Impact of revenue-driven CDN on the competition among network operators

We investigate the impact of decisions made by a CDN willing to maximize its revenue through the management of cache servers. Based on a model with two network providers, we highlight that revenue-oriented management policies can affect the user-perceived quality of experience, impacting the competition among network access providers in favor of the largest one. Since this contradicts the principle underpinning network neutrality-although not with the technical net neutrality rules-we discuss the necessity to regulate CDN activity.