Realistic per-category pricing schemes for LTE users

Abstract

As demand on data access and bandwidth explodes, service providers across cellular network infrastructures are struggling to find effective ways to manage the data traffic on their network, and meet customer expectations without eroding profitability, or attracting regulatory attention. Pricing schemes are designed to offer protable business to the operators as well as to create favorable services for the mobile subscribers. In this paper, we analyze three well-known pricing schemes proposed for Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile networks. We then propose a realistic per-category pricing (R2P) scheme for LTE. Our pricing scheme takes into account QoS parameters, physical resources blocs utilization, user valuation, and user price categories: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Finally, we show, through extensive simulation results that our proposed pricing scheme provides the higher revenue for the operator.