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Implications of Zero Rating Programs on Consumer Welfare

Authors: Jialin Song;

Implications of Zero Rating Programs on Consumer Welfare

Abstract

In the past few years, Mobile Service Providers (MSPs), such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, have introduced several zero-rating programs, allowing participating Content Providers (CPs) to pay for data usage for accessing their contents on behalf of consumers. However, some worry that MSP may be incentivized to increase prices and reduce data caps of existing data plans after the introduction of zero-rating programs and thus hurt welfare of customers of a MSP's existing data plans. We develop a model-based approach to analyze MSP's profit-maximizing offering of data plans and the influence of zero rating on their decisions. We analyze a set of plausible scenarios on the changes of subscribers' data usage requirements and willingness to pay based on our observations of zero- rating programs. In each scenario, we carry out numerical experiments to examine the change of consumer welfare for each group of customers before and after the introduction of zero-rating program. Our numerical results show that consumer welfare implications of zero rating differ significantly for subscriber groups associated with different data usage requirements and willingness to pay. In particular, our analysis highlights the point that zero rating affects MSPs' ability to price-discriminate their subscribers, and the extent and implication of this impact depends on how data usage requirements and willingness to pay is correlated, and how the correlation is changed by zero rating.

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
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