Business Commons^™

The Economics Of Network Neutrality, Nicholas Economides, Benjamin E. Hermalin

Benjamin E. Hermalin

Pricing of Internet access has been characterized by two properties: Parties are directly billed only by the Internet service provider (ISP) through which they connect to the Internet. Pricing, moreover, is not contingent on the type of content being transmitted. These properties define a regime known as “network neutrality.” In 2005, some large ISPs proposed that application and content providers directly pay them additional fees for accessing the ISPs’ residential clients, as well as differential fees for prioritizing certain content. We analyze the private and social incentives to introduce such fees when the network is congested and more traffic implies …