Network neutrality debate

Abstract

Network Neutrality has recently become a major issue in the telecommunications industry as emerging services which need more bandwidth have continuously grown. It is frequently argued that network neutrality is necessary to guarantee fair competition, continuous innovation among content providers, and to protect the private information of end-users. However, some argue that it might reduce incentives for network operators to invest to upgrade their networks, and thereby the high quality of services (QoS) may not be guaranteed. Although network neutrality is a controversial issue that can affect the interests of the wide range of stakeholders in the Internet industry, current studies have only focused on the relationships between network operators and contents providers, without taking into consideration the standpoint of the customer who is one of the most important stakeholders. Therefore, this paper tries to empirically examine the Network Neutrality debate from the perspective of the end-users. We review the current approaches and then empirically examine consumer preference for the foreseeable broadband Internet services. The results imply that Internet access speed is the most important factor we should consider, and user-oriented approach minimizes conflicts between network operators and contents service providers.