Experiments with user understanding of usage based charging of ATM services

Among related issues, the ACTS project CA$hMAN, studies the understanding of usage based charging schemes for ATM by means of experiments with users. The usage based charging schemes of CA$hMAN charge for time and volume and aim to provide incentives to customers to reduce waste of network resources. It is important that the customers understand these incentives and that they are susceptible for them. The experiment described in this article concentrates on this issue. More specifically, it investigates two questions: (1) What information should an operator ask from and provide to a non-technical residential customer? (2) How should the operator do this? The motivation for these questions is explained, the experiments are described, and the observations are presented