Peering Costs and Fees

Internet users have suffered collateral damage in tussles over paid peering between large ISPs and large content providers. In order to qualify for settlement-free peering, large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) require that peers meet certain requirements. However, the academic literature has not yet shown the relationship between these settlement-free peering requirements and the value to each interconnecting network. We first consider the effect of paid peering on broadband prices. We adopt a two-sided market model in which an ISP maximizes profit by setting broadband prices and a paid peering price. Our result shows that paid peering fees reduce the premium plan price, and increase the video streaming price and the total price for premium tier customers who subscribe to video streaming services. We next consider the effect of paid peering on consumer surplus. We find that consumer surplus is a uni-modal function of the paid peering fee. The peering price depends critically on the incremental ISP cost per video streaming subscriber; at different costs, it can be negative, zero, or positive. Last, we construct a network cost model. We show that the traffic-sensitive network cost decreases as the number of interconnection points increases, but with decreasing returns. Interconnecting at 6 to 8 interconnection points is rational, and requiring interconnection at more than 8 points is of little value. We show that if the content delivery network (CDN) delivers traffic to the ISP locally, then a requirement to interconnect at a minimum number of interconnection points is rational. We also show that if the CDN delivers traffic using hot potato routing, the ISP is unlikely to perceive sufficient value to offer settlement-free peering.
Comment: This paper was accepted for presentation at the Pacific Telecommunications Council 2023 (PTC'23 conference)