Abstract
Over the past several years, sponsored mobile data and the payment directions on the Internet have been two major subjects in network economics. Several tier-1 service providers (SPs) created their frameworks for sponsored mobile data by cooperating with content providers. Based on these frameworks, users can have free data transfer if they accomplish a predefined task such as watching advertised videos. In this paper, we investigate particular types of mobile applications that can deliver their data to all cellular users free, even to the users without a data plan. Our approach does not force users to click on advertised content to obtain free data access yet it can still generate a level of revenue for application providers (APs) that can compensate for the revenue loss of the network service provider. We call this approach an Application-Oriented Free Data (AFD) program. To model and analyze the characteristics of the considered framework we use a multi-stage game consisting of cellular users, an SP, and an AP. We solve this game by backward induction. In this way, we define the required thresholds of price and data usage for an AFD program. The feasibility of the AFD program is illustrated by several numerical examples.
Highlights
The circuit-switched networks have no knowledge about the transmitted information or its worth and the dominant type of pricing for these networks is based on the duration of each connection
ON THE FEASIBILITY OF Application-Oriented Free Data (AFD) PROGRAM we focus on those types of applications that can be offered free of charge to the end-users
The presented results show the feasibility of the AFD program for the eligible applications, even if the application providers (APs) revenue is linearly related to the size of transferred data
Summary
The circuit-switched networks have no knowledge about the transmitted information or its worth and the dominant type of pricing for these networks is based on the duration of each connection. Note that in the volume-based pricing there is no resolution among different types of data, but this can change soon due to the vast implementation of content delivery networks (CDN) [3] and edge-computing. These developments lead to many studies of content-aware networks (CAN), e.g. The arrival of CDN networks creates new opportunities for customizations and improvements of the current pricing policies that would have an eye on fairness and user satisfaction This context gives us the motivation to focus in this paper on an economical framework and models where specific mobile applications have no cost to the endusers. The network service providers (SPs) and eligible application providers (APs) cooperate to leverage the natural behavior of users, such as online shopping, to generate revenue
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