Problem:
Telecom providers in Australia were expanding broadband services. The key question was how rollout costs, technology limits, and rising demand for faster internet could shape the market over the next ten years.
Solution:
Evans & Peck and Alcatel built an agent-based model in AnyLogic to simulate consumer choice and technology adoption. The model combined geographic data, technology coverage, and customer behavior to test different rollout scenarios.
Results:
- Simulated broadband market development over 10 years.
- Modeled how location affects technology availability and speed.
- Analyzed competition between multiple providers and technologies.
- Evaluated cost and revenue scenarios for different rollout strategies.
- Helped providers plan long-term broadband infrastructure decisions.
Context
Telecommunications providers are seeking to capitalise on the growth potential of broadband internet services in Australia.
The choice of technology roll-out by providers must balance technology roll-out cost, technology limitations of broadband speed decreasing with distance from the source, and consumer’s demand for internet services requiring increasing broadband speeds over time.
Modeling Approach
Evans & Peck and Alcatel Australia jointly developed an agent based consumer choice model which allows scenario analysis on the potential impact to providers over the next 10 years. Critical to the consumer choice behaviour in the model were the geographical aspects of the consumer's location in relation to technology sources (eg. telephone exchange or base station) which ultimately setup a choice matrix of technologies and providers for that particular consumer.
A user interface was created in which a map of the geographical area of a single telephone exchange could be overlaid with both the location characteristics of households (density and consumer type) and of technologies' coverage.
Key features of the modelling tool developed include:
- Segmentation of the market by multiple customer types
- Multiple internet service providers, each offering multiple technologies
- Inclusion of cost models (CAPEX/OPEX) and revenue models (ARPU)
- Geographical mapping of populations densities and technology coverage areas
- Consumer choice algorithm based on availability of technologies, customer profile and ranking of providers
- Variation of consumer demand for broadband speed over time based on selection of products (eg. high definition video)
Model developed and published by Evans & Peck Australia