Pricing mechanisms for Internet transport services:: a critical literature review

The future development of the number of Internet users and services is substantially affected by efforts aiming to reduce transport capacity shortages at all levels of the public Internet infrastructure system. The likelihood of congestion occurrences in the Internet does not depend only on technological Internet improvements but also on economic forces. In the latter context systematic approaches for setting prices for Internee transport services (ITS) are of special relevance. This paper presents a proposal for structuring the numerous approaches to pricing ITS found in the literature. Various of such approaches are evaluated in terms of the extent to which they meet price-related requirements of Internet access providers and end customers.