  Data sponsoring is a widely-used incentive method in today's cellular
networks, where video content providers (CPs) cover part or all of the cellular
data cost for mobile users so as to attract more video users and increase data
traffic. In the forthcoming 5G cellular networks, edge caching is emerging as a
promising technique to deliver videos with lower cost and higher quality. The
key idea is to cache video contents on edge networks (e.g., femtocells and WiFi
access points) in advance and deliver the cached contents to local video users
directly (without involving cellular data cost for users). In this work, we aim
to study how the edge caching will affect the CP's data sponsoring strategy as
well as the users' behaviors and the data market. Specifically, we consider a
single CP who offers both the edge caching service and the data sponsoring
service to a set of heterogeneous mobile video users (with different mobility
and video request patterns). We formulate the interactions of the CP and the
users as a two-stage Stackelberg game, where the CP (leader) determines the
budgets (efforts) for both services in Stage I, and the users (followers)
decide whether and which service(s) they would like to subscribe to. We analyze
the sub-game perfect equilibrium (SPE) of the proposed game systematically. Our
analysis and experimental results show that by introducing the edge caching,
the CP can increase his revenue by 105%.
