Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
Many flavors of differential data pricing are being practiced in different telecom markets. One popular version is zero-rating, where customers do not pay for consuming a certain basket of “zero-rated” content. These zero-rated services are in turn sponsored by payments to the Internet service provider (ISP) by the corresponding content providers (CPs). In this paper, we provide an analytical treatment of a zero-rating platform, highlighting the effect of zero-rating on the structure of the CP market and also on the surplus of ISPs, CPs, and users. A leader–follower game is assumed with the ISP setting the prices for users (for non-sponsored data) and CPs (for sponsored data), CPs making a binary decision on sponsorship and users consuming content based on the resulting data charges. User consumption is determined by a utility maximization, the sponsorship decision is determined by a Nash equilibrium between the CPs, and the ISP sets prices to maximize its profit. Several scenarios mimicking real-life practices are analyzed. Our results indicate that zero-rating grants the ISP significant power to determine the mix of content consumption and the profitability of the CPs. Furthermore, the ISP can also take away a significant portion of the surplus in the system. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
2019 | 10.1109/TNET.2019.2903156 | IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking |
Keywords | Field | DocType |
Pricing,Games,Quality of service,Mathematical model,IEEE transactions,Web and internet services,Telecommunications | Zero-rating,Computer science,Binary decision diagram,Quality of service,Computer network,Operations research,Service provider,Profitability index,Nash equilibrium,Payment,The Internet | Journal |
Volume | Issue | ISSN |
27 | 2 | 1063-6692 |
Citations | PageRank | References |
1 | 0.38 | 0 |
Authors | ||
3 | ||
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kunal Phalak | 1 | 1 | 0.38 |
| D. Manjunath | 2 | 5 | 3.84 |
| Jayakrishnan Nair | 3 | 72 | 20.59 |