Abstract Internet of Things envisions some services that require both end‐device mobility and high availability or high bandwidth. However, the current environment with a cellular network and single‐path protocols may not guarantee a sufficient service level. Thus, this study evaluates the economic feasibility of using multipath protocols for increased availability and bandwidth when contracting with several cellular operators. By using cost‐efficiency analysis, a model is developed for comparing multipath protocols with their single‐path alternatives. The usage of the model is demonstrated with two potential mobile application scenarios that could benefit either from increased availability or bandwidth. Finland is used as an example market. The benefits of multipath protocols were quantified with an extensive set of handset‐based measurements from Finnish cellular networks. The results of this study indicate that the initial costs of a multipath infrastructure remain relatively small, and the total costs rapidly approach the operational costs as the number or active time of smart devices increase. Therefore, this study indicates that multipath protocols are economically feasible for certain mobile Internet of Things applications, particularly those requiring high bandwidth. Thus, new service models emerging in the Internet could create a real demand for multipath protocols in the future. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The growth of mobile Internet usage is raising concerns about the sufficiency of capacity in networks. Therefore, several technical solutions are currently being developed and standardized to increase the efficiency in the radio access and on the entire end-to-end Internet path. If successfully deployed, these technologies will have a significant impact on the Internet connectivity market, especially the mobile access competition. The objective of this paper is to shed light on the different evolution paths of the mobile access market which developments in technical, economic and regulatory domains could induce in the future. This paper envisions operator and end-user centric competition scenarios and compares them against the current vertical competition between mobile network operators (MNOs). The analysis shows that the degree of competition in the mobile access in the future is highly dependent on the level of transaction and switching costs. The end user scenario with related multipath protocol deployments intensifies the competition more than the operator scenario enabled by software-based dynamic spectrum management.