Context-based application-aware pricing for composite mobile services in wireless networks

Next generation mobile services will be composed of services components offered by different third-party providers. Complex services ecosystems will be supported by partnership agreements that will explore different application-aware pricing models. Such pricing models are based on service description information and are a central enabler for billing. However these composite services pricing models do not take into account the context information related to third-party partner services involved in the user session. This paper proposes a charging technique, supported by context dissemination mechanisms among administrative domains, which enables application-aware pricing models to explore inter-domain contextual data present in collaborative service arrangements. The authors present a use case scenario and discuss how such model can fit in core network wireless broadband charging architecture through extension of charging interfaces via Diameter protocol.