An Antitrust Analysis of the Case for Wireless Network Neutrality

The ongoing debate about possible implementation of regulatory rules requiring “network neutrality” for wireless telecommunications services is inherently about whether to impose a prohibition on the ability of network operators to control their vertical relationships. Antitrust analysis is well suited to analyze whether a wireless network neutrality rule is socially beneficial. Implementing network neutrality rules would be akin to using a per se antitrust rule regarding vertical relationships instead of the rule of reason analysis typically applied to vertical relationships in antitrust. Per se rules are used to prevent actions that rarely, if ever, have any pro-competitive benefits, such as price-fixing agreements. Rule of reason analysis is used when there are potential efficiency gains from the actions under investigation. Some vertical practices of the wireless carriers, such as bandwidth restrictions, may appear to be anticompetitive, but may also have plausible efficiency justifications so should be judged under rule of reason analysis. Economic examination of the wireless industry shows significant competition between networks which reduces the concern about vertical relationships, but some areas that should be monitored by antitrust and regulatory authorities. We propose several regulatory changes that would likely increase wireless competition and lessen the perceived need for prophlactic network neutrality rules while at the same time allowing efficiency-enhancing vertical relationships.network neutrality, wireless internet, antitrust,

Road User Charging – Pricing Structures.

This project considers the extent to which the public could cope with complex price or tariff structures such as those that might be considered in the context of a national congestion pricing scheme. The key elements of the brief were: • to review existing studies of road pricing schemes to assess what information and evidence already exists on the key issues; • to identify what can be learned about pricing structures from other transport modes and other industries and in particular what issues and conclusions might be transferable; • to improve the general understanding of the relationship between information and people’s ability to respond; and • to recommend what further research would be most valuable to fill evidence gaps and enable conclusions to be drawn about an effective structure

Public safety mobile broadband: draft report

The draft report was released on 23 September 2015. You are invited to examine the report and to make written submissions by Wednesday 28 October 2015. This draft report looks at the best way to deliver a Public Safety Mobile Broadband (PSMB) capability for emergency services that is reliable, interoperable and works across Australia. The final report will be released in December 2015. Key points Public safety mobile broadband (PSMB) holds considerable potential to improve how the police, fire, ambulance and other public safety agencies (PSAs) deliver their services. It will allow frontline officers to access high-speed video, images, location tracking and much more. PSAs currently rely on their own radio networks for voice communications and some low-speed data. Mobile broadband use has been modest due to concerns that the quality of commercial services is insufficient to support \u27mission critical\u27 operations. The network capacity that PSAs require is uncertain. PSAs are seeking a higher quality of service than what is currently available on commercial networks. However, the standards required (in terms of coverage, reliability, security, priority access and so on) are not specific. There are many ways to provide a PSMB capability, including the construction of a dedicated network, a commercial approach, or some combination (hybrid) of the two. A dedicated network would give PSAs access to (and control over) their own PSMB network using their own parcel of spectrum. A commercial approach would mean that PSAs obtain PSMB services from one or more of the commercial mobile carriers through a contract for service. The Commission has undertaken an illustrative evaluation of the costs of several specific delivery options over a 20-year period. The cost of a dedicated network was estimated to be in the order of $6.1 billion, compared to$2.1 billion for a commercial option. Even the lowest-cost hybrid option is twice as expensive as a commercial option. A commercial option is cheaper because it requires significantly less \u27new investment\u27 than a dedicated or hybrid option as considerable existing infrastructure could be used or shared. Risk factors also influence the relative merits of different options. A dedicated network would likely take longer to deliver and offer less flexibility to scale up network capacity in the short term, relative to other options. Providing priority services under commercial or hybrid options would be more technically complex than under a dedicated option. There are also commercial risks arising from limited competition and supplier \u27lock-in\u27. The benefits of each option are not expected to vary markedly, since the options under evaluation have been designed to deliver a similar level of PSMB capability. On that basis, the cost evaluation is likely to provide the best guide to net community benefit for each option. On first principles, a commercial approach represents the most efficient, effective and economical way of delivering a PSMB capability to PSAs. Small-scale trials would provide an opportunity for jurisdictions to gain confidence in a commercial approach; gauge the costs, benefits and risks of PSMB; and develop a business case for a wider-scale roll out. Competitive procurement is essential. Splitting up tenders, leveraging infrastructure assets and insisting on open technology standards can help governments secure value for money. Achieving interoperability will require jurisdictions to agree on common technical standards. PSAs will also need to adapt their operations to make the most of PSMB. This includes protocols for sharing information and network capacity among agencies. Spectrum allocation is an Australian Government responsibility. Any spectrum made available for PSMB should be priced at its opportunity cost to support its efficient use

The Economics of Regulating Cellular Phones in Vehicles

Regulation of the use of cellular phones by individuals while driving is now commonplace outside the United States and has been proposed in a number of jurisdictions in the United States. There is growing concern that using cellular phones while driving leads to increases in accidents and fatalities. This paper provides an economic analysis of regulatory options for addressing cellular phone usage by drivers of vehicles. While large uncertainties surrounding both benefits and costs exist, a key conclusion is that banning drivers from using cellular phones is a bad idea. Our best estimate is that the costs of a ban are likely to exceed benefits by more than $20 billion annually. Less intrusive regulation, such as requiring the use of a hands-free device that would allow a driver to use both hands for steering also is not likely to be economically justified. We are doubtful that the net benefits from a ban on drivers using hand-held phones or a mandate requiring the use of hands-free devices would be positive for three reasons. First, the results of our quantitative benefit-cost analysis suggest that costs are likely to exceed benefits. Second, our best estimates of accidents and fatality reductions do not take into account how drivers would alter their behavior in response to regulation. If regulations were enforced, drivers may simply switch to other risky behaviors. Thus, the net reductions in accidents and fatalities are likely to be overstated, which means the benefits of regulatory interventions could be quite small. Third, the technology is already moving in the direction of voice activation, which is likely to reduce risks. Instead of regulating now, the federal government and the states should collect more systematic information on the relationship between cellular phone use by individuals while driving and accidents. Specifically, governments should attempt to improve estimates of the number of accidents and fatalities associated with cellular phone use. It is possible that accidents are underestimated now. Moreover, an argument can be made that accidents will increase more than linearly as more drivers use cellular phones in vehicles. The federal government should also assess the benefits and costs of introducing promising new technologies that could reduce the risks of accidents associated with drivers' using cellular phones in vehicles.

Mobile agent based distributed network management : modeling, methodologies and applications

The explosive growth of the Internet and the continued dramatic increase for all wireless services are fueling the demand for increased capacity, data rates, support of multimedia services, and support for different Quality of Services (QoS) requirements for different classes of services. Furthermore future communication networks will be strongly characterized by heterogeneity. In order to meet the objectives of instant adaptability to the users\u27 requirements and of interoperability and seamless operation within the heterogeneous networking environments, flexibility in terms of network and resource management will be a key design issue. The new emerging technology of mobile agent (MA) has arisen in the distributed programming field as a potential flexible way of managing resources of a distributed system, and is a challenging opportunity for delivering more flexible services and dealing with network programmability. This dissertation mainly focuses on: a) the design of models that provide a generic framework for the evaluation and analysis of the performance and tradeoffs of the mobile agent management paradigm; b) the development of MA based resource and network management applications. First, in order to demonstrate the use and benefits of the mobile agent based management paradigm in the network and resource management process, a commercial application of a multioperator network is introduced, and the use of agents to provide the underlying framework and structure for its implementation and deployment is investigated. Then, a general analytical model and framework for the evaluation of various network management paradigms is introduced and discussed. It is also illustrated how the developed analytical framework can be used to quantitatively evaluate the performances and tradeoffs in the various computing paradigms. Furthermore, the design tradeoffs for choosing the MA based management paradigm to develop a flexible resource management scheme in wireless networks is discussed and evaluated. The integration of an advanced bandwidth reservation mechanism with a bandwidth reconfiguration based call admission control strategy is also proposed. A framework based on the technology of mobile agents, is introduced for the efficient implementation of the proposed integrated resource and QoS management, while the achievable performance of the overall proposed management scheme is evaluated via modeling and simulation. Finally the use of a distributed cooperative scheme among the mobile agents that can be applied in the future wireless networks is proposed and demonstrated, to improve the energy consumption for the routine management processes of mobile terminals, by adopting the peer-to-peer communication concept of wireless ad-hoc networks. The performance evaluation process and the corresponding numerical results demonstrate the significant system energy savings, while several design issues and tradeoffs of the proposed scheme, such as the fairness of the mobile agents involved in the management activity, are discussed and evaluated

Telecommunication reforms, access regulation, and Internet adoption in Latin America

The authors review the stylized facts on regulatory reform in telecommunications and its effects on telecommunications development and Internet penetration in Latin America. Relying on data from the International Telecommunication Union, the Information for Development Program (InfoDev), and the World Bank for 1990-99, the authors then test econometrically the determinants of the differences in Internet penetration rates across Latin America. The results show that effective implementation of the reform agenda in telecommunications regulation could accelerate adoption of the Internet in Latin America-even though it is only part of the solution (income levels, income distribution, and access to primary infrastructure are the main determinants of growth in Internet connections and use). Regulation will work by cutting costs. Cost cutting will require that regulators in the region take a much closer look at the design of interconnection rules and at the tradeoffs that emerge from the complex issues involved. It will also require a commitment to developing analytical instruments, such as cost models, to sort out many of the problems. Appropriate cost models will generate benchmarks that are much more consistent with the local issues and with the local cost of capital than international benchmarks will ever be for countries in unstable macroeconomic situations. Cost cutting will require an equally strong commitment to imposing regulatory accounting systems that reduce the information asymmetrics that incumbents use to reduce the risks of entry. All these changes will ultimately require a stronger commitment by competition agencies, since in many countries a failure to negotiate interconnection agreements will raise competition issues just as often as it will raise regulatory questions.Rural Communications,Information Technology,Telecommunications Infrastructure,Knowledge Economy,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Knowledge Economy,Information Technology,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Rural Communications,Education for the Knowledge Economy

The Centripetal Network: How the Internet Holds Itself Together, and the Forces Tearing It Apart

Two forces are in tension as the Internet evolves. One pushes toward interconnected common platforms; the other pulls toward fragmentation and proprietary alternatives. Their interplay drives many of the contentious issues in cyberlaw, intellectual property, and telecommunications policy, including the fight over network neutrality for broadband providers, debates over global Internet governance, and battles over copyright online. These are more than just conflicts between incumbents and innovators, or between openness and deregulation. Their roots lie in the fundamental dynamics of interconnected networks. Fortunately, there is an interdisciplinary literature on network properties, albeit one virtually unknown to legal scholars. The emerging field of network formation theory explains the pressures threatening to pull the Internet apart, and suggests responses. The Internet as we know it is surprisingly fragile. To continue the extraordinary outpouring of creativity and innovation that the Internet fosters, policy-makers must protect its composite structure against both fragmentation and excessive concentration of power. This paper, the first to apply network formation models to Internet law, shows how the Internet pulls itself together as a coherent whole. This very process, however, creates and magnifies imbalances that encourage balkanization. By understanding how networks behave, governments and other legal decision-makers can avoid unintended consequences and target their actions appropriately. A network-theoretic perspective holds great promise to inform the law and policy of the information economy

The Economics of “Wireless Net Neutrality”

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