Smart phones, tablets, and other video and music streaming devices fuel an exploding demand for network, cloud, and content services. Providers find it difficult to increase revenue to match the investments required to address this demand. The wireless networks are getting stressed and the quality of service suffers. The experience of other industries suggests that smarter pricing mechanisms might improve the matching of resources and users and the revenue of providers, thereby increasing user welfare both in the short term and long term. Researchers are exploring this possibility and a number of recent workshops on this topic attest to the perceived urgency of developing effective approaches.

This collection of papers presents the analysis of the pricing of network services and content conducted by leading researchers from industry and academia. The topics include the following: the tension between the users’ preference for simple tariffs and potential benefits of more complex schemes; the users’ sensitivity to quality of service and their willingness to shift demand; economic incentives for efficient caching and infrastructure improvements; and pricing schemes for content and for cloud resources.

Researchers will welcome this timely and broad coverage of Smart Data Pricing (SDP).

JEAN WALRAND

University of California, Berkeley, CA