Providing Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation in future IP-based networks is closely linked to the concurrent implementation of appropriate pricing and charging mechanisms. Thus, in recent years, a broad range of QoS-based charging mechanisms have been proposed, ranging from Paris Metro Pricing and effective bandwidth pricing to the Cumulus Pricing Scheme or the Contract and Balancing Mechanism. However, the strongly increasing interest in Quality of Experience (QoE/QoX) so far has not led to a comparable burst of research activity in the Internet Economics community. Therefore, in order to highlight this important paradigm shift from a charging perspective, we first will review the most prominent QoS-based charging schemes and provide some discussion on lessons learned. In the next step, we describe the imminent transition from QoS to QoX from an economic point of view and discuss recent proposals for pricing of QoX. The paper ends with an outlook on current and future work in this highly interesting research field.

From charging for Quality of Service to charging for Quality of Experience

Telecommunications research can no longer be considered to be pure communications engineering. The convergence of fixed-line and mobile telephony with the Internet together with the rise of novel technologies for rapid service creation has made economic efficiency and user acceptance/usability to crucial factors for the success of the telecommunication business as such. In the emerging new paradigm, a holistic view onto the entire value chain from basic architectural concepts over the efficient design and implementation of new services and applications up to the end customer is becoming indispensable. Within this broad interdisciplinary field, the present paper focuses on the evolution of corresponding concepts for service quality. Whereas the traditional notion of 'QoS' (Quality-of-Service) is already well-established and has led to a plethora of research work mainly in the area of network architectures and protocols, the quality of service design ('QoD') has by far not received comparable attention in the research community. Nevertheless, we argue that both concepts are equally important for achieving a sufficient quality of user experience ('QoE') which eventually leads to both economic viability and user satisfaction. To illustrate our claim, we discuss recent developments in the area of QoS-enabled next generation network architectures as well as novel user-centric service design paradigms, examples for the resulting QoE evaluations and a novel HCI lab approach which allows flexible user tests of mobile applications "in the wild".

From ‘Quality-of-Service’ and ‘Quality-of-Design’ to ‘Quality-of-Experience’: A holistic view on future interactive telecommunication services

Background: Most adults do not engage in sufficient physical activity to maintain good health. Smartphone apps are increasingly used to support physical activity but typically focus on tracking behaviors with no support for the complex process of behavior change. Tracking features do not engage all users, and apps could better reach their targets by engaging users in reflecting their reasons, capabilities, and opportunities to change. Motivational interviewing supports this active engagement in self-reflection and self-regulation by fostering psychological needs proposed by the self-determination theory (ie, autonomy, competence, and relatedness). However, it is unknown whether digitalized motivational interviewing in a smartphone app engages users in this process.
Objective: This study aimed to describe the theory- and evidence-based development of the Precious app and to examine how digitalized motivational interviewing using a smartphone app engages users in the behavior change process. Specifically, we aimed to determine if use of the Precious app elicits change talk in participants and how they perceive autonomy support in the app.
Methods: A multidisciplinary team built the Precious app to support engagement in the behavior change process. The Precious app targets reflective processes with motivational interviewing and spontaneous processes with gamified tools, and builds on the principles of self-determination theory and control theory by using 7 relational techniques and 12 behavior change techniques. The feasibility of the app was tested among 12 adults, who were asked to interact with the prototype and think aloud. Semistructured interviews allowed participants to extend their statements. Participants’ interactions with the app were video recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with deductive thematic analysis to identify the theoretical themes related to autonomy support and change talk.
Results: Participants valued the autonomy supportive features in the Precious app (eg, freedom to pursue personally relevant goals and receive tailored feedback). We identified the following five themes based on the theory-based theme autonomy support: valuing the chance to choose, concern about lack of autonomy, expecting controlling features, autonomous goals, and autonomy supportive feedback. The motivational interviewing features actively engaged participants in reflecting their outcome goals and reasons for activity, producing several types of change talk and very little sustain talk. The types of change talk identified were desire, need, reasons, ability, commitment, and taking steps toward change.
Conclusions: The Precious app takes a unique approach to engage users in the behavior change process by targeting both reflective and spontaneous processes. It allows motivational interviewing in a mobile form, supports psychological needs with relational techniques, and targets intrinsic motivation with gamified elements. The motivational interviewing approach shows promise, but the impact of its interactive features and tailored feedback needs to be studied over time. The Precious app is undergoing testing in a series of n-of-1 randomized controlled trials.

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Engaging Users in the Behavior Change Process With Digitalized Motivational Interviewing and Gamification: Development and Feasibility Testing of the Precious App

This paper explores social interaction features for Mobile Broadcast TV services. On behalf of a paired user study we evaluate peer interaction enablers such as text- and audio-chat, synchronized zapping and "See-what-I-see" messages in different contexts. We discuss their impact on the Mobile TV user experience and provide guidance on the design of Social Mobile TV services. Our results show that social features do enrich the mobile video experience despite inherent distraction potential. However, successful integration depends on effectively addressing the prevailing mobile terminal interface limitations as well as the diverse skill-levels and communication preferences of mobile users.

Social interaction features for mobile TV services

An improved system and method for communicating Presence Information. According to various embodiments, the sequence of actions undertaken in established Presence procedures are changed, and enhancements are also provided for Watcher information notifications. Upon the initiation of a Presence Service (115), the Presence Source (110) starts publishing Presence Information (150) about a Presentity using a soft-state approach. Instead of having publication occur first, the Presence Source (110) makes a subscription (125) for the Watcher information first or simply waits until the Presence Server (115) contacts the Presence Source (110). As a result, publication (150) occurs only when there is a demand therefor.

System and method for using presence information

The 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is currently expected to provide the basic architecture framework for the Next Generation Network which will bridge the traditional divide between circuit-switched and packet-switched networks and consolidate both sides into one single network for all services There-fore, the imminent commercial roll-out of IMS will have immense impact both for the migration of the core network as well as the integration of future mobile services and applications This paper presents an OpenSER-based experimental testbed which has been designed as a minimal standard-compliant IMS core network We discuss major practical requirements and describe our implementation of this "IMS in a bottle" approach Furthermore, we introduce a terminal-based native IMS location service enabler We argue that physical location data can be regarded as a type of presence information and propose an architecture which reuses a large part of the IMS presence infra-structure by applying presence mechanisms, like notification handling, access control and privacy management, to location data We demonstrate that the realization of this service can be integrated efficiently into the IMS core environment, and present initial evaluation results for the joint demonstrator Finally, important current and future challenges including migration, interworking, charging, Quality-of-Service, identity management, security, and regulatory aspects, are discussed in detail, thus ending up with an up-to-date research agenda

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Practical experiences with an IMS-aware location service enabler on top of an experimental open source IMS core implementation

Nach einhelliger Einschatzung von Netzbetreibern, Dienstanbietern, Equipmentherstellern und weltweiten Standardisierungsgremien ist das 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) derzeit der vielversprechendste Kandidat fur die grundlegende Architektur eines Next Generation Networks (NGN), welches die herrschende Kluft zwischen leitungs- und paketbasierten Netzen uberbrucken und beide Seiten zu einem einzigen Netzwerk fur alle Dienste konsolidieren soll. Daher ist die bevorstehende kommerzielle Einfuhrung des IMS von kaumzuuberschatzender Wirkung sowohl auf die Migration des Core-Netzwerks als auch auf die Integration kunftiger mobiler Dienste und Applikationen. Die vorliegende Arbeit bietet hierzu eine praktische Standortbestimmung aus Mobilnetz-orientierter Perspektive, wiesie im Rahmen des ftw.-Projekts CAMPARI in den letzten Monaten erarbeitet wurde. Der erste Teil des Beitrags dient einer naheren Vorstellung dieses Projekts, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die darin vorgenommene Realisierung eines Open Source-basierten experimentellen Testsystems als Minimalversion eines weitgehend standardkonformen IMS Core-Netzes. Im zweiten Teil werden sodann zentrale offene Fragen im Zusammenhang mit IMS-Vergebuhrung, Identitatsmanagement, Migration, Sicherheit und regulatorische Aspekte wie IMS-Notrufe und Abhormasnahmen diskutiert.

Hannes Weisgrab

Papers

Practical experiences with an IMS-aware location service enabler on top of an experimental open source IMS core implementation

Quo vadis, IMS? Das Projekt CAMPARI als Mobilnetz-orientierte Standortbestimmung für das IP Multimedia Subsystem

D2.4 Ethical and privacy guidelines for PRECIOUS system implementation