Techno-economic price-worthiness of mobile networks: a hedonic heuristic perspective

The present study is conceived to develop a model based on hedonic heuristics to deduce a performance index of service products offered by modern mobile telecommunication operators. The index so obtained includes the associated “price-worthiness” (value-for-money) aspects of the services; and, it is adopted to compare and evaluate the relative performance of competitive mobile networks deployed in a service area, supporting App-intense, smart, mobile-devices concomitant to traditional feature phones. Relevant operational details (such as technology-centric mobile-speed parameter of the services rendered) and the associated economic considerations are fused judiciously with hedonic perspectives of the users, in order to infer an overall performance metric for the mobile networks in question. Data availed from typical service areas in the U.S. relevant to specific mobile networks are gathered and a comparison of services rendered is made using the proposed measure. The measure of hedonic considerations specified here as the hedonic pricing index (HPI) leads to corresponding results on price-worthiness of underlying service products versus the techno-economic features; and, relevant aspects of certain incumbent networks in a selected service area in the U.S. are deduced, compared and discussed. Foreseeable limitations of HPI in ascertaining the mobile service performance are identified and discussed.