9320481 The Internet is a worldwide network of networks. As of May 1993 it connects over 10,000 different networks, comprising over 1.5 million separate computers. Traffic on the NSFNET backbone to the Internet (the largest but not the only backbone) has been growing at about 11% per month over the last five years; this means it has been doubling every seven months. The Internet is considered to be the model for the National Research and Education Network (NREN) that is the focus of the $5 billion HPCC program adopted by Congress in 1992. Important policy decisions are already being made about the commercialization and privatization of the Internet backbones, regulation of transmission providers and information service providers, the protection of intellectual property in electronic form, and public access to information infrastructure. These decisions are being made with little input from economists. This project will clarify the economic context for wide-area data networks: costs, pricing, investment, and growth. It examines competition and industry structure, and address the important regulatory questions that follow as data, telephone and video technologies and markets begin to merge. Furthermore it develops mechanisms for efficient resource allocation in such networks.
