Encouraging wireless connection sharing by means of an attractive pricing strategy

Nowadays Internet has become a critical part of our daily lives and an affordable Internet access, is a leading engine of economic, cultural, social and political growth. In our opinion, customer cooperation could give a boost to Internet availability and affordability, therefore, we propose an attractive and efficient pricing mechanism to give incentives to wireless users which decide to share their connection resources with others. Thanks to the proposed strategy, a natural expansion of the wireless coverage area can be realized increasing accessibility and reducing connection fees. To take into account the customers´ satisfaction, a users´ utility function is defined and, to preserve the network efficiency, the network congestion is controlled and prevented. Obtained results, in terms of profits obtained by wireless nodes, overall network utility and customers´ satisfaction, show the goodness of the proposed strategy and encourage further studies.