A study of QoS support, performance and pricing of mobile data plans in the USA and South Korea

There has been a phenomenal growth in wireless and cellular network technologies since the past few years. This has further led to a rapid increase in the number of mobile subscribers and the amount of data traffic. To accommodate the exponentially increasing data traffic, while optimizing the spectral efficiency, different techniques such as offloading, etc. have been adopted by the network operators. However, the demand is expected to eventually exceed the capacity, and hence, there is a need of more efficient network management techniques. Pricing is now considered as one of the effective ways to regulate the user behavior and manage the network resources, while optimizing the Quality of Service (QoS) and the operator revenue, at the same time. By analyzing the key features and limitations of different pricing plans offered by telecom operators in different countries, this paper attempts to facilitate the better understanding of the implications of pricing strategies on the network performance and the user satisfaction.