How to provide Quality of Service guarantees on Internet: The lessons from airline and card-based payment sectors

The increasing demand for real-time applications (video conferencing, Internet telephony - VoIP- etc.) delivered over networks requires stringent Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. Interdomain routing based on a Best-effort basis can hardly support end-to-end QoS. This paper argues that Internet services providers could form strategic alliances to coordinate their investments and provide innovative services with QoS guarantees. We draw some lessons from the alliances in the airline and card-based payment sectors and conclude that in the Internet sector the optimal organizational form should be a centralized alliance with an hub-and-spoke network structure.