User Behavior for a Pricing Scheme in a Multi-provider Scenario

Pricing of communication services becomes a necessity once these services form a commodity in a market. As visible today, the Internet has dramatically made a move into its commercial deployment. Therefore, e.g. , Internet access, bandwidth, or services need to be charged for. However, there exist a number of pricing models – from static ones to highly dynamic ones – which need to be evaluated in a practical environment. Based on the design of an appropriate charging architecture for the Internet, a dynamic pricing model is defined in the approach presented here. The scheme termed CHiPS is based on auctions and its advantages are discussed. In turn, CHiPS is evaluated with respect to its incentive compatibility and the user behavior. For that reason, a small set of simulation results are discussed. Based on socio-economic arguments, an appropriate user interface for a given sample application of an IP phone is presented, which integrates charging and accounting information besides technical Quality-of-Service parameters.