(No.164) The evolving Internet ecosystem: A two-sided market?
* *Priority theme:* Managing Critical Internet Resources Questions: Question 5: What new developments pose specific new policy and technical challenges? * *Secondary theme:* Emerging Issues: Question 3: In what ways are new opportunities and challenges being created as the new Internet services and traditional media (such a broadcast TV and radio) are accessed through the ‘same screen’?
Economists have been increasingly interested in recent years in “two-sided markets,” cases where some platform intermediates between the two sides of the market in order to ensure that there is sufficient subscription and use on both sides of the market. Free-to-air broadcast television is often given as one example, where the television network intermediates between advertisers and viewers; credit card systems are another, intermediating between merchants and consumers. The flow of payments in these two-sided markets can sometimes be quite different from those in conventional markets, as a means of achieving the levels of participation in the market. This workshop will consider: * Should the Internet ecosystem be viewed as a form of two-sided market, with network operators / ISPs collectively intermediating between content providers and consumers? * In what ways does the Internet differ from other two-sided platforms? In what ways is it similar? * How might a change in the level of any of these payments alter levels of participation? * What economic consequences might flow from changes in the level of payments and participation in the market? What social consequences might follow (for example, as regards innovation or free speech)? A diverse international panel of stakeholders will consider these issues from a wide range of perspectives.
J. Scott Marcus is a well known researcher on Internet issues. He is a Director of the Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommuniktionsdienste (WIK), a research institute owned by the German Ministry of Economics. He is the principal author of a study on these issues on behalf of Google. Former Senior Advisor on Internet Technology, US FCC; former CTO, GTE Internetworking (portions subsequently acquired by Verizon, Level 3). He is a member of the Scientific Committee, Florence School of Regulation, telecoms and media programme. Adam Peake is an executive research fellow at the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), a research institute located in Tokyo. He has been with GLOCOM since 1994 and he currently works on projects related to telecommunications and broadband policy, network and information security, and follow-up activities for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). His interests include the intersection of public policy and the internet, and promoting information and communication technologies within society. Dr. Patrick Ryan is Policy Counsel, Open Internet at Google, where he supports the policy and regulatory efforts for Google's enterprise cloud services. In addition, Patrick is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he teaches Internet and telecommunications policy. Prior to joining Google, Patrick was a lawyer in private practice advising companies on the deployment of next-generation networks, and has worked on telecommunications projects the United States, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Spain and Belgium, Patrick received a JD from the University of Texas at Austin, an MBL from the Universität St.Gallen, (Switzerland), and a Ph.D. from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium).
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- J. Scott Marcus; Director, WIK (research institute) (Germany); Moderator (confirmed)
- Dr. Patrick Ryan; Policy Counsel, Open Internet, Google (USA, commercial) (confirmed)
- Robert Pepper (Cisco) USA
- Victor Kapiyo, will be replaced by Ali Hussein (3Mice Interactive Media) Kenya
- Kurt Opsahl; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (USA, civil society) (confirmed)
- Verena Weber; OECD (France, international organisation) (confirmed)
- Ali Hussein (3Mice Interactive Media) Kenya