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.