In the pricing of network resources, network operators
and service providers aim at facilitating the use of the
limited network resources in a manner that would encourage
responsibility among the end-users and lead to the maximisation
of profits. The optimum tariff rates used for charging the mobile
services are affected by factors like the market forces affecting
the industry. However, the tariff rates generally increase with the
achieved QoS level. Next generation networks will offer higher
QoS, hence users need incentives to utilise the enhanced capacity.
In this paper, we propose a pricing approach that introduces
service profiles into a DiffServ-enabled network, whose prices and
QoS levels depend on the degree of congestion in the network.
The use of the UMTS connection admission control to support
the proposed pricing scheme is explored. An emulation testbed is
used to evaluate the scheme.