Designing future networks: The investigation of socio-economic awareness by the Tussle Analysis

The Internet enables the interaction of stakeholders of virtually all commercial, industrial, and private sectors. Thereby, innumerable conflicting socio-economic interests collide through the Internet. Since self-interested stakeholders will try enforcing their interests through technological, economical, or judicial means, the Internet technology and related standards must not only be focused on technical engineering goals, but also need to ensure a fair playing field for all stakeholders. This necessity to consider socio-economic factors, when designing technology and standards, is slowly recognized by academia and standardization bodies and highlighted in this paper. The Tussle Analysis is presented as the first tool for assessing such a socio-economic awareness of Internet technology and related standards. The Tussle Analysis was standardized in Study Group (SG) 13 of the ITU-T and published as Recommendation Y.3013 in 2014. Thus, methods to implement the Tussle Analysis' three steps are presented and discussed throughout the paper.