI - On the Guifi.net community network economics
UR - /sites/default/files/dsg/Guifi_net_Economics.pdf
VL - 168
SN - 1389-1286
ER -