Net Neutrality Debate: Impact of Competition among ISPs

François Boussion (1) , Patrick Maillé (2) , Bruno Tuffin (3)

1 ENS Cachan Bretagne - École normale supérieure - Cachan, antenne de Bretagne
2 RSM - Département Réseaux, Sécurité et Multimédia
3 DIONYSOS - Dependability Interoperability and perfOrmance aNalYsiS Of networkS

Network neutrality has recently been the topic of an important debate, in both the telecommunication and political worlds, because of its potential impact in every-day life. While there has been many studies discussing the advantages and drawbacks of neutrality, there is no game-theoretical study dealing with the observable situation of competitive ISPs in front of a (quasi-)monopolistic content provider (CP), while it is a complaint from ISPs, and an illustration of the non-neutrality need. This paper provides a first game-theoretical analysis of relations between two competitive ISPs and a single CP, in the form of a four-level game, played at different time scales. This game is analyzed by backward induction. We show that while the complaint from ISPs is relevant with a such a competitive model, inserting side payments does not solve the problem.

Mots clés: Network neutrality; Competition; Pricing; Game theory

Domaines: Modélisation et simulation; Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]; Economies et finances

François Boussion, Patrick Maillé, Bruno Tuffin. Net Neutrality Debate: Impact of Competition among ISPs. COMSNETS 2012: 4th International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks, Jan 2012, Bangalore, India. pp.1-8. ⟨hal-00725489⟩