When the price is right: enabling time-dependent pricing of broadband data

In an era of 108% annual growth in demand for mobile data and $10/GB overage fees, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are experiencing severe congestion and in turn are hurting consumers with aggressive pricing measures. But smarter practices, such as time-dependent pricing (TDP), reward users for shifting their non-critical demand to off-peak hours and can potentially benefit both users and ISPs. Although dynamic TDP ideas have existed for many years, dynamic pricing for mobile data is only now gaining interest among ISPs. Yet TDP plans require not only systems engineering but also an understanding of economic incentives, user behavior and interface design. In particular, the HCI aspects of communicating price feedback signals from the network and the response of mobile data users need to be studied in the real world. But investigating these issues by deploying a virtual TDP data plan for real ISP customers is challenging and rarely explored. To this end, we carried out the first TDP trial for mobile data in the US with 10 families. We describe the insights gained from the trial, which can help the HCI community as well as ISPs, app developers and designers create tools that empower users to better control their usage and save on their monthly bills, while also alleviating network congestion.