LTE Pricing Strategies

Pricing plays an important role to efficiently manage the cellular network resources, maintain user required QoS (Quality of Service) levels and to optimize the operator´s revenue. In this paper, we analyze some previous pricing schemes proposed for general wireless multimedia systems and for WiMAX and adapt these methods within LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks. We also propose a dynamic pricing strategy for LTE. Most of these methods (including ours) are based on users´ price categories: Gold (or high), Silver (or medium) and Bronze (or low). The price charged to these users may also vary with the QoS level. We compare these methods considering the LTE network context. Our proposed strategy provides high revenue for the operator as well as a smaller average price paid for the user, with regard to the flat-rate pricing strategy.