Costs of Neutral/Unmanaged IP Networks

An important issue in "network neutrality" is the degree to which networks that comprise the Internet may be "managed" by their operators. This paper examines the current costs of unmanaged/neutral network technology and demonstrates that as customer Internet usage patterns evolve and become both more bandwidth-intensive and real-time oriented, a model of pure neutrality would be extremely expensive for consumers. Unmanaged network capacity sufficient to accommodate expected consumer demand growth currently would result in bills between $143 and $416 per month depending on the customers level of TV viewing. Such fees would likely make unmanaged/neutral Internet service commercially prohibitive.