An economic model for a new broadband ecosystem based on fast and slow lanes

—Today’s residential broadband ecosystem is in stasis – Internet Service Providers (ISPs) suffer from low margins and flat revenues, Content Service Providers (CSPs) have unclear incentives to invest in broadband infrastructure, and users have limited dimensions (speed/quota) in which to compare broadband pricing. This paper explores the use of service quality capabilities, in the form of fast- and slow-lanes, for overcoming this stasis. We propose an architecture in which all entities have a say – CSPs request dynamic fast- and slow-lane creation for specific sessions, ISPs operate and charge for these lanes, and users control their broadband bandwidth available to such lanes. We develop an economic model that balances fast- and slow-lane pricing by the ISP with the returns for CSPs and service quality improvement for end-users, and evaluate the parameters of our model with real traffic traces. We believe our proposal based on dynamic fastand slow-lanes can represent a win-...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: NETWORK
• Authors: Hassan Habibi Gharakheili, Arun Vishwanath, Vijay Sivaraman
• Keywords: NETWORK 2016