Price Setting in Two-Sided Markets for Internet Connectivity

Due to a lack of incentives, Internet peerings are a notorious bandwidth bottleneck. Through the use of direct interconnection and content delivery networks, content providers are able to provide better services to their customers. These technologies have a profound impact on the business models of internet service providers. Instead of competing for consumers and keeping uplink connection costs low, ISPs face a two-sided market in which they compete for EUs and generate revenues on the CP side of the market. This work presents a formal model for the providers' pricing decision towards content providers and discusses consequences for the Internet.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICQT
• Authors: Thorsten Hau, Walter Brenner
• Keywords: Content Delivery Networks, Content Providers, ICQT 2009, Notorious Bandwidth Bottleneck, Optimization