Wireless network capacity management: a real options approach

This paper applies financial option valuation methods to new wireless network capacity investment decision timing. In particular, we consider the case of network capacity for cellular telephone service. Given a cluster of base stations (with a certain traffic capacity per base station), we determine when it is optimal to increase capacity for each of the base stations contained in the cluster. We express this in terms of the fraction of total cluster capacity in use, i.e. we calculate the optimal time to upgrade in terms of the ratio of observed usage to existing capacity. We study the optimal decision problem of adding new capacity in the presence of stochastic wireless demand for services. A four factor algorithm is developed, based on a real options formulation. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate various aspects of the model.