Pricing Communication Networks

Traditionally engineers devised communication services without reference to how they should be priced. In today's environment pricing is a very complex subject and in practice depends on many parameters of the actual market - including amount of traffic, architecture of the network, technology, and cost. The challenge is to provide a generic service model which accurately captures aspects such as quality and performance, and can be used to derive optimal pricing strategies.

Recent technology advances, combined with the deregulation of the telecommunication market and the proliferation of the internet, have created a highly competitive environment for communication service prividers. Pricing is no longer as simple as picking an appropriate model for a particular contract. There is a real need for a book that explains the provision of new services, the relation between pricing and resource allocation in networks; and the emergence of the internet and how to price it.
Pricing Communication Networks provides a framework of mathematical models for pricing these multidimensional contracts, and includes background in network services and contracts, network techonology, basic economics, and pricing strategy. It can be used by economists to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of network services and technology, and for engineers and operational researchers to gain the background in economics required to price communication services effectively.
* Provides a broad overview of network services and contracts
* Includes a primer on modern network technology and the economic concepts relevant to pricing and competition
* Includes discussion of mathematical models of traffic flow to help describe network capability and derive pricing strategies
* Includes coverage of specialist topics, such as regulation, multicasting, and auctions
* Illustrated throughout by detailed real examples
* Suitable for anyone with an understanding of basic calculus and probability


Primarily aimed at graduate students, researchers and practitioners from electrical engineering, computer science, economics and operations research Pricing Communication Networks will also appeal to telecomms engineers working in industry. Preface.

List of Acronyms.

A: NETWORKS.

Pricing and Communications Networks.

Network Services and Contracts.

Network Technology.

Network Constraints and Effective Bandwidths.

B: ECONOMICS.

Basic Concepts.

Competition Models.

C: PRICING.

Cost-based Pricing.

Charging Guaranteed Services.

Congestion.

Charging Flexible Contracts.

D: SPECIAL TOPICS.

Multicasting.

Interconnection.

Regulation.

Auctions.

Appendix A: Lagrangian Methods for Constrained Optimization.

Appendix B: Convergence of Tatonnement.

References.

Index.

Costas Courcoubetis is the author of Pricing Communication Networks: Economics, Technology and Modelling, published by Wiley.

Richard Weber is the author of Pricing Communication Networks: Economics, Technology and Modelling, published by Wiley. Recent advances in technology, combined with the deregulation of the telecommunication market and the proliferation of the Internet, have created a highly competitive environment for communication service providers. There is no simple recipe for pricing network service contracts in all contexts. Pricing is a complex subject, which depends on parameters of the actual market - including the degree of competition and customer demand - and parameters of technology, such as resource consumption, network architecture, resource availability, and cost.

Pricing Communication Networks: Economics, Technology and Modelling covers many important issues in providing new services, the relation between pricing and resource allocation in networks, and the emergence of the Internet and its pricing. It provides a framework of mathematical models for pricing multidimensional contracts with quality of service guarantees, and includes a useful background on network services and contracts, network technology, basic economics, and pricing strategy.

• Provides a broad overview of network services and contracts.
• Includes a primer on modern network technology and the economic concepts relevant to pricing and competition.
• Discusses mathematical models for multiplexing bursty traffic flows, and applies these to measuring network capability and deriving pricing strategies for services with statistical quality guarantees.
• Discusses definitions of cost for communication networks and explains the intricacies of cost-based pricing.
• Explains congestion pricing and its potential applications in the Internet.
• Illustrated throughout by detailed examples and figures.
• Includes coverage of specialist topics, such as regulation, multicasting, interconnection, and auctions.

Pricing Communication Networks: Economics, Technology and Modelling is an essential reference for graduate students, researchers and practitioners from electrical engineering, computer science, economics and operations research. It can be used by economists to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of network services and technology and by engineers and operational researchers to gain the background in the economics that is required to understand how to price communication networks effectively.