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This book discusses the pros and cons of information and communication (ICT) neutrality. It tries to be as objective as possible from arguments of proponents and opponents, this way enabling readers to build their own opinion. It presents the history of the ongoing network neutrality debate, the various concepts it encompasses, and also some mathematical developments illustrating optimal strategies and potential counter-intuitive results, then extends the discussion to connected ICT domains. The book thus touches issues related to history, economics, law, networking, and mathematics. After an introductory chapter on the history of the topic, chapter 2 surveys and compares the various laws in place worldwide and discusses some implications of heterogeneous rules in several regions. Next, chapter 3 details the arguments put forward by the participants of the net neutrality debate. Chapter 4 then presents how the impact of neutral or non-neutral behaviors can be analyzed mathematically, with sometimes counter-intuitive results, and emphasizes the interest of modeling to avoid bad decisions. Chapter 5 illustrates that content providers may not always be on the pro-neutrality side, as there are situations where they may have an economic advantage with a non-neutral situation, e.g. when they are leaders on a market and create barriers to entry for competitors. Another related issue is covered in chapter 6, which discusses existing ways for ISPs to circumvent the packet-based rules and behave non-neutral without breaking the written law. Chapter 7 gives more insight on the role and possible non-neutral behavior of search engines, leading to another debate called the search neutrality debate. Chapter 8 focuses on e-commerce platforms and social networks, and investigates how they can influence users actions and opinions. The issue is linked to the debate on the transparency of algorithms which is active in Europe especially. Chapter 9 focuses on enforcing neutrality in practice through measurements: indeed, setting rules requires monitoring the activity of ICT actors in order to sanction non-appropriate behaviors and be proactive against new conducts. The chapter explains why this is challenging and what tools are currently available. Eventually, Chapter 10 briefly concludes the presentation and opens the debate.

1. Introduction: a bit of history -- 2. Definitions -- 3. Pros and cons: the arguments in the debate -- 4. Mathematical analysis -- 5. Non-neutrality pushed by content providers -- 6. A more general view of neutrality -- 7. Search Neutrality -- 8. Algorithmic transparency -- 9. Tools to monitor neutrality -- 10. Conclusions.

International audience ; In October 2015, the European parliament has decided to forbid roaming charges among UE mobile phone users, starting June 2017, as a first step toward the unification of the European digital market. In this paper, we aim at investigating the consequences of such a measure from an economic perspective. In particular, we analyze the effect of the willingness-to-pay heterogeneity among users (also due to wealth heterogeneity), and the fact that the roaming behavior is positively correlated with wealth. Considering a monopolistic operator, we compare the paid-roaming situation (with usage-based pricing) to the envisioned free-roaming from the point of view of the operator and of users. Our analysis suggests that imposing free roaming degrades the revenues of the operator but can also deter some users from subscribing. This is because paid roaming allows some partial market segmentation; hence we conclude that such (apparently beneficial) regulatory decisions must be taken with care.

International audience ; In October 2015, the European parliament has decided to forbid roaming charges among UE mobile phone users, starting June 2017, as a first step toward the unification of the European digital market. In this paper, we aim at investigating the consequences of such a measure from an economic perspective. In particular, we analyze the effect of the willingness-to-pay heterogeneity among users (also due to wealth heterogeneity), and the fact that the roaming behavior is positively correlated with wealth. Considering a monopolistic operator, we compare the paid-roaming situation (with usage-based pricing) to the envisioned free-roaming from the point of view of the operator and of users. Our analysis suggests that imposing free roaming degrades the revenues of the operator but can also deter some users from subscribing. This is because paid roaming allows some partial market segmentation; hence we conclude that such (apparently beneficial) regulatory decisions must be taken with care.

International audience ; Starting in June 2017, roaming within Europe will become free for mobile phone users, as an enforcement of the European parliament. The goal being to obtain a unified digital market: this seems at first sight to largely benefit to users, who will not have to worry about their usage abroad. We design in this paper a model analyzing the impact of free roaming enforcement on users and ISPs' pricing strategies, with respect to paid roaming to verify this assumption. We particularly focus on the strategies on transit payments between ISPs in different countries. We highlight that scrutiny is required since, depending on parameters, consumer surplus or subscription penetration are not necessarily maximized if free roaming is enforced.

International audience ; Starting in June 2017, roaming within Europe will become free for mobile phone users, as an enforcement of the European parliament. The goal being to obtain a unified digital market: this seems at first sight to largely benefit to users, who will not have to worry about their usage abroad. We design in this paper a model analyzing the impact of free roaming enforcement on users and ISPs' pricing strategies, with respect to paid roaming to verify this assumption. We particularly focus on the strategies on transit payments between ISPs in different countries. We highlight that scrutiny is required since, depending on parameters, consumer surplus or subscription penetration are not necessarily maximized if free roaming is enforced.

International audience ; Network neutrality is the topic of a vivid and very sensitive debate, in both the telecommunication and political worlds, because of its potential impact in everyday life. That debate has been raised by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), complaining that content providers (CPs) congest the network with insu cient monetary compensation, and threatening to impose side payments to CPs in order to support their infrastructure costs. While there have been many studies discussing the advantages and drawbacks of neutrality, there is no game-theoretical work dealing with the observable situation of competitive ISPs in front of a (quasi-)monopolistic CP. Though, this is a typical situation that is condemned by ISPs, and, according to them, another reason of the non-neutrality need. We develop and analyze here a model describing the relations between two competitive ISPs and a single CP, played as a three-level game corresponding to three di erent time scales. At the largest time scale, side payments (if any) are determined. At a smaller time scale, ISPs decide their ( at-rate) subscription fee (toward users), then the CP chooses the ( at-rate) price to charge users. Users nally select their ISP (if any) using a price-based discrete choice model, and decide whether to also subscribe to the CP service. The game is analyzed by backward induction. As a conclusion, we obtain among other things that non-neutrality may be bene cial to the CP, and not necessarily to ISPs, unless the side payments are decided by ISPs (through a non-cooperative game).

International audience ; Network neutrality is the topic of a vivid and very sensitive debate, in both the telecommunication and political worlds, because of its potential impact in everyday life. That debate has been raised by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), complaining that content providers (CPs) congest the network with insu cient monetary compensation, and threatening to impose side payments to CPs in order to support their infrastructure costs. While there have been many studies discussing the advantages and drawbacks of neutrality, there is no game-theoretical work dealing with the observable situation of competitive ISPs in front of a (quasi-)monopolistic CP. Though, this is a typical situation that is condemned by ISPs, and, according to them, another reason of the non-neutrality need. We develop and analyze here a model describing the relations between two competitive ISPs and a single CP, played as a three-level game corresponding to three di erent time scales. At the largest time scale, side payments (if any) are determined. At a smaller time scale, ISPs decide their ( at-rate) subscription fee (toward users), then the CP chooses the ( at-rate) price to charge users. Users nally select their ISP (if any) using a price-based discrete choice model, and decide whether to also subscribe to the CP service. The game is analyzed by backward induction. As a conclusion, we obtain among other things that non-neutrality may be bene cial to the CP, and not necessarily to ISPs, unless the side payments are decided by ISPs (through a non-cooperative game).

International audience ; Network neutrality is the topic of a vivid and very sensitive debate, in both the telecommunication and political worlds, because of its potential impact in everyday life. That debate has been raised by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), complaining that content providers (CPs) congest the network with insu cient monetary compensation, and threatening to impose side payments to CPs in order to support their infrastructure costs. While there have been many studies discussing the advantages and drawbacks of neutrality, there is no game-theoretical work dealing with the observable situation of competitive ISPs in front of a (quasi-)monopolistic CP. Though, this is a typical situation that is condemned by ISPs, and, according to them, another reason of the non-neutrality need. We develop and analyze here a model describing the relations between two competitive ISPs and a single CP, played as a three-level game corresponding to three di erent time scales. At the largest time scale, side payments (if any) are determined. At a smaller time scale, ISPs decide their ( at-rate) subscription fee (toward users), then the CP chooses the ( at-rate) price to charge users. Users nally select their ISP (if any) using a price-based discrete choice model, and decide whether to also subscribe to the CP service. The game is analyzed by backward induction. As a conclusion, we obtain among other things that non-neutrality may be bene cial to the CP, and not necessarily to ISPs, unless the side payments are decided by ISPs (through a non-cooperative game).

International audience ; Network neutrality is the topic of a vivid and very sensitive debate, in both the telecommunication and political worlds, because of its potential impact in everyday life. That debate has been raised by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), complaining that content providers (CPs) congest the network with insu cient monetary compensation, and threatening to impose side payments to CPs in order to support their infrastructure costs. While there have been many studies discussing the advantages and drawbacks of neutrality, there is no game-theoretical work dealing with the observable situation of competitive ISPs in front of a (quasi-)monopolistic CP. Though, this is a typical situation that is condemned by ISPs, and, according to them, another reason of the non-neutrality need. We develop and analyze here a model describing the relations between two competitive ISPs and a single CP, played as a three-level game corresponding to three di erent time scales. At the largest time scale, side payments (if any) are determined. At a smaller time scale, ISPs decide their ( at-rate) subscription fee (toward users), then the CP chooses the ( at-rate) price to charge users. Users nally select their ISP (if any) using a price-based discrete choice model, and decide whether to also subscribe to the CP service. The game is analyzed by backward induction. As a conclusion, we obtain among other things that non-neutrality may be bene cial to the CP, and not necessarily to ISPs, unless the side payments are decided by ISPs (through a non-cooperative game).

International audience ; Network neutrality has recently been the topic of an important debate, in both the telecommunication and political worlds, because of its potential impact in every-day life. While there has been many studies discussing the advantages and drawbacks of neutrality, there is no game-theoretical study dealing with the observable situation of competitive ISPs in front of a (quasi-)monopolistic content provider (CP), while it is a complaint from ISPs, and an illustration of the non-neutrality need. This paper provides a first game-theoretical analysis of relations between two competitive ISPs and a single CP, in the form of a four-level game, played at different time scales. This game is analyzed by backward induction. We show that while the complaint from ISPs is relevant with a such a competitive model, inserting side payments does not solve the problem.