What are some of the emerging trends and challenges in mobile data pricing and billing?

The Future of Mobile Data Pricing: Beyond Demand-based Models: Personalized Pricing: Instead of blanket pricing based on location or time, personalized pricing could offer discounts to low-income users or reward efficient data usage. Data Sharing and Aggregation: Collaborative models where users share data allowances or pool resources could offer more affordable options. Blockchain-based Solutions: Utilizing blockchain technology for secure and transparent data management could revolutionize pricing models. Regulation and Consumer Protection: Regulatory frameworks could ensure fair and transparent pricing practices, while protecting vulnerable users from excessive charges.

The nature of engineering requires that a network be designed to support peak hour usage so what is not used during the rest of the day is spare capacity. It behooves service providers to have as flat a usage profile as possible throughout the day to make the best use of resources. Therefore, any mechanism that encourages time-shifting of traffic to lower demand periods is desirable. This can include off-peak pricing as well as caching or downloading of large content such as videos or file backups during low-traffic hours.

Network-oriented (i.e. network utilisation) and market-oriented (i.e. additional services) aspects should, in my opinion, be the price-determining factors.

In response to excessive use by some customers, some service providers have taken the approach of throttling access speeds. While in some cases this may be an approach to governing fair use, in other cases it's employed as a substitute for better engineering or managing of the network, resulting in frustrated customers.

The problems have been identified and some of them are unavoidable. Personally, I believe that the future will belong to customisable and mobile slices.

In mobile data pricing and billing, emerging trends include increased transparency and control over data usage. Customers demand clearer breakdowns of charges and more control over their data consumption. Challenges arise in implementing systems that provide real-time usage information while ensuring simplicity and accuracy. Balancing transparency with profitability for telecom companies remains a key challenge. As data becomes more valuable, ensuring customers have control over their privacy and how their data is used is crucial.

Pooling works very well in areas such as IoT or Smart City. Here, a large number of devices generally require small amounts of data. Individual outliers can be balanced out in a customer-friendly way. In the private customer business, the deviation risks are not yet easy to calculate. This inevitably leads to expensive misunderstandings on one side or the other. Long-term planning security and pooling are also contradictory in a world in which data volumes are growing ever faster.

A nice "playground" for the price designers. I think the cross-selling potential here is huge and new partnerships may be formed. Especially across media (e.g. mobile communications and energy), the opportunities here have not even been recognised for the most part...