Journal of Internet Services and Information Security (Aug 2016)
An Investigation of Telecom Mobile Data Billing Plans
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.
