Time-Dependent Broadband Pricing

Charging different prices for Internet access at different times induces users to spread out their capacity,or bandwidth,g consumption across times of the day. Is it feasi ble and how much benefit can it bring? We design an architecture for time-dependent broadband pricing. We develop an efficie nt way to compute the cost-minimizing time-dependent prices f or an Internet service provider (ISP), using both a static sessio n-level model and a dynamic session model with stochastic arrivals. Our formulations of the optimization problem remain computationally tractable on a large scale. We show simulations illustrating the use and limitations of time-dependent pricing, and discussnext steps in implementing and deploying the theory in the TUBE Project.

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