Near-optimal tariff strategy and billing system for voice communication on shared media

The increase in information services on shared media is creating an unprecedented demand for bandwidth. The shared media and backbone service providers are continuously upgrading their infrastructure to accommodate this demand. These services providers, however, are following some wasteful resources allocation strategies and are charging their customers at some predetermined flat-rate. These rates are too imprecise to truly motivate the users to employ shared media. This paper presents a strategy to efficiently use the bandwidth on shared media and charge the customer on the basis of used resources, network services and bandwidth.