ABSTRACT
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.
- Chetty, M., Banks, R., Brush, A.J., Donner, J. and Grinter, R. "You're capped!" Understanding the effects of bandwidth caps on broadband use in the home. In Proc. CHI 2012, ACM Press (2012): 3021 -- 3030. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chetty, M., Haslem, D., Baird, A., Ofoha, U., Sumner, B. and Grinter, R. Why is my Internet slow?: Making network speeds visible. In Proc. CHI 2011, ACM Press (2011): 1889 -- 1898. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chetty, M., Tran, D. and Grinter, R. Getting to green: Understanding resource consumption in the home. In Proc. UbiComp 2008, ACM Press (2008): 242 -- 251. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chetty, M., Banks, R., Harper, R., Regan, T., Sellen, A., Gkantsidis, C., Karagiannis, T. and Key, P. Who's hogging the bandwidth?: The consequences of revealing the invisible in the home. In Proc. CHI 2010, ACM Press (2010): pp. 659 -- 668. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cisco, Visual Networking Index 2011 -- 2016. http://www.tinyurl.com/VNI2012.Google Scholar
- Clark, D. D. Internet cost allocation and pricing. In Internet Economics, eds. L. W. McKnight and J. P. Bailey. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1997. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Edell, R. J., Internet Demand Experiment: Technology and Market Trial. PhD Thesis, UC Berkeley, 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Electronista Staff. Verizon preps LTE femtocells, says it hits limits in 2013. Electronista (2012), 5 March 2012.Google Scholar
- Froelich, J., Findlater, L. and Landay, J. The design of eco-feedback technology. In Proc. CHI 2010, ACM Press (2010): 1999 -- 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Genachowski, J. New Rules for an Open Internet. FCC (2010).Google Scholar
- Grinter, R.E., Edwards, K. W. and Newman, M. W. The work to make a home network work. In Proc. ECSCW, Springer (2005): pp. 469 -- 488. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ha, S., Sen, S., Joe-Wong, C., Im, Y., and Chiang, M. TUBE: Time-dependent pricing for mobile data. In Proc. SIGCOMM, ACM Press (2012): 247 -- 258. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Heller, F. and Borchers, J. PowerSocket: Towards onoutlet power consumption visualization. In Ext. Abstracts CHI 2011, ACM Press (2011): 1981 -- 1986. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Holmes, T. Eco-visualization: Combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption. In Proc. C&C 2007, ACM Press (2007): 153 -- 162. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jiang, L., Parekh, S. and Walrand, J. Time-dependent network pricing and bandwidth trading. In Proc. NOMS Workshops 2008, IEEE (2008): 193 -- 200.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kim, T., Hong, H. and Magerko, B. Design requirements for ambient display that support sustainable lifestyle. In Proc. DIS 2010, ACM Press (2010): 103 -- 112. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mortier, R., Rodden, T., Tolmie, P., Lodge, T., Spencer, R., Crabtree, A., Koliousis, A. and Sventek, J. Homework: Putting interaction into the infrastructure. In Proc. UIST, ACM Press (2012): pp. 197-- 206. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Newman, J. Got bandwidth caps? Netflix has you covered. Technologizer (2011), 23 June 2011.Google Scholar
- Odlyzko, A., St. Arnaud, B., Stallman, E. and Weinberg, M. Know Your Limits: Considering the Role of Data Caps and Usage Based Billing in Internet Access Service. Public Knowledge White Paper (2012).Google Scholar
- Petersen, D., Steele, J. and Wilkinson, J. WattBot: A residential electricity monitoring and feedback system. In Ext. Abstracts CHI, ACM Press (2009): 2847 -- 2852. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pierce, J. and Paulos, E. Beyond energy monitors: Interaction, energy, and emerging energy systems. In Proc. CHI 2012, ACM Press (2012): 665 -- 674. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Roto, V., Geisler, R., Kaikkonen, A., Popescu, A. and Vartiainen, E. Data traffic costs and mobile browsing user experience. In Proc. Workshop on Empowering the Mobile Web, in conjunction with WWW 2006.Google Scholar
- Sen, S., Joe-Wong, C., Ha, S., and Chiang, M. Incentivizing time-shifting of data: A survey of timedependent pricing for Internet access. IEEE Communications Magazine 50, 11 (2012), 91 -- 99.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Shih, J., Katz, R. and Joseph, A. D. Pricing experiments for a computer-telephony-service usage allocation. In Proc. GLOBECOM, IEEE (2001), pp. 2450 -- 2454.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Standage, T. The mother of invention. The Economist, Special report (2009), 24 September 2009.Google Scholar
- Yang, J., Edwards, W. K. and Haslem, D. Eden: Supporting home network management through interactive visual tools. In Proc. UIST, ACM Press (2010): pp. 109--118. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- When the price is right: enabling time-dependent pricing of broadband data
Recommendations
Price discrimination in E-commerce? an examination of dynamic pricing in name-your-own price markets
The enhanced abilities of online retailers to learn about their customers' shopping behaviors have increased fears of dynamic pricing, a practice in which a seller sets prices based on the estimated buyer's willingness-to-pay. However, among online ...
Existence and computation of equilibria of first-price auctions with integral valuations and bids
AAMAS '09: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2We consider existence and computation of symmetric Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium (PSNE) in single-item, sealed-bid, first-price auctions with integral valuations and bids. For the most general case, we show that existence of PSNE is NP-hard. Then, we ...
Repeated Sales with Multiple Strategic Buyers
EC '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Economics and ComputationIn a market with repeated sales of a single item to a single buyer, prior work has established the existence of a zero revenue perfect Bayesian equilibrium in the absence of a commitment device for the seller. This counter-intuitive outcome is the ...
Comments