A study on shared and non-shared billing for mobile service

In this paper, we study on the price comparison between shared plan and non-shared plan for mobile service. A non-shared data plan is a traditional data plan for a single user with a limited monthly data allowance. A shared data plan allows a user to add different devices to one inclusive plan and receive one bill at the end of every month, which the monthly data allowance is shared by a group of users across multiple devices. Each data plan is charged by a fixed price for a monthly data allowance and there will be an extra charge if a user consumes more than the monthly data allowance. Therefore, the charged price is affected by the user´s behaviors. We study the users´ behaviors by observing the measured data from Chunghwa Telecom and derive stochastic models for shared plan and non-shared plan to evaluate monthly prices based on different users´ behaviors. We recommend the most appropriate plan for a group of users based on users´ behaviors. On the other hand, mobile operators can attract more customers and earn more profit. We show that the shared plan is a `win-win´ plan for users and operators.