To Accept or Not to Accept: The Question of Supplemental Discount Offers in Mobile Data Plans
To Accept or Not to Accept: The Question of Supplemental Discount Offers in Mobile Data Plans
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DOI：
10.1109/infocom.2018.8486386
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发表时间：
2018-04
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
M. Harishankar;N. Srinivasan;Carlee Joe-Wong;P. Tague
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文献类型：
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作者：
M. Harishankar;N. Srinivasan;Carlee Joe-Wong;P. Tague
随着互联网使用需求的增加，互联网服务提供商（ISP）已开始探索基于定价的解决方案来抑制数据需求。然而，很少有提供商明确考虑在非拥堵时段将闲置网络容量货币化的双重问题。PopData是威瑞森公司近期推出的一项举措，它通过在这些时段提供补充折扣优惠（SDO）来解决此问题，用户可以支付固定费用以换取在下一个小时内无限制的数据使用。这项工作是首次通过将用户和ISP的决策建模为一个博弈，同时考虑整个月的总体月度决策以及逐月逐时的决策，来评估SDO的益处和可行性。我们首先使用月度模型表明用户通常愿意接受一些SDO优惠，这使得ISP能够增加其收入。然后我们表明，用户在其计费周期内面临着一个复杂的逐时决策问题，即他们应该接受哪些SDO，因为他们不清楚自己确切的未来需求以及未来何时会有SDO。ISP在决定何时提供SDO以在用户决策的约束下实现收入最大化时，也面临着类似的挑战性问题。我们为用户和ISP制定了最佳决策标准，以决定是否提供或接受SDO优惠。我们的分析表明，用户和ISP都能从这些优惠中受益，并且我们通过对20个移动数据用户一周的使用记录进行数值实验验证了这一点。我们发现ISP可以利用用户对未来何时会有SDO的不确定性来优化其收入。
As demand for Internet usage increases, Internet service providers (ISPs) have begun to explore pricing-based solutions to dampen data demand. However few explicitly consider the dual problem of monetizing idle network capacity at uncongested times. PopData is a recent initiative from Verizon that does so by offering supplemental discount offers (SDOs) at these times, in which users can pay a fixed fee in exchange for unlimited data in the next hour. This work is the first of its kind to assess the benefits and viability of SDOs by modeling user and ISP decisions as a game, considering both overall monthly decisions and hour-to-hour decisions throughout the month. We first use our monthly model to show that users are generally willing to accept some SDO offers, allowing the ISP to increase its revenue. We then show that users face a complex hourly decision problem as to which SDOs they should accept over their billing cycles, since they are unaware of their exact future needs or when future SDOs will be made. The ISP faces a similarly challenging problem in deciding when to offer SDOs so as to maximize its revenue, subject to users' decisions. We develop optimal decision criteria for users and ISPs to decide whether to make or accept SDO offers. Our analysis shows that both users and ISPs can benefit from these offers, and we verify this through numerical experiments on a one-week trace of 20 cellular data users. We find that ISPs can exploit user uncertainty in when future SDOs will be made to optimize its revenue.