Smart Data Pricing

Chapter 15Asynchronous Content Delivery and Pricing in Cellular Data Networks

VIJAY GABALE, UMAMAHESWARI DEVI, RAVI KOKKU and SHIVKUMAR KALYANRAMAN

15.1 Introduction

Cellular and wireless data traffic have been growing at unprecedented rates over the past few years. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index [1], in 2012, mobile data traffic grew by 70% and was nearly 12 times greater than the total global Internet traffic seen during the year 2000. This growth trend is expected to continue for at least another 5 years, with predictions of 66% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for mobile data traffic during 2012–2017. In particular, video constituted half of the total mobile data during 2012 and is projected to rise to two-thirds level by 2017.

15.1.1 Surging Mobile Data Traffic and Declining Operator Profits

The exponential growth in mobile data traffic, especially in the form of video, is severely stressing the cellular backhaul and core networks. On one hand, emerging applications are bandwidth heavy and/or pose stringent requirements for end-user quality of experience (QoE); on the other hand, mobile network operators (MNOs) are unable to charge in proportion to the costs incurred by the higher demands and, hence, are faced with declining profits. MNOs are, therefore, on the lookout for solutions that can help to manage the traffic growth without degradation to end-user QoE and also boost their revenues. Some solutions in this direction that are in active exploration ...