Feasibility analysis of content charge by ISPs

As content delivered on the Internet becomes richer, the use of content delivery services in which users pay a fee for each content delivery to the content provider (CP) increases. For Internet service providers (ISPs), on the other hand, the increased investment cost required to maintain stable quality is a problem, and ISPs need to recover this cost from CPs because it is difficult to do so by increasing fees to users. However, CPs usually pay an access fee whose increase ratio diminishes as the volume of transmitted data increases, so the profit obtained by the ISPs is not sufficient to cover their investment cost. To address this problem, a content charge in which ISPs charge a fee for each content delivery to CPs would seem to be effective. However, it is anticipated that CPs will switch to another ISP if the original ISP introduces a content charge, so introducing a content charge may not always increase the revenue of ISPs. This paper investigates the feasibility of adding a content charge by ISPs and evaluates the effect such a charge would have by modeling the relationship between CPs and ISPs using a two-stage Stackelberg game.