Managing Usage-Based Pricing in a Future Telecommunication Market

Abstract

We describe one scenario of a future telecommunication market in which Internet Service Providers and Internet users sell and buy services. ISPs specialize in niche markets offering certain telecommunication services under different usage-based pricing schemes. Users choose between those services on the basis of their current needs and QoS-price preferences. Since the service choice is a complicated task in a competitive environment we propose a software agent which purchases services on behalf of the user. The user agent is also supported by an agent for evaluating delivered services. At the ISP site, a flexible billing and accounting system exists. The design and implementation of this multi-agent system is investigated within the framework of the INternet Demand EXperiment project (INDEX), a testbed for analyzing the users demand and willingness to pay for different qualities of services.