Pricing of Real-Time Applications in WiMAX Systems

WiMAX/IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access (BWA) is a very open technology with different possible services that is likely to be widely used in metropolitan access networks in the near future. While the technical aspects of that technology are now quite well established, the economic implications of the introduction of WiMAX technology have received little attention. In this paper, we consider the problem of pricing WiMAX sessions: we propose some simple pricing mechanisms aimed at coping with congestion while maintaining a sufficient quality of service and/or yielding a sufficient revenue to the operator. Our mechanisms are evaluated under a specific model of user preferences and WiMAX situations, and the implications of some parameter choices are observed.