A Study of Non-neutral Networks with Usage-Based Prices

Abstract

Abstract. Hahn and Wallsten [1] wrote that network neutrality "usually means that broadband service providers charge consumers only once for Internet access, do not favor one content provider over another, and do not charge content providers for sending information over broadband lines to end users." We study the implications of non-neutral behaviors under a simple model of linear demand-response to usage-based prices. We take into account advertising revenues for the content provider and consider both cooperative and non-cooperative scenarios. We show that by adding the option for one provider to determine the amount of side payment from the other provider, not only do the content provider and the internaut suffer, but also the Access Provider's performance degrades.

Net Neutrality and Quality of Service

“…The CP's strategy is its charging to the users, and the ISP's strategy is the charging from both the CP and the end user. In [21] we find that if the ISP has the power to decide the side payment, not only do the CP and the end users suffer, but also the ISP's utility degrades. More precisely, we show that the only possible equilibrium would be characterized by prices that will induce zero demand from the users.…”

“…Motivated by [26], the authors of [21] investigate network non-neutrality with a monopoly ISP, one CP and a number of end users. The sources of income (other than side payments) are payments of end users (to both the ISP and the CPs), and some third party payments (e.g.…”

“…We extend [21] to incorporate the QoS of users provided by the ISP in the non-neutral model [23]. This QoS measure is different from those in [37,43] where more demands lead to a reduced QoS.…”

Application neutrality and a paradox of side payments

“…We studied in [4] some net neutrality related issues like side payments and premium service fees (e), limiting our consideration to monopolistic providers. We are now lifting this limitation with an extended model including competition between multiple identical providers (it is actually a generalization of the idea sketched in [4]-VI).…”

“…We are now lifting this limitation with an extended model including competition between multiple identical providers (it is actually a generalization of the idea sketched in [4]-VI).…”