A wide-ranging discussion of the evolution of pricing in early transportation industries, such as lighthouses, canals, and turnpikes, is presented. It shows that price discrimination was an important factor in the development of those industries, and tended to intensify with time. In order to...

The popular press often extolls packet networks as much more efficient than switched voice networks in utilizing transmission lines. This impression is reinforced by the delays experienced on the Internet and the famous graphs for traffic patterns through the major exchange points on the...

We investigate the existence and implications of competitive equilibria when two firms offer the same electronic goods under different pricing policies. One charges a fixed subscription fee per period; the other charges on a per-use basis. Two models are examined when firms' marginal costs are...

A wide-ranging discussion of the evolution of pricing in early transportation industries, such as lighthouses, canals, and turnpikes, is presented. It shows that price discrimination was an important factor in the development of those industries, and tended to intensify with time. In order to...

Network neutrality as such may fade from public interest discussions, but historical precedents going back for centuries argue that the underlying issues will continue to be debated. Those issues revolve around the basic tension between efficiency and fairness in markets, a tension that has...

There are repeating patterns in the histories of communication technologies, including ordinary mail, the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet. In particular, the typical story for each service is that quality rises, prices decrease, and usage increases to produce increased total revenues....

Costs of communications networks are determined by the maximal capacities of those networks. On the other hand, the traffic those networks carry depends on how heavily those networks are used. Hence utilization rates and utilization patterns determine the costs of providing services, and...