Pricing Data: A Look at Past Proposals, Current Plans, and Future Trends

Traditionally, network operators have used simple flat-rate broadband data plans for both wired and wireless network access. But today, with the popularity of mobile devices and exponential growth of apps, videos, and clouds, service providers are gradually moving towards more sophisticated pricing schemes, including dynamic pricing. This decade will therefore likely witness a major change in ways in which network resources are managed and the role of economics in allocating these resources. This survey reviews some of the well-known past broadband pricing proposals (both static and dynamic), their current realization in various consumer data plans around the world, and discusses several research challenges and developments. It also provides a brief overview of the relationships between various pricing ideas in broadband data plans and their counterparts in other markets, such as electricity and transportation networks. By exploring the benefits and challenges of pricing data, this paper attempts to facilitate both the industrial and the academic communities' efforts in understanding the existing literature, recognizing new trends, and shaping an appropriate and timely research agenda.