Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: telecommunications evolution and the set of actors
- 2 Mathematical foundations: optimization, game theory, auctions
- 3 Economics of access service providers
- 4 Economics at the content and application level
- 5 Interactions among network service providers
- 6 Interactions among content or application service providers
- 7 Relations between content/application providers and access service providers
- References
- Index
7 - Relations between content/application providers and access service providers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: telecommunications evolution and the set of actors
- 2 Mathematical foundations: optimization, game theory, auctions
- 3 Economics of access service providers
- 4 Economics at the content and application level
- 5 Interactions among network service providers
- 6 Interactions among content or application service providers
- 7 Relations between content/application providers and access service providers
- References
- Index
Summary
The evolution of economic relations between content/application and network providers
The previous chapters discussed relations of network access, service, or content providers with customers, and the competition for those customers. However, the different types of providers also need to interact in order to reach and attract users.
Content providers (CPs) and service providers cannot reach users without sending traffic through network providers; they need agreements (or regulation) to ensure that traffic transfer with a “sufficient” QoS occurs.
Network providers need the network to be attractive for users in order to increase demand and (as a consequence) revenue; this happens typically through applications and services those users want to consume. Thus rejecting traffic from some CPs might be done at the eventual expense of network providers.
Therefore, even if sometimes those different commercial entities compete or disagree (see the network neutrality debate, for example), network and content/service providers have to cooperate to run a successful business.
Up to now, CPs have been (or were) connected to the Internet similarly to users, paying a flat-rate fee for that service, mostly independently of the externality (positive through the added value to the network, and negative through the increased congestion) they create. Unfortunately, information about how much CPs pay for access is rare, if not inaccessible, probably because they are reluctant to reveal it to competitors.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Telecommunication Network EconomicsFrom Theory to Applications, pp. 239 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014