skip to main content
article

Economics of network pricing with multiple ISPs

Published: 01 December 2006 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how transit and customer prices and quality of service are set in a network consisting of multiple ISPs. Some ISPs may face an identical set of circumstances in terms of potential customer pool and running costs. We examine the existence of equilibrium strategies in this situation and show how positive profit can be achieved using threat strategies with multiple qualities of service. It is shown that if the number of ISPs competing for the same customers is large then it can lead to price wars. ISPs that are not co-located may not directly compete for users, but are nevertheless involved in a non-cooperative game of setting access and transit prices for each other. They are linked economically through a sequence of providers forming a hierarchy, and we study their interaction by considering a multi-stage game. We also consider the economics of private exchange points and show that their viability depends on fundamental limits on the demand and cost.

References

[1]
{1} Internet Mapping Project. 2000 {Online}. Available: http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/
[2]
{2} AS Internet Graph. 2003 {Online}. Available: http://www.caida.org
[3]
{3} The Australian ISP Directory. 2003 {Online}. Available: http://www. australianispdirectory.com
[4]
{4} Broadband ISP List. 2005 {Online}. Available: http://www.broadbandisplist.com/
[5]
{5} U.S. Nationwide ISPs. 2005 {Online}. Available: http://www.thelist. com/misc/usa
[6]
{6} R. A. El, E. Altman, and L. Wynter, "Telecommunications network equilibrium with price and quality-of-service characteristics," in Proc. ITC, Berlin, Germany, Sep. 2003.
[7]
{7} B. Hajek and G. Gopal, "Do greedy autonomous systems make for a sensible Internet?," in Conf. Stochastic Networks, 2002.
[8]
{8} P. Baake and T. Wichmann, On the economics of Internet peering Berlecon Research, Berlin, Germany, Tech. Rep., 1998.
[9]
{9} N. Badasyan and S. Chakrabarti, "Private peering among Internet backbone providers," Economics Working Paper Archive, Series on Industrial Organization, Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), Jan. 2003.
[10]
{10} F. Bernstein and A. Federgruen, "A general equilibrium model for industries with price and service competition," Ann. Oper. Res., vol. 52, no. 6, Nov. 2004.
[11]
{11} B. Charny, "VoIP providers face price war," Nov. 3, 2003 {Online}. Available: http://www.news.com
[12]
{12} R. Dewan, M. Freimer, and P. Gundepudi, "Interconnection agreements between competing Internet service providers," in Proc. 33rd Hawaii Int. Conf. System Sciences, Maui, HI, Jan. 2000, p. 6014.
[13]
{13} J. W. Friedman, "A non-cooperative equilibrium for supergames," Rev. Economic Studies, vol. 38, no. 113, pp. 1-12, Jan. 1971.
[14]
{14} D. Fudenberg and J. Tirole, Game Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991, 7th printing, 2000.
[15]
{15} G. Huston, ISP Survival Guide: Stratagies for Running a Competitive ISP. New York: Wiley, 1999.
[16]
{16} J.-J. Laffont, S. Marcus, P. Rey, and J. Tirole, "Internet interconnection and the off-net cost pricing principle," The RAND J. Economics, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 370-390, 2003, No. 130, IDEI Working Papers from Institut d'Economie Industrielle (IEDI), Toulouse, France, 2001.
[17]
{17} J.-J. Laffont, S. Marcus, P. Rey, and J. Tirole, "American economic review," Internet Peering, vol. 91, pp. 287-291, 2001.
[18]
{18} J.-J. Laffont and J. Tirole, Competition in Telecommunication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
[19]
{19} P. S. H. Leeflang, D. R. Wittink, M. Wedel, and P. A. Naert, Building Models for Marketing Decisions, 1st ed. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2000.
[20]
{20} W. B. Norton, "Internet service providers and peering," 2001 {Online}. Available: http://www.equinix.com
[21]
{21} W. B. Norton, "A business case for ISP peering," 2002 {Online}. Available:http://www.equinix.com
[22]
{22} W. B. Norton, The Evolution of the U.S. Internet Peering Ecosystem. White paper from Equinix. 2003 {Online}. Available: http://www. equinix.com
[23]
{23} A. M. Odlyzko, "Paris Metro pricing for the Internet," in Proc. ACM Conf. Electronic Commerce (EC'99), Mar. 1999, pp. 140-147.
[24]
{24} A. M. Odlyzko, "Internet growth: Myth and reality, use and abuse," J. Comput. Resource Manag., pp. 23-27, Nov. 2000.
[25]
{25} A. M. Odlyzko, "Pricing and architecture of the Internet: Historical perspectives from telecommunications and transportation," 2004 {Online}. Available: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/networks.html
[26]
{26} S. Shakkottai and R. Srikant, "Economics of network pricing with multiple ISPs," in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM 2005, Miami, FL, Mar. 2005, pp. 184-194.
[27]
{27} H. Wang, H. Xie, L. Qiu, A. Silberschatz, and Y. R. Yang, "Optimal ISP subscription for Internet multihoming: Algorithm design and implication analysis," in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM 2005, Miami, FL, Mar. 2005, pp. 2360-2371.
[28]
{28} C. Wolter, "Consumer VoIP price war heating up," Dec. 1, 2004 {On-line}. Available: http://www.xchnagemag.com

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Enabling Long-Term Cooperation in Cross-Silo Federated Learning: A Repeated Game PerspectiveIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2022.314826322:7(3910-3924)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2023
  • (2021)Analyzing the Dynamic Data Sponsoring in the Case of Competing Internet Service Providers and Content ProvidersMobile Information Systems10.1155/2021/66290202021Online publication date: 19-Jan-2021
  • (2019)Strategic Network Formation Through an IntermediaryTheory of Computing Systems10.1007/s00224-018-09906-863:6(1314-1335)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking  Volume 14, Issue 6
December 2006
247 pages

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 01 December 2006
Published in TON Volume 14, Issue 6

Author Tags

  1. Stackelberg games
  2. internet economics
  3. peering and transit
  4. quality of service
  5. repeated games

Qualifiers

  • Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)1
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 02 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Enabling Long-Term Cooperation in Cross-Silo Federated Learning: A Repeated Game PerspectiveIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2022.314826322:7(3910-3924)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2023
  • (2021)Analyzing the Dynamic Data Sponsoring in the Case of Competing Internet Service Providers and Content ProvidersMobile Information Systems10.1155/2021/66290202021Online publication date: 19-Jan-2021
  • (2019)Strategic Network Formation Through an IntermediaryTheory of Computing Systems10.1007/s00224-018-09906-863:6(1314-1335)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • (2017)Joint Caching and Pricing Strategies for Popular Content in Information Centric NetworksIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications10.1109/JSAC.2017.267216135:3(654-667)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
  • (2017)A game-theoretic evaluation of an ISP business model in cachingInformation Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-015-9619-519:4(803-818)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2017
  • (2016)Cost-Aware CachingIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2015.243329627:5(1316-1330)Online publication date: 1-May-2016
  • (2015)Dynamic pricing of call ratesInformation Processing Letters10.1016/j.ipl.2014.09.020115:2(237-242)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2015
  • (2014)Remote PeeringProceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies10.1145/2674005.2675013(185-198)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2014
  • (2014)Design and evaluation of cost-aware information centric routersProceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Information-Centric Networking10.1145/2660129.2660156(147-156)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2014
  • (2014)Price differentiation for communication networksIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2013.225817322:3(703-716)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2014
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media