An Investigation of Telecom Mobile
Data Billing Plans
Department of Computer Science,
National Chiao Tung University Hsinchu
30010, Taiwan, R.O.C. liny@cs.nctu.edu.tw, {jyneda, banbandom, yong.cing723}@gmail.com Abstract In the recent years, mobile operators have provided
many billing alternatives such as limited
and unlimited billing plans, and shared and non-shared data plans for the users with different needs. A non-shared
data plan is designed for a single user with a limited monthly data
allowance. On the other hand, the monthly data allowance of a shared data
plan is shared by a group of users with multiple devices. The mobile
operators often conduct the primary price study to compare their billing plans,
which shows the relationship between the prices of the billing plans against
the fixed amounts of data usage. Although the primary price study can easily
and quickly draw the conclusions, it only provides rough billing plan
suggestions. In reality, the amounts of data usage are not fixed, and
therefore should be measured from commercial mobile networks to reflect the
user behaviors on data usage. This paper proposes an analytical approach by
using the measured data of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. (CHT), the largest
telecommunications company in Taiwan, to derive the expected payments of
various billing plans. The results of the analytical model are more accurate
than those of the primary price study, and therefore provide better
suggestions for billing plan selection. Other mobile operators can easily use
our model to analyze the billing alternatives with their measured data. Keywords: 3G,
4G LTE, mobile data service, unlimited and limited data billing, shared and +: Corresponding author: Yun-Wei Lin
Journal of Internet Services and Information Security (JISIS), 6(3): 1-26, August 2016 [pdf] |
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