Pricing for Content in the Internet

Computer …, 2004

Pricing content defines a major challenge for tomorrow's Internet, since existing models appear to be unworkable. However, the provider of content, commercial ones as well as private persons, show in a commercialized world of interactive trade the clear need for content charging systems, which in particular are necessary for electronic content. Those systems generally are beyond the pure technical scope of a system and they go beyond the economic point of view as well. Only an integrated approach, fully understood in their details and technological -economic interactions, will provide the platform for future success. Although traditional manners of content charging will work in the Internet, such as credit card payments or paper bills, the set of constraints and technical possibilities has changed, e.g. a customized newspaper can be provided only electronically. This new approach for pricing content in the Internet needs to cover mechanisms for resource allocation, service fusion, payment schemes, valuation of content, pricing, charging for services and content, and a management system. q

2001

This paper investigates the efficiency of one-component pricing mechanisms versus two-component pricing mechanisms. The paper deals with four pricing mechanisms used in the Internet, namely, flat rate pricing, usage-based pricing, transaction-based pricing and version-based pricing for the analysis. The objective of the paper is to evaluate and analyse the ways in which the usage-based pricing mechanism is more efficient than one-component-based pricing and this evaluation has been made in accordance with the four examples cited. The paper observes the efficiency of the two-component pricing mechanism structure from both the sellers' and buyers' perspective and clears the way for further research in this area.

1993

This paper was prepared for the conference "Public Access to the Internet," JFK School of Government, May 26-27 , 1993. We describe the technology and cost structure of the NSFNET backbone of the Internet, and discuss how one might price Internet access and use. We argue that usage-based pricing is likely to be necessary to control congestion on the Internet and propose a particular implementating of usage-based pricing using a "smart market". the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it will cease funding the ANS T3 Internet backbone in the near future. This is a major step in the transition from a government-funded to a commercial Internet. This movement has been welcomed by private providers of telecommunication services and businesses seeking access to the Internet.

1999

The Internet is growing very fast. As the current Internet pricing schemes do not support the planned developments in the Internet service offering, .i.e. QoS schemes and broadband access, also Internet pricing models are under study. In this paper the environment of the ISP that implements the pricing schemes is explained and the current as well as the potential new pricing mechanisms are discussed. Basically Internet pricing can be flat rate or it can be based on basic usage parameters such as time and traffic volume. Additionally it is possible to price a connection according to the resources it consumes in the network. These advanced schemes can take into account the state of the network (congestion) and the nature of the traffic flow (burstiness).

ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, 2014

Content providers are often accused of free riding by exploiting the network to distribute their content without sharing their revenues with the network providers. In order to assess the correctness of such an accusation, we set up a game-theoretical model, where content providers releasing their contents for free and under the payment of a usage-based charge are both present. In this model, the network provider charges both content providers a usage-based charge (network charge) as well. The network provider and the paid content provider act as the players, using the respective retail prices as strategic leverages. Both the cases where network charges are set by the network provider and by a regulatory authority are examined. The Nash equilibrium is determined in a closed form. In a typical scenario, the solution represented by zero network charges maximizes both the network provider's revenues and the social welfare: free riding for content providers appears as the best choice under both the viewpoints of the selfish network provider and the regulatory authority.

The Internet has become a multi -purpose network capable of providing many services to a variety of geographies and population. Content delivery of digital content covers many possibilities from music and video to published papers and e-Books, and also wide ranging services and applications. This paper describes the challenges of providing the infrastructure required to make digital content delivery possible in a reliable, efficient and auditable way, and how to charge to allow the various providers to recover the investment and to generate revenue and profit. The implementation of QoS mechanisms in Content Distribution Internetworking (CDI) networks is proposed as a method to add value for the content providers, network providers and end-users.

Journal of Electronic Publishing, 1996

The Internet continues to evolve as it reaches out to a wider user population. The recent introduction of user-friendly navigation and retrieval tools for the World Wide Web has triggered an unprecedented level of interest in the Internet among the media and the general public, as well as in the technical community. It seems inevitable that some changes or additions are needed in the control mechanisms used to allocate usage of Internet resources. In this paper, we argue that a feedback signal in the form of a variable price for network service is a workable tool to aid network operators in controlling Internet traffic. We suggest that these prices should vary dynamically based on the current utilization of network resources. We show how this responsive pricing puts control of network service back where it belongs: with the users.

1994

The Internet is by far the fastest growing economy in the world in terms of the number of users and information providers. Currently there are over 30 million users with an estimated 100% annual growth. As an economic system we can view the information providers, including entertainment, news, educational services, etc., as producers and the users as consumers. The Internet is already experiencing traffic jams and, given the growth rate of The Internet and the need to provide real time services in future, this will become a severe problem if proper coordinating mechanisms are not designed and implemented. We have developed a priority pricing mechanism based on General Equilibrium theory in economics, and we use a measure based on the collective benefits obtained by the users to evaluate the performance of the system. We have developed simulation model to test the validity of our approach and to show the gain in efficiency induced by pricing. We present some results with a non-priority pricing scheme and show substantial improvements versus a free access policy. Furthermore, we address the issues concerning the development of new accounting/billing methods, cross subsidization of services, infrastructure investment, development of smart agents for dynamic scheduling and users' job management, and the possible competitive market structures which will evolve over The Internet.

The telecommunications industry is immersed in a deep process of transformation, in which the natural complexity of any evolution in business models is increased by accelerated innovation that exists in the sector. The providers' diversity has to resolve how to fix and develop the prices of their services in a frame with many unknowns and fewer equations. In this article, we propose a model for calculating the costs of a user, who accesses and uses the Internet services that it provides, based in a methodology to structure various types of services and assign costs.