University of Florida News – Study: Abandoning net neutrality discourages improvements in service and Study: No net neutrality, no ISP incentive
A game theory study out of the U Florida decision and info science department found a number of factors to support network neutrality. Based on the reports of the forthcoming article, many of the economics-like findings are sort of no-brainers (companies who have to double pay for access and consumers who prefer services which don’t pay for enhanced access are the “losers”). However, one interesting finding which also makes sense is that incentives for communications companies to enhance their infrastructure go down.
Improving the infrastructure reduces the need for online content providers to pay for preferential treatment, Bandyopadhyay said.
“The whole purpose of charging for preferential treatment to content providers is that one content provider gains some edge over the other,†he said. “But when the capacity is expanded, this advantage becomes negligible.â€
I hadn’t considered this, but again it makes sense. When controlling and charging for access to a limited commodity (bandwidth), the provider has greater incentive to keep that commodity limited. It seems as though, if we are to catch up with the better-connected parts of the world, removing incentives to upgrade our network infrastructure might not be a good idea.
I still truly enjoy how the breadth of this debate has brought out so many interesting perspectives. It may be occasionally painted as partisan, but in some areas the quality of reasoning has been remarkable.
