Internet economics: when constituencies collide in cyberspace

Computer engineering, economics and public policy offer different perspectives on the problem of sustaining Internet growth without abandoning the technological innovations that underpin the infrastructure-and culture-of global information. This article offers a framework for addressing this interdisciplinary challenge. We examine how the often conflicting and overlapping interests of different Internet constituencies are beginning to yield to a rough consensus. In particular, we believe these constituencies are beginning to recognize that the growth of the Internet can be explained by a combination of three features: its technical characteristic of statistical sharing, its economic feature of positive network externalities, and its policy objective of interoperability.