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An Algorithm To Facilitate Uber-Style Dynamic Phone Tariffs (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new paper proposes an algorithm to help network providers furnish 'surge' pricing for mobile data and other network communications, citing a 50% shortfall between demand and capacity over the next five years as an indicator that consumers may have to be shepherded out of the congested times and areas in order for normal service to continue to be maintained. Just don't tell any of the people in charge of airport wireless networks.
Maybe it would be better if they followed the Amazon model where they built the infrastructure to support the surges and turned the excess into a viable business instead of mimicking a glorified bandit taxi dispatcher that has never been profitable.
They get paid more the worse their network is. Yeah, great idea, I am sure customers will love this.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Last year Uber quadrupled their prices for people trying to leave downtown Sydney during a hostage standoff. Uber style phone tariffs means that if terrorists kill 100-1000 people in a town, it will cost $50 for people to communicate their survival to concerned family members, because after all, that's what people will pay, right? So it's all good.
In theory. In practice, the result is that the provider is strongly encouraged to under-provision their network so they can charge extreme rates for normal use, citing "high" utilization as an excuse. So you end up with a poor experience at all times, rather than just during disasters.
It'd work well if we had some kind of requirement in place that mandated capacity upgrades such that the system only approaches max capacity less than x% of the time, where x is small. But that's not going to happen.