Dynamic Pricing for 3G Networks Using Admission Control and Traffic Differentiation

In the pricing of network resources, network operators and service providers aim at facilitating the use of the limited network resources in a manner that would encourage responsibility among the end-users and lead to the maximisation of profits. The optimum tariff rates used for charging the mobile services are affected by factors like the market forces affecting the industry. However, the tariff rates generally increase with the achieved QoS level. Next generation networks will offer higher QoS, hence users need incentives to utilise the enhanced capacity. In this paper, we propose a pricing approach that introduces service profiles into a DiffServ-enabled network, whose prices and QoS levels depend on the degree of congestion in the network. The use of the UMTS connection admission control to support the proposed pricing scheme is explored. An emulation testbed is used to evaluate the scheme.