Manuscript Submission Deadline: 31 July 2009. 

CFP in PDF: http://www.comsoc.org/livepubs/ni/info/cfp/CFP_SI_v4.pdf

In pursuit of new revenue opportunities and to improve competitiveness, network service providers are offering new value-added network services, such as VoIP, video on demand, IPTV, and so on. With the increased competition, improving the quality of the offered services as perceived by the users, commonly referred to as the quality of experience (QoE), becomes very important to providers in order to reduce customer churn and maintain and increase their competitive edge. There are many issues that may impact users perception in many different ways. For example, government regulation on viewing IPTV may impact QoE in a way that may be difficult to measure with traditional tools and techniques. Similarly, the pricing strategy selected will likely to impact the QoE irrespective of the technical performance of the underlying network. Developing tools and techniques for accurately measuring, monitoring, and improving QoE in complex end-to-end networking infrastructure has become the focus of many industry R&D initiatives. QoE standardization is actively pursued by International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and industry consortia. At the same time, despite the considerable foundational progress already made, engineering QoE for existing and future network-based services remains a challenging research topic, hence, attracting significant interest from academia as well.

This timely special issue will bring together researchers from industry, academia and standard bodies to present and analyze this challenging and important area of improving QoE for existing and future network services. We are soliciting original research and survey articles written in a tutorial style comprehensible to all readers of the magazine regardless of their speciality. Submissions will go through an open call-for- papers and will undergo rigorous peer review process. Topics of interest include, but not limited to:

* QoE measuring, monitoring and performance improvement strategies for network services (e.g., IPTV, VoIP, VoD, Internet)

* Modeling of user satisfaction and tolerance to quality degradation

* Test-bed studies of QoE for networked applications

* Impact of user mobility on QoE

* Impact of radio and network resource utilization and management on QoE

* Impact of billing and pricing on QoE

* Impact of regulatory issues on QoE

* Measurement and optimization of end-to-end QoE

Prospective authors must prepare their original submissions in accordance with the IEEE Network guidelines to authors, see http://www.comsoc.org/livepubs/ni/info/authors.html. Authors should submit their single column, double-spaced manuscript electronically in PDF format by email to the corresponding guest editor (with cc to all the other guest editors) according to the following timetable (authors are encouraged to notify at least 15 days before deadline, their intention to submit a paper indicating title, authors and keywords):

* Paper Submission Deadline: 31 July 2009

* Acceptance notification to authors: 01 November 2009

* Final Manuscripts due: 01 January 2010

* Publication of Special Issue: First half of 2010

 Guest Editors:

 Dr. Jahan A. Hassan (Corresponding Editor), University of New South Wales, Australia, E-mail: jahan@cse.unsw.edu.au

 Prof. Sajal K. Das, University of Texas at Arlington, USA, E-mail: das@cse.uta.edu

 Prof. Mahbub Hassan, University of New South Wales, Australia, E-mail: mahbub@cse.unsw.edu.au

 Dr. Chatschik Bisdikian, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA, E-mail: bisdik@us.ibm.com

 Dr. David Soldani, Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd., Germany, E-mail: david.soldani@huawei.com