Mobile Data Services: Embracing Flexibility in Time, Location, and User Identity

This book is on mobile networks with the emphasis on mobile data services.

Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) monetize the scarce wireless spectrum resource, generating revenue through the provision of mobile data services to their customers. The traditional mobile data service is a three-part tariff involving a monthly data quota. This kind of service lacks for flexibility seriously, since it rigidly dictates the usage of data based on time, location, and user identity, limiting when, where, and by whom the data can be consumed. The severer market competition has recently forced the MNOs to explore more flexible data services from different dimensions. For instance, the rollover data service enables time flexibility by permitting unused data in the current month to be carried over for usage in the subsequent month. The day-pass data service enables location flexibility by granting users the ability to utilize domestic data while traveling overseas. The data trading service enables user-identity flexibility by creating a marketplace where users can either offload their surplus data or purchase additional data from one another.

This book will delve into the economic issues of flexible mobile data services. The authors leverage game theory to analyze users’ optimal behaviour, and design economic mechanisms for MNOs’ data service optimization. This book will introduce who ultimately reaps the benefits from flexible mobile data services—whether it will be the mobile users or the MNOs themselves.

Zhiyuan Wang is currently an Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University. From 2019 to 2021, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Information Engineering, from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 2019. He received the B.Eng. degree in Information Engineering, from Southeast University, Nanjing, in 2016. His research interests include edge computing, integrated satellite-ground network, stochastic modeling, and online learning. His research works have been published in leading conferences and journals, including IEEE INFOCOM, ACM MobiHoc, IEEE/ACM IWQoS, IEEE/ACM ToN, IEEE JSAC, and IEEE TMC.

Lin Gao is a Full Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China. He received Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2010, and worked as a Postdoc Research Fellow in the Network Communications and Economics Lab at The Chinese University of Hong Kong  during 2010-2015. His main research interests are in the interdisciplinary area between Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory, with applications in wireless communications, mobile computing, and networking. He has published 160+ papers in leading international journals and conferences, and co-authored 4 Best Paper Awards. He received the IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2016.

Biying Shou received her Bachelor's degree from the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University and her Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from Northwestern University, USA. Her research focuses on operations and supply chain management as well as network economics. She has published in leading journals, such as Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. She has also won several international conference best paper awards. Before joining CUHK-Shenzhen, she held the position of full Professor and Associate Head of the Department of Management Sciences at City University of Hong Kong. Currently, she also serves as an associate editor for Omega and as an Independent Director at Ningbo Jansen Superconducting Technologies Co., Ltd.

Jianwei Huang is a Presidential Chair Professor and Associate Vice President (Institutional Development) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He is also the Associate Director of the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society. He has been an IEEE Fellow, a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Communications Society, and a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in Computer Science. He received the PhD degree from Northwestern University (USA) in 2005, worked as a Postdoc Research Associate at Princeton University (USA) during 2005-2007, and worked as Assistant/Associate/Full Professor at the Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong during 2007-2018. Dr. Huang’s research interests lie in the nexus of network optimization, network economics and crowd intelligence, and he has published 360+ papers in leading international journals and conferences. He is the co-author of 11 Best Paper Awards, including the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications in 2011. He has co-authored seven books, including the textbook of "Wireless Network Pricing". He received the Chinese University of Hong Kong Young Researcher Award in 2014 and IEEE Communications Society Asia-Pacific Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2009.