The desire amongst media scholars for the fulfilment of the ideal of a universally accessible public sphere by the media is such that virtually every new communications technology that has emerged over the past 1 ~O-odd years such as radio, television or the Internet has been welcomed with enthusiasm - by some - at the prospect of the newest communications innovation bringing about universal access to information. However, the history of communications media tells of the commercialisation of each new medium, from radio to television, and the imposition of barriers to access, based on cost. Access to communications media is open to those people who can afford to pay for them. 111e emergence of the Internet spawned renewed hoped that the public sphere ideal would be realised. 111is new technology seemed more powerful than anything that had come before it. The Internet offered the means whereby one could access a global repository of information, stored on a worldwide network of computer networks, and available 24 hours a day. With the Internet, it was also possible to communicate with people on the other side of the world within seconds, using electronic mail (e-mail). Here was a medium that permitted one to send text and pictures to colleagues and friends within a fraction of the time taken by traditional means such as fax, telephone or post. To enjoy the convenience of the Internet though, one had to have a means of access. In South Africa, access could be gained through a personal computer linked to the Internet either through a network in the workplace or an academic or research institution, or via a telephone link to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). What were the names of the first ISPs to emerge in South Africa? When did they emerge and how did they develop? Did the number of ISPs grow or decline? What do ISPs give access to, at what cost and to whom? Do they provide universal access to information? This study addresses these questions by examining South Africa's leading providers of home dial-up internet access, M-Web and World Online, and by exploring the histories of their emergence and development, within the context of current media trends of concentration, diversification and globalisation.

[pt] O mercado brasileiro de provedores de acesso à internet tem apresentado um crescimento vertiginoso desde 1998 e está vivenciando um período de crescente concentração. Num momento em que a disputa pelos consumidores está cada vez mais acirrada, os esforços para a manutenção da base de clientes se tornam tão importantes quanto aqueles destinados à conquista de novos consumidores. Nesse contexto, a preocupação com a fidelidade dos usuários de provedores de acesso à internet adquire especial relevância. O presente estudo se propõe a investigar as dificuldades encontradas na fidelização dos clientes de provedores de acesso e analisar o tipo de fidelidade exibida por esses, valendo-se do framework proposto por Richard Oliver (1999) como principal referência para a classificação da fidelidade. / [en] The Brazilian market of access suppliers the InterNet has presented a vertiginous growth since 1998 and this having lived deeply one periodo of increasing concentracao. At a moment where the dispute for the consumers this each incited time more, the esforcos for manutencao of the base of important customers if becomes tao how much those destined the conquest of new consumers. In this context, preocupacao with the allegiance of the usuarios of access suppliers the InterNet acquires special relevancia. The present study if propoe to investigate the difficulties found in fidelizacao of the customers of access suppliers and to analyze the type of allegiance shown for these, using itself framework considered by Richard Oliver (1999) as main referencia for classificacao of the allegiance. / [es] EL mercado brasilero de proveedores de acceso a la internet ha presentado un crescimiento vertiginoso desde 1998 y está vive ahora un período de cresciente concentración. En un momento en que la disputa por los consumidores está cada vez más fuerte, los esfuerzos para mantener la base de clientes resultan tan importantes cuanto los destinados a la conquista de nuevos consumidores. En ese contexto, la preocupación con la fidelidad de los usuarios de proveedores de acceso a la internet adquire uma especial relevancia. EL presente estudio se propone investigar las dificuldades encontradas en la fidelización de los clientes de proveedores de acceso y analizar el tipo de fidelidad que ellos exhiben, utilizando el framework propuesto por Richard Oliver (1999) como principal referencia para la clasificación de la fidelidad.

M.Ing. / The development of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies offers a novel platform for IP-based service resale via Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) that provide high network coverage and lower infrastructure cost. In this IP-based service resale business, the Access Point (AP) providers sets their pricing policies as IP-based service resellers to maximize their profits, while the resale-users (end users of the WMNs) who are price- and quality-of-service (QoS)- sensitive, respond to AP providers’ pricing policies by controlling their usage. This research exploits the efficiency of dynamic pricing by integrating pricing into best effort based WMNs as an economic control tool to optimize the profit of the AP providers and improve the utilization of their limited uplink bandwidth by taking into consideration the resale-users’ price- and QoS- sensitivity. Two cases are presented in this thesis: a monopoly, where a single AP provider aims to maximize its profit while guaranteeing its resale-users with a minimum allocated bandwidth; and a duopoly, where two AP providers compete to maximize their individual profits based on the resale-users’ price- and delay- sensitivity. For both cases, the limited uplink bandwidth of the AP providers is considered as a bottleneck of the WMN. We propose two dynamic pricing models for these two cases respectively and investigate how pricing depends on the assumptions that we make about the market. Indeed, the pricing model proposed for the monopoly is a preliminary study for the duopoly pricing model. In formulating and analyzing these two pricing models, we see how prices are driven by the profit-maximizing aim of one AP provider and the competition between two AP providers.

M. Tech. Business Administration / The purpose of this study is two-fold ; to establish how different demograhic profiles utilise the internet and classifies internet functions mostly used across demographic characteristics. Data was collected through a self-completion structured questionnaire from a sample of 131 households at Menlyn Park Shopping Centre in the City of Tshwane.

Wang, Qian. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-74). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- A Review of Pricing in Internet Industry --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Static Pricing --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Flat-rate Pricing --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Usage-based Pricing --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Paris Metro Pricing --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Dynamic Pricing --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Smart-market Pricing --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Responsive Pricing --- p.11 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Edge Pricing --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- Comparisons --- p.14 / Chapter 2.4 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.17 / Chapter 3 --- Uplink Pricing --- p.18 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- Model Description --- p.26 / Chapter 3.3 --- Uplink Pricing in a Competitive Market --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4 --- The Cooperative Strategy with Uplink Pricing --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- The Cooperative Case --- p.41 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- The Threat Strategy --- p.45 / Chapter 3.5 --- Further Discussion --- p.47 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Accounting Cost --- p.47 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Peer-to-Peer Locality --- p.48 / Chapter 3.6 --- Related Works --- p.48 / Chapter 3.7 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.49 / Chapter 4 --- Viability of Paris Metro Pricing --- p.51 / Chapter 4.1 --- The Model --- p.52 / Chapter 4.2 --- Flat-rate Pricing versus Paris Metro Pricing --- p.54 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- One-channel Flat-rate Pricing --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Two-Channel Identical Pricing --- p.56 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Flat-rate Pricing versus Two-Channel Iden-tical Pricing --- p.57 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Flat-rate Pricing versus Paris Metro Pricing --- p.59 / Chapter 4.3 --- Case Studies --- p.60 / Chapter 4.4 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.62 / Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.63 / A Equation Derivation --- p.65 / Chapter A. --- l Proof for Lemma 3.3.2 --- p.65 / Bibliography --- p.71

We developed a price-based resource allocation scheme for Differentiated Service (DiffServ) data networks. The DiffServ framework was proposed to provide multiple QoS classes over IP networks. Since the provider supports multiple service classes, we need a differentiated pricing scheme, as supposed to the flat-rate scheme employed by the Internet service providers of today. Charging efficiently is a big issue. The utility of a client correlates to the amount of bandwidth allocated. One difficulty we face is that determining the appropriate amount of bandwidth to provision and allocate is problematic due to different time scales, multiple QoS classes and the unpredictable nature of users. To approach this problem, we designed a pricing strategy for Admission Control and bandwidth assignment. Despite the variety of existing pricing strategies, the common theme is that the appropriate pricing policy rewards users for behaving in ways to improve the overall utilization and performance of the network. Among existing schemes, we chose auction because it is scalable, and efficiently and fairly shares resources. Our pricing model takes the system's availability and each customer's requirements as inputs and outputs the set of clients who are admitted into the network and their allocated resource. Each client proposes a desired bandwidth and a price that they are willing to pay for it. The service provider collects this information and produces parameters for each class of service they provide. This information is used to decide which customers to admit. We proposed an optimal solution to the problem of maximizing the provider's revenue for the special case where there is only one bottleneck link in the network. Then for the generalized network, we resort to a simple but effective heuristic method. We validate both the optimal solution and the heuristic algorithm with simulations driven by a real traffic scenario. Finally, we allow customers to bid on the duration for which the service is needed. Then we study the performance of those heuristic algorithms in this new setting and propose possible improvements.

Thesis (M.ICT.)--University of Wollongong, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 112-121.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-91). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

This research proposes a new dynamic energy management framework for a backbone Internet Protocol over Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (IP over DWDM) network. Maintaining the logical IP-layer topology is a key constraint of our architecture whilst saving energy by infrastructure sleeping and virtual router migration. The traffic demand in a Tier 2/3 network typically has a regular diurnal pattern based on people‟s activities, which is high in working hours and much lighter during hours associated with sleep. When the traffic demand is light, virtual router instances can be consolidated to a smaller set of physical platforms and the unneeded physical platforms can be put to sleep to save energy. As the traffic demand increases the sleeping physical platforms can be re-awoken in order to host virtual router instances and so maintain quality of service. Since the IP-layer topology remains unchanged throughout virtual router migration in our framework, there is no network disruption or discontinuities when the physical platforms enter or leave hibernation. However, this migration places extra demands on the optical layer as additional connections are needed to preserve the logical IP-layer topology whilst forwarding traffic to the new virtual router location. Consequently, dynamic optical connection management is needed for the new framework. Two important issues are considered in the framework, i.e. when to trigger the virtual router migration and where to move virtual router instances to? For the first issue, a reactive mechanism is used to trigger the virtual router migration by monitoring the network state. Then, a new evolutionary-based algorithm called VRM_MOEA is proposed for solving the destination physical platform selection problem, which chooses the appropriate location of virtual router instances as traffic demand varies. A novel hybrid simulation platform is developed to measure the performance of new framework, which is able to capture the functionality of the optical layer, the IP layer data-path and the IP/optical control plane. Simulation results show that the performance of network energy saving depends on many factors, such as network topology, quiet and busy thresholds, and traffic load; however, savings of around 30% are possible with typical medium-sized network topologies.

Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) are crucial to the operation and development of the Internet. However, through the performance of their basic functions, they faced the great risk of civil and criminal liability for unlawful content posted by third parties. As this risk threatened the potential of the Internet, various jurisdictions opted to promulgate legislation that granted ISP’s safe harbours from liability. The South African (RSA) response is Chapter XI of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA). The protection it provides is however not absolute. It is limited to ISP’s that are members of an Industry Representative Body (IRB) and those ISP’s must perform particular functions in relation to third party content in a certain manner to obtain limited liability. Due to the ECTA’s limited application and a lack of authority, the question is raised as to what is the liability of ISP’s for unlawful content posted by third parties? This dissertation pays particular attention to ISP liability for third party defamatory statements, hate speech, and obscene and indecent material. The role and characteristics of ISP’s in the functioning of the Internet is described. It is determined that a wide legal definition would be required to encompass the many roles they perform. The definition provided by the ECTA is wide and many different types of ISP can fall underneath it. This may have unintended consequences as entities may receive protection that the legislature did not intend. The appropriate laws in the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom are surveyed and suggestions as to the extent of ISP liability in circumstances where the ECTA does not apply are made. It is established that their position is uncertain due to difficulties in applying the law to the Internet. This could result in the law being applied incorrectly and ISP’s erroneously found liable. The ECTA’s threshold requirements limit the availability of the safe harbor provisions to ISP’s that are members of a recognised IRB. The IRB must comply with an extensive set of requirements to obtain recognition. The purpose of these requirements is to ensure that only responsible ISP’s obtain the protection provided by the act. After an examination of these requirements, their necessity is questioned as their purpose appears to be contrary to the logic of the safe harbours provided by the ECTA. The safe harbours are analysed and comparisons made to similar legislation that exists in the USA and the European Union (EU). It was established that the ECTA is a hybrid of the USA and EU legislation, and to a certain extent improves on them. It was suggested that the extent of ISP liability in relation to certain unlawful content is clearer under the ECTA. However, exceptions may exist in relation to hate speech and obscene and indecent content as a result of legislation that does not properly take the technology of the Internet into account. It was recommended that certain action be taken to correct this position to prevent any negative effects on the Internet industry and conflict with the objectives of the ECTA. The provision of limited liability contained in the ECTA is balanced with a notice and takedown procedure, which provides relief to victims of unlawful content. This procedure is analysed and it appears to be effective in providing relief. However, through an examination of concerns raised in relation to this type of procedure as it exists in the USA and the EU, it is suggested that certain flaws exist. The take-down procedure negatively effects the freedom of expression and the third party’s rights to due process. Further, the threshold requirements result in not all the users of the Internet being provided with the same remedies. It is recommended that certain action be taken to correct these flaws. The solution provided by the ECTA should be favoured over the uncertainty that existed before it promulgation. It may be necessary to correct particular flaws that exist. Certain recommendations are suggested in this regard and the concluding chapter.