From charging for Quality of Service to charging for Quality of Experience
Providing Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation in future IP-based networks is closely linked to the concurrent implementation of appropriate pricing and charging mechanisms. Thus, in recent years, a broad range of QoS-based charging mechanisms have been proposed, ranging from Paris Metro Pricing and effective bandwidth pricing to the Cumulus Pricing Scheme or the Contract and Balancing Mechanism. However, the strongly increasing interest in Quality of Experience (QoE/QoX) so far has not led to a comparable burst of research activity in the Internet Economics community. Therefore, in order to highlight this important paradigm shift from a charging perspective, we first will review the most prominent QoS-based charging schemes and provide some discussion on lessons learned. In the next step, we describe the imminent transition from QoS to QoX from an economic point of view and discuss recent proposals for pricing of QoX. The paper ends with an outlook on current and future work in this highly interesting research field.
charging quality of service quality of experience telecommunication economics next generation networks