A Game Theoretic Approach to Problems in Telecommunication

This paper considers two specific problems in telecommunication, namely the Terrestrial Flight Telephone System and the rerouting of international telephone calls. Both situations are modelled as coalitional games, and game theoretic techniques are used to tackle the problems. It is shown that a special class of coalitional games emerges from the situations under consideration and that the structure of the situations has theoretical implications, including the coincidence of several game theoretic solution concepts. The implications of these theoretical results for the two practical problems are discussed.