IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/conchp/978-3-7908-2082-9_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Competition and Cooperation in Internet Backbone Services

In: Telecommunication Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Margit A. Vanberg

Abstract

This paper analyzes the strong network externalities associated with Internet services from a competition policy perspective. In the market for Internet services, network effects are so important that an ISP needs to be able to offer universal connectivity in order to survive in this market. To reach universal connectivity, new entrants to the Internet interconnectivity market need to establish a direct or indirect transit agreement with at least one Tier-1 ISP. The fear that a single Tier-1 ISP could abuse a dominant market position in a transit agreement with lower level ISPs is not substantiated by the analysis. Competitive forces in the market for top-tier Internet interconnectivity are strong. A collusion between Tier-1 ISPs to collectively raise prices in the transit market is also not likely to be stable because the prerequisites for a stable collusion are not fulfilled in the market for top-tier Internet interconnectivity services. The analysis supports the view that competitive forces in the transit market are working and can effectively hinder Tier-1 ISPs from discriminating ISPs that are on lower levels of the Internet hierarchy.

Suggested Citation

  • Margit A. Vanberg, 2009. "Competition and Cooperation in Internet Backbone Services," Contributions to Economics, in: Peter Curwen & Justus Haucap & Brigitte Preissl (ed.), Telecommunication Markets, pages 41-58, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:conchp:978-3-7908-2082-9_3
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-7908-2082-9_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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:spr:conchp:978-3-7908-2082-9_3. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.