The Economics of Utility Services in the Future Internet
Man-Sze Li · IOS Press eBooks · 2010
“Utility” is by no means new a new concept in ICT. At the time of writing, the European Union is putting forward the argument to extend “universal service” to broadband communication services. The universal service argument may in future be extended beyond broadband to other Internet services, or services running on top of the communications infrastructure of the Internet. This paper considers the economic underpinnings of utility services in the Future Internet context. It examines a number of relevant economic models and basic economic assumptions in an attempt to answer the question: are utility services economically viable? It identifies several key issues and spells out some implications for the Future Internet service models on the basis of that analysis. The paper concludes that market forces alone are unlikely to be sufficient for utility service provision in ICT; utility service markets have the intrinsic characteristics of a monopoly. We need new and bold economic models for the emerging and future Internet scenarios.