Internet Tiered Services

As telecommunications products and services have become an essential part of - eryday life, consumers have at the same time grown intimately familiar with the concept of tiered pricing that is associated with such services. With tiered service structures, users may select from a small set of tiers that offer progressively higher levels of service with a correspondingincrease in price. Tiered structures have been applied in several forms to wireless services (e. g. , characterized by the amount of voice minutes, number of text messages, or the size of one’s circle of friends to whom voice calls are free), Internet broadband access (e. g. , the access speed or volume of monthly transferred data), and digital TV offerings (e. g. , the number of channels included), among others. Service tiering is a form of market segmentation which, if applied appropriately, bene ts both providers and consumers by making available services and associated price points that re ect the diversity in consumers’ needs and ability to pay. The purpose of this book is to develop a theoretical framework for reasoning about and pricing Internet tiered services, as well as a practical algorithmic toolset fornetworkproviderstodevelopcustomizedmenusofserviceofferings. We provide a comprehensive study of the design, sizing, and pricing of tiered structures for - ternet services, and we illustrate their potential in simplifying the operation of c- plex components such as packet schedulers.

Internet Tiered Services: Theory, Economics, and Quality of Service (QoS) presents a theoretical framework for reasoning about and pricing Internet tiered services, and develops a practical algorithmic toolset for network providers to develop customized menus of service offerings. The material includes a comprehensive study of the design, sizing, and pricing of tiered structures for Internet services, and illustrates their potential in simplifying the operation of complex components such as packet schedulers.

Specifically, the book addresses the following issues:

• Optimization of service tier selection and sizing, using fundamental concepts from location theory; several variants of the problem are considered, including deterministic vs. stochastic demands.
• Economic models for optimal pricing of service tiers that take into account simultaneously the (usually conflicting) objectives of users and providers.
• Models for optimizing "bundles of services," e.g., when a provider offers a service that includes both access bandwidth and data storage.
• Applications of tiered services in simplifying important QoS functions in the network, including fair packet scheduling.

Internet Tiered Services: Theory, Economics, and Quality of Service is a useful resource for engineers in the fields of Internet services, economics, and quality of service (QoS) in network resource allocation.