Enhancing IT investments productivity: Integrating network QOS and it indirect costs

Increasing productivity is considered one of the major driving factors for a successful business. From an Information Technology (IT) infrastructure perspective, obtaining an optimised performance of resources is expected to improve productivity. From a technical viewpoint, the introduction of Quality of Service (QoS) models have been perceived to optimise the performance of the organisation network backbone. These models aim to provide an acceptable level of service assurance to the newly introduced applications and services such as voice and video. From a management viewpoint, the proper management of IT investments indirect costs can lead to a reduction of the overall cost portfolio. Consequently, both benefits and productivity increase are likely to be realised. This paper introduces network QoS strategy within the hierarchy of business infrastructure. In addition, it aims to identify the relationship between network QoS and IT indirect costs. Such integration demonstrates how network QoS strategy can be used to control IT indirect costs as well as enhancing network performance

Information & communication technologies - panacea for traffic congestion?

As road pricing, telematics and logistics evolve, information and communication technologies (ICT) aim directly at making traffic flow more efficiently in a given infrastructure. Furthermore, the virtual world gives rise to new business fields and decentralised structures which affect the development of transport indirectly. While technological progress continues to drive qualitative improvements in traffic conditions, e-business and telework in particular have, for structural reasons, a much less pronounced effect on traffic than widely presumed. ICT helps in organising traffic flows more efficiently and plays a supplementary role as transport-relevant instrument, but it is not a panacea for traffic congestion.traffic, autobahn, ICT, LBS, mobile telephony

Social Equity Impacts of Congestion Management Strategies

This white paper examines the social equity impacts of various congestion management strategies. The paper includes a comprehensive list of 30 congestion management strategies and a discussion of equity implications related to each strategy. The authors analyze existing literature and incorporate findings from 12 expert interviews from academic, non-governmental organization (NGO), public, and private sector respondents to strengthen results and fill gaps in understanding. The literature review applies the Spatial – Temporal – Economic – Physiological – Social (STEPS) Equity Framework (Shaheen et al., 2017) to identify impacts and classify whether social equity barriers are reduced, exacerbated, or both by a particular congestion mitigation measure. The congestion management strategies discussed are grouped into six main categories, including: 1) pricing, 2) parking and curb policies, 3) operational strategies, 4) infrastructure changes, 5) transportation services and strategies, and 6) conventional taxation. The findings show that the social equity impacts of certain congestion management strategies are not well understood, at present, and further empirical research is needed. Congestion mitigation measures have the potential to affect travel costs, commute times, housing, and accessibility in ways that are distinctly positive or negative for different populations. For these reasons, social equity implications of congestion management strategies should be understood and mitigated for in planning and implementation of these strategies

Economic FAQs About the Internet

This is a set of Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) about the economic, institutional, and technological structure of the Internet. We describe the history and current state of the Internet, discuss some of the pressing economic and regulatory problems, and speculate about future developments.Internet, telecommunications, congestion pricing, National Information Infrastructure

TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE QUALITY OF SERVICE IN INTERCONNECTION

This paper analyses the structure of the Internet marketplace and the business relationships of key players involved in network services provision. A brief overview of existing pricing policies and research work in this area is presented and some new issues are introduced. We believe that the role of information asymmetry is critical when considering agreements for Internet access and interconnection. In negotiation and contract preparation, information asymmetry gives rise to adverse selection. The current structure of connectivity agreements does not address information asymmetries thus allowing the possibility of opportunistic behaviour in the form of moral hazard. Inasmuch as interconnection agreements involve sharing and/or exchanging network resources, either party will tend to exploit the agreement to its own advantage (i.e. conserving its own resources) and, possibly, to the detriment of the other (i.e. overutilising the other’s resources). The discussion focuses on interconnection agreements between Internet Service Providers, namely peering and transit. The paper concludes with an outline of an incentive compatible mechanism that can sustain quality of service requirements in interconnection agreements.interconnection information asymmetry

Economic Policy Analysis and the Internet: Coming to Terms with a Telecommunications Anomaly

The significant set of public policy issues for economic analysis that arise from the tensions between the ‘special benefits’ of the Internet as a platform for innovation, and the drawbacks of the “anomalous” features of the Internet viewed as simply one among the array of telecommunications systems, is the focus of discussion in this chapter. Economists concerned with industrial organization and regulation (including antitrust and merger law) initially found new scope for application of their expertise in conventional policy analyses of the Internet’s interactions with other segments of the telecommunications sector (broadcast and cable television, radio and telephone), and emphasized the potential congestion problems posed by user anonymity and flat rate pricing. Policy issues of a more dynamic kind have subsequently come to the fore. These involve classic tradeoffs between greater efficiency and producer and consumer surpluses today, and a potential for more innovation in Web-based products and service in the future. Many such tradeoffs involve choices such as that between policies that would preserve the original ‘end-to-end’ design of the original Internet architecture, and those that would be more encouraging of market-driven deployment of new technologies that afforded ISPs with greater market power the opportunity to offer (and extract greater profits from) restricted-Web services that consumers valued highly, such as secure and private VOIP.public policy, telecommunications, Web-based products, user anonymity