Demand management for telecommunications services

Accepted versio

A mathematical analysis of the Cumulus pricing scheme

Theme 1 - Reseaux et systemes - Projet ArmorSIGLEAvailable from INIST (FR), Document Supply Service, under shelf-number : 22588, issue : a.2002 n.1466 / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueFRFranc

A Mathematical Analysis of the Cumulus Pricing Scheme

One important task in current and future communication networks is to define a suitable pricing scheme. It is then preferable to formulate a mathematical model, so that parameters will be optimized and important properties such as fairness or truthful anticipated load revelation will be verified. In this paper we study a simple and promising scheme called the Cumulus Pricing Scheme, which can address service differentiation and scalability among other issues. Our goal is to find out, from a mathematical model, parameter values optimizing the provider's revenue but under the constraint that each user has an incentive to reveal its anticipated load. This has led to a small variation of the initial model from the literature as, in our model, cumulus points are translated into financial terms, and measurements induce a cost as well