More bars, more bang for the buck: Channel-dependent pricing for video delivery to mobile users

A great deal of research energy has been focused on the challenge of delivering high-quality video content to mobile users. In many over-the-top video services, however, the scheduler responsible for channel resource allocation is not aware of content characteristics or playback schedules at end user devices. Therefore, it cannot allocate physical resources in a way that maximizes video quality. For example, it cannot prioritize the transmission of a video frame that is to be displayed within seconds over one whose playback deadline is minutes away. Furthermore, for content that is to be viewed immediately, previous pricing structures that incentivize delaying network use to off-peak hours or WiFi offloading do not apply. To address this issue, we introduce a tiered link quality-dependent data pricing scheme for use together with usage-based pricing in wireless networks. Our pricing model encourages selfish users to prefetch video content during short intervals of good link quality, and use minimal resources when they have a poor link quality. This offers an economic incentive to video consumers to use physical resources more efficiently even with an oblivious scheduler, and leads to better overall video quality for all users in a wireless cell, as well as increased revenue for the wireless service provider.