• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.123-134
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• 2021

This paper suggests that the Internet is not free through analysis of U.S. Internet history and lawsuits related to the Charter merger in 2016. Generally speaking, the players in internet connectivity market agree to Non-Disclosure Agreement, when connecting their facilities and networks each other. So, I adopted the case study & analysis as research methodologies due to limitation of collecting the transaction data between them. The former finds that Internet access has never been free in U.S Internet history. As we know, some including Content Providers(CPs) argue that the Internet is a free network and there are many cases to use the internet for free, so they came to conclusion that ISPs have no right to charge the users like CPs. This study refutes these arguments in two ways. One is that using the internet has never been free. From ARPANET, known as the beginning of the U.S. Internet, to the commercialization of backbone, no Internet has been considered or implemented for free since the early Internet network was devised. Also, the U.S government was paying subsidies or institutions were paying fees to secure network operations for the NSFNET backbone. the other is that "free peering" refers to barter transactions between ISPs, not to free access to counterpart internet networks. Second, this study analyze the FCC' executive order of conditioned merger approval and the court's related ruling and verify that using the internet is not free. According to the analysis, this study finds that it's real situation to make paid settlements between ISP-CPs (including OTTs) in the US Internet market at the moment. This study concludes that the Internet has never been free in terms of its technical characteristics, network structure, network operation, and system. Also it proposes how to improve the domestic settlement system between ISPs-CPs in terms of policy and regulation.