NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Competition, Neutrality and Service Quality in Cellular Wireless Access

NeTS：小型：合作研究：蜂窝无线接入中的竞争、中立和服务质量

• 批准号: 1526133
• 负责人: George Kesidis
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-10-01 至 2019-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1526133&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NeTS; Small; Collaborative; Research; Competition

The network neutrality debate has raised many issues of fair competition, revenue generation, 
and the role of emerging technology. In the current public-commodity, data-networking marketplace, different competing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) presently have the option to act neutrally with respect to content and application-services 
from remote 'content providers' (CPs). Also, competition and cooperation issues not directly
 related to neutrality need to be addressed, e.g., roaming charges for small entrant cellular-wireless ISPs. These issues have direct bearing on availability and prices that ordinary consumers face. To better understand these important issues, this project aims to investigate models of competition and cooperation that integrate economic, regulatory and networking factors, particularly those of the still growing cellular-wireless context with its complex channel quality dynamics. One research thrust is to assess if there are any real economic advantages for an ISP when acting non-neutrally for different models of interaction between ISPs and CPs. To this end, this project will jointly consider different types of cellular wireless data-plans typically involving some type of quota, subscription frameworks and advertising revenues of CPs, side-payments between ISPs and remote CPs manifest through service-level agreements at gateways to the (last-mile) ISP, and the physical-layer controls (e.g., transmission power) enacted by the ISP to service the wireless traffic according to different priorities and quality-of-service requirements. It will also consider the problem of promotion of competition between like providers to reduce consumer costs, particularly how to regulate roaming charges to encourage entrant cellular-wireless access providers. In addition, the project aims to investigate how best to leverage available types of real-world operational data, both econometric and workload (packet-traffic), to inform the investigators' models.

关于网络中立性的辩论提出了许多关于公平竞争、创收和新兴技术作用的问题。在当前的公共商品、数据联网市场中，不同的竞争因特网服务提供商（ISP）目前具有相对于来自远程“内容提供商”（CP）的内容和应用服务中立地行动的选项。此外，需要处理与中立性没有直接关系的竞争与合作问题，例如，漫游费的小入门蜂窝无线互联网服务提供商。这些问题直接影响到普通消费者面临的可用性和价格。为了更好地了解这些重要问题，该项目旨在研究竞争与合作的模型，整合经济，监管和网络因素，特别是那些仍在增长的蜂窝无线环境及其复杂的信道质量动态。研究的一个重点是评估在独立服务提供商和供应商之间的不同互动模式下，独立服务提供商采取非中立行动是否有任何真实的经济优势。为此，该项目将联合考虑不同类型的蜂窝无线数据计划，通常涉及某种类型的配额、订阅框架和CP的广告收入、ISP和远程CP之间的侧支付，这些侧支付通过网关处的服务级别协议（最后一英里）ISP和物理层控制（例如，传输功率）来根据不同的优先级和服务质量要求为无线业务提供服务。它还将考虑促进类似供应商之间的竞争以降低消费者成本的问题，特别是如何监管漫游费以鼓励进入蜂窝无线接入供应商。此外，该项目旨在调查如何最好地利用现有类型的现实世界的业务数据，包括计量经济学和工作量（数据包流量），为调查人员的模型提供信息。