IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/itse13/88473.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reporting policies of ISPs: Do general terms and conditions (GTCs) match with the reality?

Author

Listed:
  • Grove, Nico
  • Agic, Damir
  • Sedlmeir, Joachim

Abstract

Technological progress allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to carry out network manage-ment practices in a discriminatory fashion without being detected by their customers. This creates an opportunity that providers will exploit this information asymmetry in an opportunistic way by blocking and/or throttling certain services and applications without informing their customers in an adequate fashion that their Internet service is a restricted one. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the extent to which reporting policies - as im-plemented through the General Terms and Conditions (GTCs) - of selected ISPs match with the display of discriminatory behavior by those ISPs as shown by Grove & Agic, (2012). Our analysis examines whether ISPs in Europe and the USA are informing their subscribers adequately about discriminatory traffic management. We, thus, analyze GTCs, signed between ISPs and their subscribers by applying a cross-country/provider approach, focusing on three main aspects of the contractual agreement: (1) availability of service, (2) obligations of the customers and (3) the contractual agreements concerning any intervention in services by ISPs...

Suggested Citation

  • Grove, Nico & Agic, Damir & Sedlmeir, Joachim, 2013. "Reporting policies of ISPs: Do general terms and conditions (GTCs) match with the reality?," 24th European Regional ITS Conference, Florence 2013 88473, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:itse13:88473
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/88473/1/773372814.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Crocioni, Pietro, 2011. "Net Neutrality in Europe: Desperately seeking a market failure," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 1-11, February.
    2. Mueller, Milton L. & Asghari, Hadi, 2012. "Deep packet inspection and bandwidth management: Battles over BitTorrent in Canada and the United States," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 462-475.
    3. Barbara van Schewick, 2010. "Internet Architecture and Innovation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262013975, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jörn Künsemöller & Nan Zhang & Kimmo Berg & João Soares, 2017. "A game-theoretic evaluation of an ISP business model in caching," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 803-818, August.
    2. Jörn Künsemöller & Nan Zhang & Kimmo Berg & João Soares, 0. "A game-theoretic evaluation of an ISP business model in caching," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-16.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sedlmeir, Joachim & Hopf, Stefan & Neuburger, Rahild & Picot, Arnold, 2017. "Convergent Digital Infrastructures and the Role of (Net-)Neutrality," 28th European Regional ITS Conference, Passau 2017 169497, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    2. Martinez, Luis & Alvarez, Oscar Alvarez & Markendahl, Jan, 2015. "Study of the potential impact of Quality-of-Experience based services on Net Neutrality principles," 26th European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2015 127168, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    3. Robb, Genna & Hawthorne, Ryan, 2019. "Net neutrality and market power: The case of South Africa," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(9).
    4. Patrick Maillé & Bruno Tuffin, 2017. "Preventing competition using side payments: when non-neutrality creates barriers to entry," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 3-22, May.
    5. Greenstein Shane, 2012. "Concentration in Internet Access and Entrepreneurial Truncation of Innovation," Capitalism and Society, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-33, November.
    6. Ricardo GONCALVES & Álvaro NASCIMENTO, 2013. "Next Generation Access Networks: The Post-Investment Conundrum," Communications & Strategies, IDATE, Com&Strat dept., vol. 1(92), pages 91-112, 4th quart.
    7. Gasser, Urs & Palfrey, John, 2011. "Fostering Innovation and Trade in the Global Information Society: The Different Facets and Roles of Interoperability," Papers 250, World Trade Institute.
    8. Bauer, Johannes M. & Shim, Woohyun, 2012. "Regulation and digital innovation: Theory and evidence," 23rd European Regional ITS Conference, Vienna 2012 60364, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    9. Bauer, Johannes M. & Prado, Tiago S., 2020. "Lessons from Innovation Economics for Digital Platform Policy," ITS Conference, Online Event 2020 224846, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    10. Kranz, Johann & Picot, Arnold & Roemer, Benedikt, 2011. "Unlocking the potential of the smart metering technology: How can regulation level the playing-field for new services in smart grids?," 22nd European Regional ITS Conference, Budapest 2011: Innovative ICT Applications - Emerging Regulatory, Economic and Policy Issues 52183, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    11. Stocker Volker & Knieps Guenter, 2018. "Network Neutrality Through the Lens of Network Economics," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(3), pages 115-150, September.
    12. Martínez, Luis & Álvarez San-Jaime, Oscar & Markendahl, Jan, 2015. "Net neutrality principles and its impact on quality of experience based service differentiation in mobile networks," 2015 Regional ITS Conference, Los Angeles 2015 146319, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    13. Grove, Nico & Agic, Damir & Sedlmeir, Joachim, 2012. "Network neutrality and consumer discrimination: Comparing ISP's GTCs and DPI application," 23rd European Regional ITS Conference, Vienna 2012 60403, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    14. Musiani, Francesca, 2013. "Network architecture as internet governance," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 2(4), pages 1-9.
    15. Shane Greenstein & Martin Peitz & Tommaso Valletti, 2016. "Net Neutrality: A Fast Lane to Understanding the Trade-Offs," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 127-150, Spring.
    16. Patrick Maillé & Bruno Tuffin, 2021. "Big content providers weighing on non-neutrality?," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 1-26, June.
    17. Peha, Jon M. & Mateus, Alexandre M., 2014. "Policy implications of technology for detecting P2P and copyright violations," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 66-85.
    18. Wagner, Ben, 2012. "Push-button-autocracy in Tunisia: Analysing the role of Internet infrastructure, institutions and international markets in creating a Tunisian censorship regime," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 484-492.
    19. Bauer, Johannes M. & Knieps, Günter, 2018. "Complementary innovation and network neutrality," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 172-183.
    20. Potgieter, Petrus H., 2014. "Alternatives to network neutrality: A South African perspective," 20th ITS Biennial Conference, Rio de Janeiro 2014: The Net and the Internet - Emerging Markets and Policies 106880, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Network Neutrality; General Terms and Conditions; Regulation; Telecommunications; User Discrimination;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • K23 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:itse13:88473. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.itseurope.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.