Network Neutrality and the Need for a Technological Turn in Internet Scholarship

Abstract

To most social scientists, the technical details of how the Internet actually works remain arcane and inaccessible. At the same time, convergence is forcing scholars to grapple with how to apply regulatory regimes developed for traditional media to a world in which all services are provided via an Internet-based platform. This chapter explores the problems caused by the lack of familiarity with the underlying technology, using as its focus the network neutrality debate that has dominated Internet policy for the past several years. The analysis underscores a surprising lack of sophistication in the current debate. Unfamiliarity with the Internet's architecture has allowed some advocates to characterize prioritization of network traffic as an aberration, when in fact it is a central feature designed into the network since its inception. The lack of knowledge has allowed advocates to recast pragmatic engineering concepts as supposedly inviolable architectural principles, effectively imbuing certain types of political advocacy with a false sense of scientific legitimacy. As the technologies comprising the network continue to change and the demands of end users create pressure on the network to further evolve, the absence of technical grounding risks making the status quo seem like a natural construct that cannot or should not be changed.

How Evolving Network Access and Network Management Technologies are Redefining the Competitive Wireless Markets

“…Determining the allocation of prices becomes a complex issue. In fact, as (Yoo, 2006) asserts: "the theory of two-sided markets implies that the retail prices charged to consumers and websites, whether in the form of fixed fees or variables fees, need not reflect the benefits or costs of either side by itself", we should expect subscription and usage fees to probably be more difficult to determine because they also depend not only on users own sensitivity to demand but also on cross-network effects, due to the interlinking platform. All this shows that as enjoyable as Carlitos entertainment service consumption may be, the structures that determines how much he would pay, if anything, is becoming extremely complex.…”

“…One characteristic of such two-sided market structure is that the market is essentially affected by cross network effects between the two sides. This just describes the external effect over one group, for instance Carlitos and millions like him, when the size of the other group increases (Yoo, 2006). In just one example, an increasing number of service providers use the Internet to sell services such as VoIP, traditionally the domain of telephone companies.…”

Network neutrality in the European Union: A communications policy process analysis

“…autonomous driving) or similar purposes require reliable transmission. Accordingly, the theoretical definition of network neutrality do not match practical affordances (Wu & Yoo, 2007;Yoo, 2012)a dilemma that still demands for a policy or regulatory answer. Kr€ amer et al (2013, pp.…”