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Abstract:
With the boom in bit-intensive and live streaming content in the broadband Internet ecosystem, the phenomenon of increasing and persisting congestion on the Internet is no longer a mere engineering possibility, but a grave and imminent reality in developed nations. To deal with this problem, "network neutrality" has become the focus of discussion among operators, academics, telecom regulators, and various interest groups in recent years. From an economic viewpoint, this problem is nothing but a combination of a congestion problem with a limited network capacity and the potential for anti-competitive behaviors by dominant Internet service providers (ISPs). Thus, from a theoretical viewpoint, it is not difficult to develop a set of "optimal" solutions. However, since the development and execution of such policy must take into account the ever-developing broadband ecosystem and changing market conditions, each telecom authority must develop its own solution. In Japan, where competition rules have successfully maintained competitiveness in the retail ISP market, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has introduced a co-regulatory approach that focuses on congestion control. However, it is flawed in that it lacks sufficient participation from the demand side. Using a web-based questionnaire, the author discusses the remaining missing piece in Japan's efforts to address net neutrality issues, that is, possible government action to disseminate relevant QoS information to individual subscribers.
Key words: net neutrality, best-effort, QoS, co-regulation, Japan's approach.
The rapid development of information and communication technology has facilitated Internet use considerably. In particular, with the expansion of broadband Internet, consumers have benefited from an ever-increasing number of applications that enable various activities, leading to the improvement of social welfare. In response to strong demand from users, network operators and Internet service providers (ISPs) have been aggressive in network investment for capacity expansion. However, due to the much higher pace of demand growth, which comes from the boom in bit-intensive and live streaming content, the phenomenon of increasing and persisting congestion on the Internet is no longer a mere engineering possibility, but a grave and imminent reality that may harm the user experience. For example, congestion on the Internet forces users to wait longer to download content from distant servers and makes quality of service (QoS)-sensitive applications, such as Voice over Internet Protocol...