Although in previous years we have investigated telecommunications regulation issues in both the federal and state arenas, we prefer instead to invest, and see others invest, in research that might diminish the need for regulatory attention to the Internet industry. For example, Bohn et al. [19] have proposed a policy for IP traffic precedence that can enable a graceful transition into a more competitively supplied Internet market that might reduce the need for federal interest in regulation.
The paper discusses how taking advantage of existing IP functionality to use multiple levels of service precedence can begin to address disparities between the requirements of conventional and more new and highly demanding applications.
Our approach thus far has assumed the belief that at least so far, the less regulation of the Internet, and in fact the more progress in removing regulatory barriers for existing telecommunications companies so they can participate more effectively in the Internet market, the better. However, regulation may be necessary in order to foster a healthy competitive network environment where consumers can make educated decisions regarding which network service providers to patronize. A key requirement in analyzing the relative performance of and customer satisfaction with network service providers is public availability of statistics that measure their capacity, reliability, security, integrity, and performance.