economics of shared data plans
DESCRIPTION
Economics of Shared Data Plans. Soumya Sen Carlee Joe-Wong Sangtae Ha. Issue: Sustainability. e-commerce. Google Amazon Apple Microsoft Facebook. m -commerce. c loud services. AT&T Verizon T-Mobile Sprint Comcast. wired. wireless. Issue: Demand Growth. Issue: Viability. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Economics of Shared Data Plans
Soumya SenCarlee Joe-Wong
Sangtae Ha
Issue: Sustainability
e-commerce
cloud services
m-commerce
GoogleAmazonAppleMicrosoftFacebook
wired
wireless
AT&TVerizonT-MobileSprintComcast
Issue: Demand Growth
Issue: Viability
• Spectrum Crunch• 108% Growth• Data Caps
Trends: Pricing Evolution
Trends: Shared Data Plans
Perspectives & Questions
• Is a shared data plan always better?• How to fairly share data across users?
• How to price shared data plans?• How many shared plans to offer?
Consumers Service Providers
Shared PlansDevice 1 Device 2
• Entertainment & Productivity device
• Child’s & Parent’s device
Shared Plans
• Devices have different marginal value for consumed bandwidth (v1, v2)
• Usage distribution: fi(ci), demand ci
• Different max usage (C1max, C2
max)
Device 1 Device 2
Shared Plans
• Entertainment & Productivity device– v1 < v2, C1
max > C2max
• Child’s & Parent’s device– v1 < v2, C1
max < C2max
Device 1 Device 2
Shared Data Plan Pricing
• Per device fee (by device type): g1, g2
• Bandwidth Caps: B1, B2, Bs
• Tiered (approximates usage pricing $10/GB):– {p1, p2} < ps (in $/GB up to cap)
• Overage fees: {o1, o2} < os (in $/GB above cap)
Devices Monthly Line Access (per device)
Smartphones $40
Basic Phones $30
Jetpack/Netbooks/Notebooks/USBs $20
Tablets $10
Overage Scenarios
• Demand loss above cap• Quality degradation, throttling above cap• Self-restraint by users on lower utility device• α of overage demand is lost
• Usage loss from lower valued (v1) device
3- Stage Model
Assumptions (relaxable): • Continuum of data caps to choose from• Log utility function: Ui=vi log(1+ci)-piBi
Choose between shared and individual
Data plans
Choose the data capfor the chosen plan
Adjust for usage loss(if needed) and
incur overage fees
Demand for data on each device
is realized
Direction of solution
Analysis: Individual Data Plans
• Compute (B1*, B2
*) and (U1*, U2
*)
User utilities:
Expected utility:
Analysis: Shared Data Plan (1)
Relationship between data cap, realized demand, and usage loss in overage regime
c2
c1
(c1, c2)
Case 2:
No demand loss
c2
c1
(c1, c2)
Demand loss
Case 1: c2
c1
(c1, c2)
Demand loss
Case 3:
Analysis: Shared Data Plan (2)• Shared plan allows
adjustments across devices
• Compute Bs*, Us
* in each region and select the best option
• Use E(Us*), E(U1
*+U2* )
to choose shared vs individual data plans
Example Usage Stats
• 19 iPhone, 15 iPads• iPad users: β~(0.348, 0.408)• iPhone users: β~(0.515, 0.191)
Consumer Choice: Non-trivial
Indv. Indv.
Shared
Correct choice of shared or individual plan depends on demand loss in overage regime due to behavioral factors (user’s self-restraint) and technological factors (performance degradation from throttling)
Robustness: Tiered Data Plans
Consumer choice can be even more complicated for tiered data plans
Indv.
Indv.
Shared
Shared
The budget choices are B1 = 0.2, 1 and B2 = 0.5, 1.5 (in GB)
Future Directions
• Is a shared data plan always better?• How to fairly share data across users?
• How to price shared data plans?• What shared data caps to offer?
Consumers Service Providers
“Fair” sharing• Build “fairness” into the system• Allow “priorities”• Use dynamic planning to increase “efficiency”
40%
35%
25% 20%
48%
33%
Alice
Bob
Chris
Chris
Empowering Consumers
Daily allocationby users
+Usage alerts
Fair allocation by apps
+Usage alerts
Set cap. Set priority.
priority=1 Priority=2
ChrisAlice
Trial App GUIs
Personal Usage MonitoringShared Usage Monitoring Shared Usage Prediction
References• Innovating Access Pricing
– http://www.datami.com
• Industry-academia collaboration– http://scenic.princeton.edu/SDP2012/
• SDP 2013 (Workshop on Smart Data Pricing)– co-located with IEEE INFOCOM 2013, Turin, Italy
• DataWiz (free iOS & Android mobile app)– scenic.princeton.edu/datawiz/
Questions?Thank you!