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Last call for the buffet: economics of cellular networks

Authors:

Jeremy Blackburn,

Rade Stanojevic,

Vijay Erramilli,

Adriana Iamnitchi,

Konstantina PapagiannakiAuthors Info & Claims

MobiCom '13: Proceedings of the 19th annual international conference on Mobile computing & networking

Pages 111 - 122

https://doi.org/10.1145/2500423.2500441

Published: 30 September 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Voice and data traffic growth over the last several years has become a major challenge for cellular operators with a direct impact on revenues, infrastructure investments, and end-user performance. The economics of these operators depend on various incentives used to attract users in the form of unlimited, buffet-like voice/sms/data packages. However, our understanding of the effects of user behavior under these offerings on operator revenues/costs remains poor. Using two years of detailed usage information of ~1 million users across three services, voice, sms and data, combined with payment and cost information, we study how user behavior affects the economics of cellular operators. We discover that around 20% of the users consume more resources than what they pay for and hence are non-profitable. In addition to the individual user behavior, we study how the user interactions in the call graph affect the operator's revenues and cost, drawing on tools from social network analysis. We develop a framework that incorporates both the individual and social user behavior for studying how volume caps influence the revenues and the traffic costs. Using this framework we empirically show that volume caps can increase the difference between the revenues and the traffic costs of the studied operator by a factor of 2, while affecting only 16% of the existing user base.

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Cited By

Heidarpour BDziong ZLau WNguyen KCheriet M(2020)Application-Oriented Free Data in Cellular NetworksIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29871598(71173-71188)Online publication date: 2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2987159
Xiong ZNiyato DWang P(2020)Network EffectsEncyclopedia of Wireless Networks10.1007/978-3-319-78262-1_34(975-981)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78262-1_34
Akram H(2019)Multi-Task Sensing for Multiple Crowdsourcers: A Dynamic Game Based Pricing Model2019 28th International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN)10.1109/ICCCN.2019.8846909(1-9)Online publication date: Jul-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCCN.2019.8846909
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Last call for the buffet: economics of cellular networks
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Implementation management
        Pricing and resource allocation
      2. Information system economics

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

MobiCom '13: Proceedings of the 19th annual international conference on Mobile computing & networking

September 2013

504 pages

ISBN:9781450319997

DOI:10.1145/2500423

General Chair:
Sumi Helal
University of Florida, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Ranveer Chandra
Microsoft, USA
,
Robin Kravets
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGMOBILE: ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 September 2013

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MobiCom'13

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SIGMOBILE

MobiCom'13: The 19th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking

September 30 - October 4, 2013

Florida, Miami, USA

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MobiCom '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 207 submissions, 14%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 440 of 2,972 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Heidarpour BDziong ZLau WNguyen KCheriet M(2020)Application-Oriented Free Data in Cellular NetworksIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29871598(71173-71188)Online publication date: 2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2987159
Xiong ZNiyato DWang P(2020)Network EffectsEncyclopedia of Wireless Networks10.1007/978-3-319-78262-1_34(975-981)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78262-1_34
Akram H(2019)Multi-Task Sensing for Multiple Crowdsourcers: A Dynamic Game Based Pricing Model2019 28th International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN)10.1109/ICCCN.2019.8846909(1-9)Online publication date: Jul-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCCN.2019.8846909
Xiong ZNiyato DWang P(2018)Network EffectsEncyclopedia of Wireless Networks10.1007/978-3-319-32903-1_34-1(1-7)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32903-1_34-1
Fortetsanakis GDimitriou IPapadopouli M(2017)A Game-Theoretical Analysis of Wireless Markets Using Network AggregationIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2016.257075616:3(602-616)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TMC.2016.2570756
Jordan S(2017)A critical survey of the literature on broadband data capsTelecommunications Policy10.1016/j.telpol.2017.09.00141:9(813-837)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.telpol.2017.09.001
Wang HWang LKong FSun LYong J(2015)A novel optimization approach for revenue maximization in mobile data pricing2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)10.1109/ICC.2015.7249428(6918-6923)Online publication date: Jun-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2015.7249428
Poularakis KPefkianakis IChandrashekar JTassiulas LSeneviratne ADiot CKurose JChaintreau ARizzo L(2014)Pricing The Last MileProceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies10.1145/2674005.2675008(295-306)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2674005.2675008
Cardona JStanojevic RLaoutaris NSeneviratne ADiot CKurose JChaintreau ARizzo L(2014)Collaborative Consumption for Mobile BroadbandProceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies10.1145/2674005.2674997(307-318)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2674005.2674997
Bischof ZBustamante FStanojevic RWilliamson CAkella ATaft N(2014)Need, Want, Can AffordProceedings of the 2014 Conference on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/2663716.2663753(73-86)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2663716.2663753
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