Scholastic streaming: rethinking mobile video-on-demand in a campus environment

Innovations in micro-processor architecture and wireless technologies like 3G have given rise to the production of smartphones with computation, networking, and storage capacities that rival personal computers. These smartphones can support a wide range of media-rich applications that involve streaming audio and video. Emerging wireless technologies like LTE and Wi-Max have enabled even higher bandwidth consumption for mobile users. All these trends have led to a huge demand for smartphones among mobile users. However, the rapid increase of bandwidth-hoggin.g applications like video has severely strained the current 3G networks and may lead to degradation of cell phone voice and data quality or even dropped calls. One way to reduce this congestion is to offload the rich media data from the 3G network to other networks like Wi-Fi, which is ubiquitous in many college campus environments. In this position paper, we outline the challenges for providing mobile Video-On-Demand (VoD) services and propose solutions for optimal delivery of VoD services with incentives in a college campus. We outline strategies for dynamic pricing of mobile content based on available resources with the goal of providing customers a fair value for the services provided while utilizing network resources optimally