An Investigation of Telecom Mobile Data Billing Plans

Yi-Bing Lin, Yun-Wei Lin
+, Jo-Ching Wu, and Yung-Ching Wang

 

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
non-shared data billing

+: Corresponding author: Yun-Wei Lin
EC117, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 University Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300, ROC,
Tel: +886-3-5712121 # 31350

 

Journal of Internet Services and Information Security (JISIS), 6(3): 1-26, August 2016 [pdf]