A Business Model for Charging and Accounting of Internet Services

The fast growing development of electronic commerce within the past few years and the increasing number of multimedia applications for the Internet contribute to traffic congestion and bottlenecks on the Internet. Since bandwidth is and will remain a scarce network resource in the future, the demand for charging and accounting mechanisms for the Internet arose. Besides from the implementation of charging and accounting mechanisms for Internet services, it is essential to define a business model for electronic business applications. This paper introduces a business model that defines and characterizes the business entities and describes their roles and functions within an e-commerce scenario. Based on these definitions, a technology model applies the different Internet technologies available today.