The effects of network neutrality on the diffusion of new Internet application services

• We estimate the effect of net neutrality, considering the diffusion of application.
• We show the path of diffusion in a virtually created social network.
• The effect of net neutrality depends on the level of diffusion of application.

The debate over network neutrality started with the appearance of new Internet application services that are latency sensitive and the use of broad bandwidth. These services are still diffusing, and more applications that use broader bandwidth with greater latency sensitivity are expected to be developed. To estimate precisely the effect of network neutrality regulation, it is necessary to forecast the number of end-users that will adopt application services. However, previous studies are limited in that they assume that the potential market and the final number of adopters are constant at the current market penetration level. By computational experiments, this research estimates the effect of network neutrality regulation considering the diffusion process of application services such as IPTV and VoIP. Additionally, it deduces the relation between the effect of network neutrality regulation and the level of diffusion of new Internet application services.