Demand for data in both wired and wireless broadband networks is doubling every year, inducing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to use pricing both as a congestion management tool and a revenue generation model.  This changing landscape is evidenced by the elimination of flat-rate plans in favor of $10/GB usage based fees in the US and various other countries in Asia and Europe. More recently, new monetization approaches are taking off, such as the Sponsored Content plans from AT&T and other ISPs in Asia, Africa, and South America. Consequently, Smart Data Pricing (SDP) is now playing a major role in the future of mobile, broadband, and content. The 6th workshop on SDP will provide an interdisciplinary platform for researchers in engineering, economics, and business schools to exchange novel ideas that jointly address the challenges and opportunities presented by the recent explosive growth in demand for broadband data.
SDP can refer to many types of pricing plans for Internet data transmission, with the goal of creating less congestion, better quality-of-experience for users, lower CapEx/OpEx, higher revenue/profit margins, less churn, and more usage and revenue for content/app providers. It requires developing pricing models that capture the interplay between technical and economic factors, interfaces among network providers and content/app providers, field trials, and a combination of smart ideas, smart execution, and smart policy. We welcome papers that contain any or all of these elements.
In addition to papers on the economics of Internet data transmission, we welcome papers that consider related areas, e.g., pricing in the Internet-of-Things, which will likely be a major component on 5G wireless networks, as well as the pricing of smart grids, cloud resources, and the sharing economy. We expect that the workshop will benefit from bringing together not only the attendees’ different views on pricing, but also technical papers on a variety of application domains.