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

有关网络中立性的辩论引发了许多问题，包括公平竞争、创收以及新兴技术的作用。在当前的公共商品、数据网络市场中，不同的相互竞争的互联网服务提供商(ISP)目前可以选择对来自远程内容提供商(CP)的内容和应用服务采取中立行动。此外，与中立性没有直接关系的竞争和合作问题也需要解决，例如，向小型蜂窝无线互联网服务提供商收取漫游费。这些问题直接影响到普通消费者面临的供应和价格。为了更好地了解这些重要问题，该项目旨在调查整合了经济、监管和网络因素的竞争与合作模型，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。一项研究重点是评估当对不同的互联网服务提供商和合作伙伴之间的交互模式采取非中立行动时，互联网服务提供商是否会有任何真正的经济优势。为此，该项目将共同考虑不同类型的蜂窝无线数据--通常涉及CP的某种类型的配额、订阅框架和广告收入的计划、通过到(最后一英里)ISP的网关的服务级别协议来体现的ISP和远程CP之间的边际支付、以及由ISP制定的物理层控制(例如，传输功率)，以根据不同的优先级和服务质量要求来服务于无线流量。它还将考虑促进同类提供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提供商。此外，该项目旨在调查如何最好地利用现有类型的真实世界操作数据，包括计量经济学和工作量(信息包流量)，以便为调查人员的模型提供信息。

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.