Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality
Net neutrality has been heavily debated as a potential Internet regulation. Advocates have expressed concerns about the pricing power of ISPs, which might be used to discriminate Content Providers (CPs), and consequently destroy innovations at the edge of the Internet and hurt the user welfare. Howe...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Conference Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2016
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/81935 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/41025 |
| _version_ | 1826113857142128640 |
|---|---|
| author | Tang, Jing Ma, Richard T. B. |
| author2 | Interdisciplinary Graduate School (IGS) |
| author_facet | Interdisciplinary Graduate School (IGS) Tang, Jing Ma, Richard T. B. |
| author_sort | Tang, Jing |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Net neutrality has been heavily debated as a potential Internet regulation. Advocates have expressed concerns about the pricing power of ISPs, which might be used to discriminate Content Providers (CPs), and consequently destroy innovations at the edge of the Internet and hurt the user welfare. However, without service differentiation, ISPs do not have incentives to expand infrastructure capacities and provide quality of services, which will eventually impair the future Internet. Although competition among ISPs would alleviate the problem and reduce the need for regulations, the problem is more severe in monopolistic markets. We study the service differentiation offered by a monopolistic ISP and find that its profit-optimal strategy makes an ordinary service "damaged good", which hurts the welfare of CPs. Instead of imposing net neutrality regulations, we propose a flexible and lenient policy framework that generalizes net neutrality regulations. We find that a stringent regulation is needed when 1) the ISP's capacity is abundant, 2) the profit distribution of CPs is concentrated, or 3) the utility of CPs and their users are not positively correlated. We believe that by allowing the ISPs to differentiate services under a well designed policy constraint, the utility of the Internet ecosystem could be greatly improved. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T03:30:05Z |
| format | Conference Paper |
| id | ntu-10356/81935 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T03:30:05Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/819352020-11-01T04:43:10Z Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality Tang, Jing Ma, Richard T. B. Interdisciplinary Graduate School (IGS) 2014 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP) Multi-Platform Game Innovation Centre (MAGIC) Network Economics Net Neutrality Net neutrality has been heavily debated as a potential Internet regulation. Advocates have expressed concerns about the pricing power of ISPs, which might be used to discriminate Content Providers (CPs), and consequently destroy innovations at the edge of the Internet and hurt the user welfare. However, without service differentiation, ISPs do not have incentives to expand infrastructure capacities and provide quality of services, which will eventually impair the future Internet. Although competition among ISPs would alleviate the problem and reduce the need for regulations, the problem is more severe in monopolistic markets. We study the service differentiation offered by a monopolistic ISP and find that its profit-optimal strategy makes an ordinary service "damaged good", which hurts the welfare of CPs. Instead of imposing net neutrality regulations, we propose a flexible and lenient policy framework that generalizes net neutrality regulations. We find that a stringent regulation is needed when 1) the ISP's capacity is abundant, 2) the profit distribution of CPs is concentrated, or 3) the utility of CPs and their users are not positively correlated. We believe that by allowing the ISPs to differentiate services under a well designed policy constraint, the utility of the Internet ecosystem could be greatly improved. ASTAR (Agency for Sci., Tech. and Research, S’pore) MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore) Accepted version 2016-07-29T07:20:33Z 2019-12-06T14:43:23Z 2016-07-29T07:20:33Z 2019-12-06T14:43:23Z 2014 Conference Paper Tang, J., & Ma, R. T. B. (2014). Regulating Monopolistic ISPs without Neutrality. In Proceedings of The 22nd IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), 374-384. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/81935 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/41025 10.1109/ICNP.2014.61 en © 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. The published version is available at: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICNP.2014.61]. 11 p. application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Network Economics Net Neutrality Tang, Jing Ma, Richard T. B. Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality |
| title | Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality |
| title_full | Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality |
| title_fullStr | Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality |
| title_full_unstemmed | Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality |
| title_short | Regulating Monopolistic ISPS without Neutrality |
| title_sort | regulating monopolistic isps without neutrality |
| topic | Network Economics Net Neutrality |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/81935 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/41025 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT tangjing regulatingmonopolisticispswithoutneutrality AT marichardtb regulatingmonopolisticispswithoutneutrality |