A Multi-Agent System for Content Trading in Electronic Telecom Markets Using Multi-Attribute Auctions

The advent of the Internet and the development of the New Generation Network (NGN) has enabled, while investments in licenses and the desire to stay competitive in the future has triggered the development of value added services (VAS). Due to high market penetration, the telecommunication industry has been facing income stagnation. Consequently, it has been shifting focus to VAS in order to increase income. When forming VAS, special attention needs to be paid to the purchase of resources (e.g., transport capacity and information resources) needed for the service creation. The fact that information resources (i.e., content) are not commodities, opens the question of what is the best (i.e., efficient) mechanism that should be used for trading. As the number of participants on the B2B telecom market increases, the need for the automation of transactions carried between them is critical. The automation of transactions should lower operational costs and speed up the service provisioning process. In this paper, we try to identify stakeholders on the telecom e-market, establish their roles and relationships and find an appropriate model which captures their transactions. Finally we consider the use of multiattribute auctions for content trading in telecom markets.