Pricing Communication Networks

Traditionally engineers devised communication services without reference to how they should be priced. In today's environment pricing is a very complex subject and in practice depends on many parameters of the actual market - including amount of traffic, architecture of the network, technology, and cost. The challenge is to provide a generic service model which accurately captures aspects such as quality and performance, and can be used to derive optimal pricing strategies. Recent technology advances, combined with the deregulation of the telecommunication market and the proliferation of the internet, have created a highly competitive environment for communication service prividers. Pricing is no longer as simple as picking an appropriate model for a particular contract. There is a real need for a book that explains the provision of new services, the relation between pricing and resource allocation in networks; and the emergence of the internet and how to price it. Pricing Communication Networks provides a framework of mathematical models for pricing these multidimensional contracts, and includes background in network services and contracts, network techonology, basic economics, and pricing strategy. It can be used by economists to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of network services and technology, and for engineers and operational researchers to gain the background in economics required to price communication services effectively. * Provides a broad overview of network services and contracts * Includes a primer on modern network technology and the economic concepts relevant to pricing and competition * Includes discussion of mathematical models of traffic flow to help describe network capability and derive pricing strategies * Includes coverage of specialist topics, such as regulation, multicasting, and auctions * Illustrated throughout by detailed real examples * Suitable for anyone with an understanding of basic calculus and probability Primarily aimed at graduate students, researchers and practitioners from electrical engineering, computer science, economics and operations research Pricing Communication Networks will also appeal to telecomms engineers working in industry.

Today's wireless communications and networking practices are tightly coupled with economic considerations, to the extent that it is almost impossible to make a sound technology choice without understanding the corresponding economic implications. This book aims at providing a foundational introduction on how microeconomics, and pricing theory in particular, can help us to understand and build better wireless networks. The book can be used as lecture notes for a course in the field of network economics, or a reference book for wireless engineers and applied economists to understand how pricing mechanisms influence the fast growing modern wireless industry. This book first covers the basics of wireless communication technologies and microeconomics, before going in-depth about several pricing models and their wireless applications. The pricing models include social optimal pricing, monopoly pricing, price differentiation, oligopoly pricing, and network externalities, supported by introductory discussions of convex optimization and game theory. The wireless applications include wireless video streaming, service provider competitions, cellular usage-based pricing, network partial price differentiation, wireless spectrum leasing, distributed power control, and cellular technology upgrade. More information related to the book (including references, slides, and videos) can be found at ncel.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/content/wireless-network-pricing.

This edited book serves as a companion volume to the Seventh INFORMS Telecommunications Conference held in Boca Raton, Florida, March 7-10, 2004. The 18 papers in this book were carefully selected after a thorough re view process. The research presented within these articles focuses on the latest methodological developments in three key areas—pricing of telecommunica tions services, network design, and resource allocation—that are most relevant to current telecommunications planning. With the global deregulation of the telecommunications industry, effective pricing and revenue management, as well as an understanding of competi tive pressures are key factors that will improve revenue in telecommunica tions companies. Chapters 1-5 address these topics by focusing on pricing of telecommunications services. They present some novel ideas related to pricing (including auction-based pricing of network bandwidth) and modeling compe tition in the industry. The successful telecommunications companies of the future will likely be the ones that can minimize their costs while meeting customer expectations. In this context the optimal design/provisioning of telecommunication networks plays an important role. Chapters 6-12 address these topics by focusing on net work design for a wide range of technologies including SONET, SDH, WDM, and MPLS. They include the latest research developments related to the mod eling and solving of network design problems. Day-to-day management/control of telecommunications networks is depen dent upon the optimal allocation of resources. Chapters 13-18 provide insight ful solutions to several intriguing resource allocation problems.

This unified volume is a collection of invited articles on topics presented at the Symposium on Systems, Control, and Networks, held in Berkeley June 5–7, 2005, in honor of Pravin Varaiya on his 65th birthday. Varaiya is an eminent faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley, widely known for his seminal contributions in areas as diverse as stochastic systems, nonlinear and hybrid systems, distributed systems, communication networks, transportation systems, power networks, economics, optimization, and systems education. The book will serve as an excellent resource for practicing and research engineers, applied mathematicians, and graduate students working in such areas as communication networks, sensor networks, transportation systems, control theory, hybrid systems, and applications.

This book constitutes a collaborative and selected documentation of the scientific outcome of the European COST Action IS0605 Econ@Tel "A Telecommunications Economics COST Network" which run from October 2007 to October 2011. Involving experts from around 20 European countries, the goal of Econ@Tel was to develop a strategic research and training network among key people and organizations in order to enhance Europe's competence in the field of telecommunications economics. Reflecting the organization of the COST Action IS0605 Econ@Tel in working groups the following four major research areas are addressed: - evolution and regulation of communication ecosystems; - social and policy implications of communication technologies; - economics and governance of future networks; - future networks management architectures and mechanisms.

Retaining the first edition's technology-centred perspective, this book gives readers a sound understanding of packed-switched, circuit-switched and ATM networks, and techniques for controlling them.

This book proposes that usage-based charging schemes are essential to generate the incentives necessary for efficient operation of multiservice networks. The rapid development of network technology is enabling sophisticated new services and applications which demand new charging models. The same technology provides the means to operate the right charging schemes.Some of the work done in the European collaborative project CA$hMAN (Charging and Accounting Schemes in Multiservice ATM Networks). This project combined performance and economic models of network resource usage and cutomer utility to construct simple but effective charging schemes which were implemented and trialled in an advanced management platform.

This unified 2001 treatment of game theory focuses on finding state-of-the-art solutions to issues surrounding the next generation of wireless and communications networks. The key results and tools of game theory are covered, as are various real-world technologies and a wide range of techniques for modeling, design and analysis.