Limits To Certainty in QoS Pricing and Bandwidth

TL;DR

This paper examines the trade-offs between bandwidth certainty and price certainty in QoS-enabled Internet services, highlighting their mutually exclusive nature and implications for policy and universal access.

Contribution

It reveals the inherent conflict between providing reliable bandwidth and stable pricing in QoS networks, offering insights into policy and service design.

Findings

Bandwidth certainty and price certainty cannot be simultaneously achieved.

QoS improvements impact demand and universal service considerations.

Policy implications arise from the trade-offs in QoS provisioning.

Abstract

Advanced services require more reliable bandwidth than currently provided by the Internet Protocol, even with the reliability enhancements provided by TCP. More reliable bandwidth will be provided through QoS (quality of service), as currently discussed widely. Yet QoS has some implications beyond providing ubiquitous access to advance Internet service, which are of interest from a policy perspective. In particular, what are the implications for price of Internet services? Further, how will these changes impact demand and universal service for the Internet. This paper explores the relationship between certainty of bandwidth and certainty of price for Internet services over a statistically shared network and finds that these are mutually exclusive goals.