other users. Viewed from this perspective, bandwidth management and end user restrictions are just two points in a spectrum of alternative institutional approaches to solving the problems of network management. It is unnecessary to determine which of the many possible ways to manage congestion on the Internet will ulti- mately prove most economical. For our purposes, it suffices to acknowledge that the optimal solution might take on one of a range of institutional forms. The inde- terminacy of the problem justifies adopting policies that do not foreclose network owners from experimenting with any particular institutional solution absent the demonstration of concrete competitive harm. Indeed, there is no reason to presume that the eventual solution will be uniform, and it is quite conceivable that different portions of the network might pursue different institutional solutions. Barro and Romer did not initially frame their analysis in terms of congestion economics but later acknowledged the connection (Barro and Romer 1991). Networks in Telecommunications This analysis also suggests that prohibiting last-mile providers from deviating from network neutrality may actually harm consumers. Simply put, the current regime of flat-rate pricing and unrestricted access discourages innovation in net- work management. In the process, it allows high-volume users to impose costs on low-volume users, in effect requiring the latter to subsidize the former. Taking a broader vision of consumer welfare reveals that allowing network owners to place restrictions on high-bandwidth uses can benefit consumers by making possible new ways to manage network traffic and to force those who create the most congestion on the Internet to bear the costs they impose on others. Conversely, low-volume users may well benefit from such restrictions through increases in the quality of the service they receive and decreases in the prices they pay (MacKie-Mason and Varian 1995b). Indeed, the emergence of potentially beneficial practices, such as backbon