Pricing strategies and categories for LTE networks

Abstract

Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems will provide a large number of users with various high quality wireless Internet services including but not limited to voice over IP, real-time gaming, multimedia streaming and several others. A suitable pricing policy is an important component in order to bring benefits to both the operators and the customers. In fact, through this, the operator can efficiently manage the radio resources of cellular networks. For different types of services, the operator can maintain user Quality of Service and through which, the revenue can be optimized. This article analyzes various possible LTE pricing schemes, including the one proposed, based on different criteria: network load and congestion, operator revenue, traffic differentiation and user categorization. We provide comparative graphs to highlight the pros and cons of the studied pricing strategies. We highlight the importance for the operator to move from the often used flat-rate style policies towards more dynamic pricing strategies taking into account the user and service classes.