Pricing of Bandwidth and Communication On Demand Services
Keynote Speaker: Jean Walrand, University of California
Abstract
Technology is available to provide bandwidth-on-demand services. These
services enable a host of new applications that users value and they
should generate new revenues for the network operators. The pricing of
such services is an essential component of their commercial success.
Pricing bandwidth is not a trivial exercise for a few reasons. First,
bandwidth is a finite divisible resource. Multiple users may compete for
that resource and value it differently. Second, providing end-to-end
bandwidth generally requires a combination of links that belong to
different operators. Third, the signalling between users and providers
cannot be exceedingly complex. In this talk, we illustrate some of the
main ideas and results from the research on pricing of bandwidth and
communication services. Our goal is to explain some key concepts with
simple examples.
Biography
Jean Walrand received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Sciences of the University of California at
Berkeley where he is now Professor. His research interests include
decision theory, stochastic processes, and communication networks. He is
the author of An Introduction to Queueing Networks (Prentice Hall, 1988)
and of Communication Networks: A First Course (2nd ed. McGraw-Hill,1998)
and co-author of High–Performance Communication Networks (2nd ed, Morgan
Kaufman, 2000). Prof. Walrand is a Fellow of the Belgian American
Education Foundation and of the IEEE and a recipient of the Lanchester
Prize and of the Stephen O. Rice Prize.
