An overview of pricing concepts for broadband IP networks

In this article we provide an overview of pricing concepts for broadband multiservice networks. We review the notions of flat pricing, priority pricing, Paris-Metro pricing, smart-market pricing, responsive pricing, expected capacity pricing, edge pricing, and effective bandwidth pricing. We use numerous evaluation criteria, including network, economic, and social efficiency, as well as their suitability in using pricing as a means for congestion control. Some of the schemes are based on best-effort networks, and are thus unable to provide the user with quality of service (QoS) guarantees. Others build on networks with connection admission control functions and are thus able to provide individual QoS guarantees. We particularly investigate the relevant time frame over which pricing schemes are assumed to operate. The majority of the schemes work on short time frames (on the order of minutes), which makes them applicable to use pricing as an additional means for controlling congestion. We also consider technical aspects such as compliance with existing networking technologies or computational overheads associated with billing and accounting.