Workshop on Internet Economics (WIE2016) Final Report

On December 8-9 2016, CAIDA hosted the 7th interdisciplinary Workshop on Internet Economics (WIE) at the UC San Diego's Supercomputer Center. This workshop series provides a forum for researchers, Internet facilities and service providers, technologists, economists, theorists, policy makers, and other stakeholders to inform current and emerging regulatory and policy debates. This year we first returned to the list of aspirations we surveyed at the 2014 workshop, and described the challenges of mapping them to actions and measurable progress. We then reviewed evolutionary shifts in traffic, topology, business, and regulatory models, and (our best understanding of) the economics of the ecosystem. These discussions inspired an extended thought experiment for the second day of the workshop: outlining a new telecommunications legislative framework, including proposing a set of goals and scope of such regulation, and minimal list of sections required to pursue and measure progress toward those goals. The format was a series of focused sessions, where presenters prepared 10-minute talks on relevant issues, followed by in-depth discussions. This report highlights the discussions and presents relevant open research questions identified by participants. Slides presented and this report are available at http://www.caida.org/workshops/wie/1612/.