Influence de la tarification horaire sur le trafic téléphonique

As the evening peakload of trunk traffic became higher than the morning one, a new time-of-day pricing was initiated in France on June 1985. The effects of this tariff change on the traffic profile and the telephone revenues were previously estimated, using an econometric model, fitted from traffic observations provided by similar experiments carried out in Germany and Switzerland. This model, based on probabilistic choice theory, uses the Logit formulation adapted to the case of a continuous set of options (times-of-day), and provides simulations of traffic trade-offs due to changes in the time-of-day pricing. Data collected since June 1984 enable us to measure the actual effects of the new tariffication. Compared with the model forecasts, these observations show a good fitting for the 6 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. period (the 8 p.m. peak-load decrease is consistent with the forecast); in the late evening however, traffic is higher than expected. These new data allowed us to improve the formulation and the fitting of the model; these recent developments are presented here.