Application neutrality and a paradox of side payments

Caron, Stéphane; Kesidis, George; Altman, Eitan

doi:10.1145/1921233.1921245

Cited by 33 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…In a previous work [19], we have considered users simply selecting the cheapest ISP (or choosing it randomly if price equality holds). However, this does not take into account the phenomenon of stickiness or loyalty of the users, highlighted in [20]. In the model considered here, user choices are influenced by the ISP subscription prices, but also by other considerations (reputation or preferences) that can be modeled as an additive noise to the main criteria determining the choice.…”

Section: B User Demandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Competition Between ISPs on the Net Neutrality Debate

Coucheney

Maillé

Tuffin

2013

IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manage.

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Network neutrality is the topic of a vivid and very sensitive debate, in both the telecommunication and political worlds, because of its potential impact in everyday life. That debate has been raised by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), complaining that content providers (CPs) congest the network with insufficient monetary compensation, and threatening to impose side payments to CPs in order to support their infrastructure costs. While there have been many studies discussing the advantages and drawbacks of neutrality, there is no game-theoretical work dealing with the observable situation of competitive ISPs in front of a (quasi-)monopolistic CP. Though, this is a typical situation that is condemned by ISPs, and, according to them, another reason of the non-neutrality need.We develop and analyze here a model describing the relations between two competitive ISPs and a single CP, played as a threelevel game corresponding to three different time scales. At the largest time scale, side payments (if any) are determined. At a smaller time scale, ISPs decide their (flat-rate) subscription fee (toward users), then the CP chooses the (flat-rate) price to charge users. Users finally select their ISP (if any) using a price-based discrete choice model, and decide whether to also subscribe to the CP service. The game is analyzed by backward induction. As a conclusion, we obtain among other things that non-neutrality may be beneficial to the CP, and not necessarily to ISPs, unless the side payments are decided by ISPs.

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Section: B User Demandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Competition Between ISPs on the Net Neutrality Debate

Coucheney

Maillé

Tuffin

2013

IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manage.

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“…In [24], we explore the effects of content-specific (i.e. not application neutral) pricing, including multiple CPs providing different types of content.…”

Section: Literature Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Net Neutrality and Quality of Service

Altman

Rojas

Wong

et al. 2012

Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Abstract. 2010 has witnessed many public consultations around the world concerning Net neutrality. A second legislative phase that may follow, could involve various structural changes in the Internet. The status that the Internet access has in Europe as a universal service evolves as the level of quality of service (QoS) to be offered improves. If guarantees on QoS are to be imposed, as requested by several economic actors, it would require introducing new indicators of quality of services, as well as regulation legislation and monitoring of the offered levels of QoS. This tendency in Europe may change the nature of the Internet from a best effort network to, perhaps, a more expensive one, that offers guaranteed performance. This paper presents an overview of the above issues as well as an overview of recent research on net-neutrality, with an emphasis on game theoretical approaches.

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“…Despite of its short history, a lot of of work on network neutrality can be found in computer science [10,22,6,12,24,16], economics [8,14], and law [26,25] literature.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their focus was primarily on a monopolistic ISP. Caron et al [6] modeled differentiated pricing for only two application types. Shetty et al [24] used a similar PMP-like twoclass service differentiations and considered capacity planning, regulation as well as differentiated pricing to consumers.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The public option

Richard

Misra

2011

Proceedings of the Seventh COnference on Emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies

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Network neutrality and the role of regulation on the Internet have been heavily debated in recent times. Amongst the various definitions of network neutrality, we focus on the one which prohibits paid prioritization of content. We develop a model of the Internet ecosystem in terms of three primary players: consumers, ISPs and content providers. We analyze this issue from the point of view of the consumer, and target the desired system state that maximizes consumer surplus.By analyzing the various structures of an ISP market, we obtain different conclusions on the desirability of regulation. We also introduce the notion of a Public Option ISP, an ISP that carries traffic in a network neutral manner. We find (i) in a monopolistic scenario, network neutral regulations might benefit consumers; however, the introduction of a Public Option ISP is even better, as it aligns the interests of the monopolistic ISP with the consumer surplus and (ii) in an oligopolistic scenario, the presence of a Public Option ISP is again preferable to network neutral regulations, although the presence of competing non-neutral ISPs provides the most desirable situation for the consumers.Lastly, the ISP survivability is an orthogonal direction towards the debate. Nevertheless, our findings reveal that even ISPs can survive, network neutrality might still not be needed.

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Application neutrality and a paradox of side payments

Cited by 33 publications

References 8 publications

Impact of Competition Between ISPs on the Net Neutrality Debate

Impact of Competition Between ISPs on the Net Neutrality Debate

Net Neutrality and Quality of Service

The public option

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