Telecommunications network services to educational institutions and government entities are…

Telecommunications
network services to educational institutions and government entities are
typically provided by a mix of private and public organizations. Many states in
the United States have one or more state agencies that are responsible for
providing network services to schools, colleges, and other state agencies. One
example of such an agency is OneNet in Oklahoma. OneNet is a division of the
Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and operated in cooperation with
the Office of State Finance. Usually agencies such as OneNet operate as an
enterprise-type fund. They must recover
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Telecommunications
network services to educational institutions and government entities are
typically provided by a mix of private and public organizations. Many states in
the United States have one or more state agencies that are responsible for
providing network services to schools, colleges, and other state agencies. One
example of such an agency is OneNet in Oklahoma. OneNet is a division of the
Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and operated in cooperation with
the Office of State Finance. Usually agencies such as OneNet operate as an
enterprise-type fund. They must recover their costs through billing their
clients and/or by justifying appropriations directly from the state
legislatures. This cost recovery should occur through a pricing mechanism that
is efficient, simple to implement, and equitable. This pricing model typically
needs to recognize many factors: convergence of voice, data, and video traffic
on the same infrastructure; diversity of user base in terms of educational
institutions, state agencies, and so on; diversity of applications in use by
state clients, from e-mail to videoconferences, IP telephoning, and distance
learning; recovery of current costs, as well as planning for upgrades and
future developments; and leverage of the shared infrastructure to enable
further economic development and collaborative work across the state that leads
to innovative uses of OneNet. These considerations led to the development of a
spreadsheet-based model. The system, SNAP-DSS, or Service Network Application
and Pricing (SNAP)- based DSS, was developed in Microsoft Excel 2007 and used
the VBA programming language. The SNAP-DSS offers OneNet the ability to select
the rate card options that best fit the preferred pricing strategies by
providing a real-time, user-friendly, graphical user interface (GUI). In
addition, the SNAPDSS not only illustrates the influence of the changes in the
pricing factors on each rate card option, but also allows the user to analyze
various rate card options in different scenarios using different parameters.
This model has been used by OneNet financial planners to gain insights into
their customers and analyze many what-if scenarios of different rate plan
options.

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