• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.21-35
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• 2009

There is a controversy on Internet pricing, flat-rate vs. usage-based. This study gives a comparative analysis between flat-rate and two-part tariff which is realistic alternative of usage-based pricing. In a basic economic model, two-part tariff based on ISP's cost structure satisfies allocative efficiency and relatively expand the number of subscribers. But the characteristics of Internet service like consumers' uncertainty on cost, measurement cost of traffic and network externality induce increase of cost or decrease of marginal utility. The analysis shows that small impact of these can make flat-rate more efficient.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.229-237
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• 2016

The purpose of this paper is to empirically identify whether unit bias exists or not under the flat rate pricing in the Korean mobile telecommunication market and to give the desirable form of pricing plans for minimizing this irrational behaviors. Our results show that with the flat rate pricing consumers tends to make more voice or data traffic over their optimal consumption level, meaning the existence of unit bias in the Korean mobile market. These results imply that under the current pricing plans subscribers may pay higher monthly fee than their optimal cost which maximizes their utility, for using the telecommunications service. Thus, policy makers need to consider adopting mobile operators' segmentation of the flat rate pricing plans for the reduction of subscribers' telecommunications costs and the improvement of consumer welfare.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.111-126
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• 2013

As the gaps become narrower in interconnection fee and volume rate, the MNOs began to introduce flat pricing for unlimited voice traffic competitively in Korea wireless telecommunication market : 'unlimited talks within intra-network' by the 1st operator, followed by the 3rd operator's 'unlimited talks over all networks'. As a result, subscribers tip in toward the third ranked operator and could bring a substantial change to steadfast market structure over the last decade in Korea. This paper aims to develop a simple economic model to analyze competition with flat pricing for unlimited voice traffic, and to check whether the pricing can be appropriate for the MNOs. The results show that MNOs already step in the necessary conditions to launch flat pricing for voice traffic. It also predicts that the MNOs compete with unlimited talk over all networks and set a single fee in an equilibrium. At present, the MNOs run virtually identical pricing for unlimited talk over all networks, considering their differentiation with respect to service quality, coverage and brand preference.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.6 no.11S
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• pp.3350-3355
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• 1999

Modeling for the Internet resource is important to use of limited resource efficiently. Also, the modeling could guide how we can approach the Internet problems. The many studies of price mechanism to internalize the externality, to decrease the externality from congestion, and to use the Internet resource efficiently, are widely going on. The represent styles for Internet pricing are usage-based pricing(UBP) and flat-rat pricing(FRP) and the FRP could prefers for the beginning stage of Internet introduce. The purpose of this study is to examine the efficiency of Internet pricing mechanism based on flat-rate pricing, both consumer and producer side.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.740-743
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• 2002

A flat-rate tariff for the high-speed Internet contributed to diffusion of the high-speed Internet in its infancy. But, according as the number of subscriber becomes over 9.20 million and the market arrives the maturity of market, the problems of flat-rate tariff begins appear and can be summarized as follows; as unfair payment, inefficience of resources distribution, and subsidy of tariff from light users to heavy users. Therefore, we need to find an efficient Internet pricing and then would like to find the implication about the pricing strategy by examining foreign cases that work usage-based pricing.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.133-152
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• 2009

This paper analyze the fee structures of digital music contents and the revenue sharing ratios that are now on-going debates in Korean digital contents industry. Especially we consider Korean situation where copyrighters and telecom companies have conflict of interest. We found two major results. First, the choice between the flat rate scheme and the usage-based rate scheme is not important to telecom companies and copyrighters. The important thing is that copyrighters should decide the revenue sharing ratio and given that telecom companies should decide the retail price. Consequently, this way can lead to win-win solutions between them. Second, the flat rate scheme affects the relationship between consumers and telecom companies. Under the flat rate scheme, telecom companies have more benefits than consumers. In the vertical integrated structure, particularly, this tendency is more severe.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.179-179
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• 2004

In the near future we can expect a change in charging the Internet service. The flat charging maybe replaced with a usage-based charging. In line with this movement, we propose a method of charging the assured-quality Internet services for the next generation network by introducing a UBC (usage-based charging) scheme over the conventional flat charging platform. First, we investigate the attribute of elastic traffic generated by assured services in IP network. Next, we propose a new method to relate the bandwidth usage with the pricing for the elastic traffic, which is based partially on the usage rate of the network bandwidth. Next, we propose a charging function for elastic traffic, which is applicable to any type of assured Internet services. Finally, we discuss the implication of the work via simple numerical experiments.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.21-28
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• 2004

In the near future we can expect a change in charging the Internet service. The flat charging maybe replaced with a usage-based charging. In line with this movement, we propose a method of charging the assured-quality Internet services for the next generation network by introducing a UBC (usage-based charging) scheme over the conventional flat charging platform. First, we investigate the attribute of elastic traffic generated by assured services in IP network. Next, we propose a new method to relate the bandwidth usage with the pricing for the elastic traffic, which is based partially on the usage rate of the network bandwidth. Next, we propose a charging function for elastic traffic, which is applicable to any type of assured Internet services. Finally, we discuss the implication of the work via simple numerical experiments.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.12
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• pp.2165-2172
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• 2010

This paper presents the operation algorithm of microgrid on the Real Time Pricing(RTP) for building the smart grid. RTP is higher power price variability than flat rate and time of use. However it has an effect on peak clipping and peak load shifting due to the increased price on peak time power demand. When the RTP are applied to the microgrid system, the proposed algorithm is able to be effective and economic operation. The implemented system is operated for the economic operation in microgrid connected with the power system. On the other hand, when the microgrid is operated on isolation mode, it focus on the improvement of stability and the power supply reliability of the sensitive loads. The test system are implemented and calculated on various operation modes based on non-dispachable generator output and RTP data for validating the proposed operation algorithm. The calculated results are compared to the implemented results using real-time simulator. It can be confirmed that the proposed operation system are identical results to the calculated one. When the proposed operation algorithm is applied to the system, it can be show the effectiveness of the peak clipping and peak load shifting and the improvement of economic feasibility.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.277-287
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• 2006

Most of the existing broadband access networks based on DSL, cable modem, and Ethernet support the best-effort internet access service, and adopt the flat rate pricing mechanism. It is almost impossible to provide the differentiated communication services, in current broadband access networks, for the different users and/or the different application services. Currently, however, the advances in multimedia, communication, and security technologies push the interactive and/or streaming multimedia services and VPN services to be widely deployed over Internet, and they require more QoS-sensitive services than the best-effort service. Though various QoS technologies such as RSVP-based IntServ and DiffSern were already developed and under standardization in Internet world, it is impractical to replace the existing QoS-unaware access networks with the QoS-enabled ones at a time to deploy QoS-sensitive services. In this paper, after analyzing current broadband access network architectures and the status of QoS support, we propose a practical approach to support multimedia QoS in the broadband access networks. The approach will be based on the integration of the differentiated pricing and the DiffServ technology. And it will be a step-wise approach to support backward compatibility with the legacy broadband access networks as much as possible.