A Simplified Pricing Model for the 3G/4G Mobile Networks

Abstract

The evolution of new technologies in the wireless technological networking environment is expected to provide economic growth as well as support a multitude of interactive and diversified multimedia and traditional services such as voice, e-mail, web-access which require large amount of network resource such as bandwidth to achieve the highest quality level. Economic Growths, Optimal Resource Allocation and End to End QoS guarantee are the key requirements of 4G wireless cellular networks. While the demand for wireless cellular services continues to increase, there is scarcity in the network resource such as bandwidth in the wireless environment which burdens the wireless service provider with a big challenge. Although the service providers feel comfortable with the traditional flat-rate model of pricing which is simple and is a popular way of billing with minimal overhead but it could seriously derelict the long term profitability of the wireless service provider. Under these circumstances in order to meet the key requirements and cope up with the new challenges the study of pricing models have gained a paramount attention in the network research. This article analyzes the existing pricing models and brings out the limitations of the same. A simple pricing model has been proposed in this article keeping in mind the limitations of the traditional pricing models. The proposed pricing model would be capable of ensuring profit of both user and service provider as well as be unbiased to both.