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This paper investigates how retail broadband prices, choice and quality are changing over time. Using a dataset containing daily observations of plans offered in Ireland from 2007 to 2013, this paper applies hedonic modelling techniques to observe the changing pricing of service characteristics. We augment our results by restricting the analysis to large operators and also by weighting by operator market share for a subset of our data (2010-2013). Although we find that average nominal prices remain static throughout our sample period, quality of service has risen dramatically over time, particularly with respect to download speed. Some characteristics of broadband plans exhibit broadly stable valuations over time, but the elasticity of price with respect to advertised download speed and the premium on bundled plans declined during the sample period. In addition, the retail price premium enjoyed by the incumbent operator fell significantly since 2007.

We estimate demand for residential broadband using high-frequency data from subscribers facing a three-part tariff. The three-part tariff makes data usage during the billing cycle a dynamic problem, thus generating variation in the (shadow) price of usage. We provide evidence that subscribers respond to this variation, and we use their dynamic decisions to estimate a flexible distribution of willingness to pay for different plan characteristics. Using the estimates, we simulate demand under alternative pricing and find that usage-based pricing eliminates low-value traffic. Furthermore, we show that the costs associated with investment in fiber-optic networks are likely recoverable in some markets, but that there is a large gap between social and private incentives to invest.

Information technology, like the telephone, influences market access; this paper answers the question about a reverse effect, does market access affect information technology, in particular its adoption? Using the introductionof the telephone in Bavaria, I demonstrate with a rank, order and stock effects diffusion model how market access affects the diffusion of local telephone exchanges over towns as well as the rate of adoption of telephone lines within towns. The results of a duration analysis show that market accessspeeds up the diffusion, a spatial correlation specification demonstrates that this is not just a geographic effect. The rate of adoption within towns is also affected by the adoption of lines in other towns, the results indicate that about 4% of all lines are due to the ability to call outside your local exchange network. Market access is therefore shown to impact the adoption of technology.

This paper discusses the relevant cost standard for the economic replicability test for Next-Generation Access (NGA) networks, described in the “Recommendation on consistent non-discrimination obligations and costing methodologies” adopted by the European Commission. According to the Recommendation, in order to reconcile investment and competition, wholesale prices should have nonlinear characteristics and only partly vary by the number of accesses. It demonstrates that a cost standard for the economic replicability test, which implies fully fixed and variable cost recovery for the access seeker, including the total wholesale price, would be incompatible with the economics of NGA networks and that such a test would deter NGA investment. Therefore, the cost standard should include only the variable part of the wholesale price. However, this paper underlines that during a transition phase, until competitors have secured access to NGA infrastructure, a second temporary test called the “competition migration test” should be added to ensure incumbent NGA retail prices do not foreclose efficient copper-based entrants. The two proposed tests surpass the limits of the “ladder of investment” theory by including the “business migration effect” developed by Bourreau, Cambini, and Dogan (2012).

This article analyzes the construction in the UK media of the ‘stay-at-home mother’, a maternal figure who received increasing visibility during the recession and its aftermath. Based on a content analysis of UK national newspaper coverage of stay-at-home mothers (2008–2013), this article argues that the stay-at-home mother emerges from its press coverage as a neoliberal postfeminist subject. On the one hand, the coverage complicates claims about antifeminist backlash and women’s harking back to passive femininity. On the other hand, it fails significantly to undermine maternal femininity’s entanglement with neoliberalism, and reinforces the process described by McRobbie as ‘disarticulation’, by separating between middle-class mothers and working-class mothers.

Background: Telehealth is an emerging field of clinical practice but current UK health policy has not taken account of the perceptions of frontline healthcare professionals expected to implement it.\ud \ud Aim: To investigate telehealth care for people with long-term conditions from the perspective of the front-line health professional.\ud \ud Design and setting: A qualitative study in three sites within the UK (Kent, Cornwall, and the London Borough of Newham) and embedded in the Whole Systems Demonstrator evaluation, a large cluster randomised controlled trial of telehealth and telecare for patients with long-term and complex conditions.\ud \ud Method: Semi-structured qualitative interviews with 32 front-line health professionals (13 community matrons, 10 telehealth monitoring nurses and 9 GPs) involved in the delivery of telehealth. Data were analysed using a modified grounded theory approach.\ud \ud Results: Mixed views were expressed by front-line professionals, which seem to reflect their levels of engagement. It was broadly welcomed by nursing staff as long as it supplemented rather than substituted their role in traditional patient care. GPs held mixed views; some gave a cautious welcome but most saw telehealth as increasing their work burden and potentially undermining their professional autonomy.\ud \ud Conclusion: Health care professionals will need to develop a shared understanding of patient self-management through telehealth. This may require a renegotiation of their roles and responsibilities.

This study highlights the extent to which rights of mobile phone and internet consumers are respected by the most important operators in Romania, namely Orange, Vodafone and Cosmote, in the context of accelerated technological changes on a highly competitive market. The research is focused on the analysis of regulations and contractual grievance procedures, number, distribution and motivation of consumer complaints, administrative quality indicators of data services and main consumer complaints. Among the documents under analysis we can mention contractual agreements, applicable procedures, as well as relevant empirical data provided by NAPC, NAMRC, economic operators and a site for online complaints, namely ReclamatieOnline.ro. The analyses emphasize that consumer complaints are mainly due to problems arising from contracts with service providers, billing services and defects of electronic terminals under warranty. The main cause for all this is the insufficient information users are provided with and, therefore, consumers’ decreased ability in the decision making process involved in the purchase of mobile technology and internet services. To better inform consumers, at the end of the study we propose a series of measures that could be adopted by mobile and internet service providers and regulatory, supervision and control institutions, as well as future directions of research in the field.

A methodology for the self-assessment of the socio-economic impact of Software-as-a-Service and Internet of Services research projects is presented in the context of EU-funded research. The SEQUOIA methodology was developed by assessing 30 existing projects in close collaboration with them. This process was documented to provide a basis for future research projects to apply the methodology on their own. The model and the empirical findings are discussed in detail, focussing on five projects that qualified as ‘best practices’. The main findings are that an ‘impact assessment culture’ needs to be cultivated, encouraged, and strengthened by the European Commission and all the stakeholders. The five projects that scored highest generated a fairly good financial return over the total projects’ output lifetime and showed a genuine attention for non-monetizable impacts such as knowledge creation and sharing, improvement in working routines, and social capital. Relative to the other projects, the five best practices demonstrated knowledge of the needs of their stakeholders and of their expectations, and engaged with them from the very beginning of their technology development activities. To integrate the assessment methodology within each project, its partners need to feel that they ‘own’ it, and that it has been optimized for its specific institutional, organizational, and epistemological requirements. We therefore recommend the inclusion in project consortia of socio-economic experts who are able to translate the ICT research language into measurable (potential) socio-economic impacts. SEQUOIA’s assumption that in the development of an effective socio-economic impact assessment methodology it is important to integrate the social and economic dimensions of potential impact was verified and validated through an ex post rationalization informed by economic anthropology, the usefulness of our quantitative model, and empirical evidence obtained through in-depth qualitative–quantitative data gathering techniques.

‘On Digital Crossings in Europe’ explores the entanglements of digital media and migration beyond the national and mono-ethnic focus. We argue how borders, identity and affectivity have been destabilized and reconfigured through medium-specific technological affordances, opting for a comparative and postcolonial framework that focuses on diversity in conjunction with cosmopolitan aspirations. Internet applications make it possible to sustain new forms of diaspora and networks, which operate within and beyond Europe, making issues of ethnicity, nationality, race and class not obsolete but transformed. It is therefore important and timely to analyse how these reconfigurations take place and affect everyday life. Using a critical approach to digital tools that avoids utopian notions of connectivity and borderlessness, this article highlights the dyssimmetries and tensions produced by the ubiquitousness of digital connectivity. It further introduces the different contributions to the special issue making connections and tracing relations among themes and methods as well as sketching main patterns for further research. It also offers a panorama of other related studies and projects in the field, which partake in a critical reassessment of the enabling power of digital media and their divisive implications for new forms of surveillance, online racism and ‘economic’ inequality, which we gather under the heading of postcolonial digital humanities.

Iraq is a country that has the potential to explode onto the Internet market due to the fact that much of Iraq is still largely without access to the Internet. Iraq¡¯s market has much room for corporate and individual investments in Internet technology, mainly, Internet access. However, this requires a deep understanding of the user with regards to the Internet and the market characteristics involved. This study is concerned with the users¡¯ choice of Internet mode connections in Iraq. There are several determinants of Internet use, namely, age, education, employment, utilization, and location. Through use of the multinomial logit models, these variables are analysed to define their numerical values and relevance to the Internet modes of choice in Iraq.

Regulation of the cable television industry was marked by remarkable periods of deregulation, re-regulation, and re-deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s. Using Federal Communications Commission firm-level survey data spanning 1993–2001, we model and econometrically estimate the effect of regulation and competition on cable rates. Our calculations indicate that although regulation lowered rates for small system operators, it raised them for medium and large systems. Meanwhile, competition consistently decreased rates from 5.6 to 8.8 percent, with even larger declines during periods of regulation. Our results suggest that competition is more effective than regulation in containing cable prices.

During last two decades, broadband gained an integral stature in digital infrastructure of countries around the globe. The investigation of broadband and economic growth nexus has been scarce for Asian countries, Mehmood and Mustafa (2014). This paper re-examines the broadband-growth nexus for Asian countries using a more statistically rigorous technique known as System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). This methodology permits the use of data with heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation and uses instrumental variables to cope with endogeneity. Results show the role of broadband as a contributor to economic growth. Moreover, to solidify the results obtained from GMM, we use panel cointegration and panel Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (PFMOLS) to estimate cointegration equations. The results of these techniques are corroborated by the results of panel Granger causality test. This suggests to include the policy steps for technology transfer with proper planning and allocation of broadband technology to common masses for a digital Asian region.

Transportations are one of the success-keys for achieving the Single European Market because they contribute to rendering concrete two of the fundamental objectives of the latter: free movement of persons and of goods. The new technologies developed for vehicles and traffic management shall be essential in diminishing the emissions caused by transportation both within the European Union and in the rest of the world. The race for sustainable mobility has worldwide amplitude. The delayed action and modest implementation of the new technologies could condemn the transportation industry within the European Union to an irreversible decline. The transportation sector within the EU is faced with increasing acerbic competition on the transportation world markets which are in a process of swift development. The present paper intends to make a brief presentation of the new information and telecommunication technologies implemented in the Romanian railways transportation, as well as an analysis of the economic and social impact of their implementation.

Our survey reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on all alternative policies to promote the deployment of new fiber-based communications infrastructure. Since such investment is expected to induce substantial positive externalities, dynamic efficiency becomes a particularly important policy goal. The available policies refer to i) different kinds of ex ante sector-specific regulations including cost-based access regulations as well as softer regulations such as regulatory holidays or geographically differentiated regulations, ii) deregulatory approaches based on effective competition law implementation and competitive market structures including allowance of co-investment models, and iii) public subsidies to cover non-profitable (“white”) areas. Our survey identifies the most significant research gaps, finding that numerous studies related to the impact of access regulations exist, whereas only a much smaller branch of literature addresses the impact of competition policies, and even fewer studies analyze the impact of public subsidies on new communications deployment. Moreover, our work allows for a generic framework for policy recommendations that identifies the comparative advantages of the individual policy options for different market structures and for varying degrees of externalities. We find that public subsidies are the dominant policy alternative in white areas, whereas access regulations can be the preferred policy in white or “grey” areas, where only monopoly structure or co-investment models lead to private investment. Deregulatory policies might be preferable in grey areas, if there is sufficient pressure from competitive outside options and if competition law is strong. Finally, deregulatory policies including soft regulation are the dominant policy in “black” areas, where several independent infrastructure operators exist.

The main objective of this paper is to identify the recent global and regional trends in ICT developments and to reveal how companies improve productivity and modernize production and services. Nowadays, the digital lifestyle of the consumers forces technology companies to address their needs in order to maintain and extend the market share. In the 21st Century, wearable devices and other forms of digital applications are gaining momentum. More users are interested in buying notebooks, smart TVs, tablets, smartphones, fitness products, smart watches, connected eyeglasses in order to be in the latest fashion of 21st Century or to use them to make the difference in the competitive markets. The Internet of Things, Unified Communications and 3D printing will revolutionize our lives in the years to come.

What are the challenges to effective academic participation in telecommunications policymaking? In this article, the authors analyze their experiences with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and Industry Canada as examples. Their goal is to increase academic policy engagement despite negligible government support for public interest advocacy, as traditional public interest values are discarded by regulators because new technologies are framed as individual rather than collective. Industry Canada is deemed opaque with an “advocacy deficit,” though the CRTC is more transparent and inviting. To succeed in both venues, academics need to work with advocacy organizations as “circumstantial activists.” Such academic participation can offer new conceptual frameworks, add nuance to discourse, substantiate the use of scholarly research in policy debates, and add to policy theory building.

Fuelled by the Arab Spring, the question of how the rise of internet-mediated communication affects authoritarian regimes has received unprecedented attention within the discipline of communications. However, in this debate, scholars have not yet turned to the concept of literacy and addressed the role of citizens’ knowledge about political media in any greater depth. This is surprising since the concept of literacy as ‘emancipatory knowledge’, in Sonia Livingstone’s words, has a ‘long and proud history’ of being linked with processes of enlightenment, political empowerment and democratization. The present study contributes to filling this gap by suggesting four highly consequential facets of critical news literacy in contemporary Russia, a high-profile hybrid regime. The conceptual development is grounded in western literature and 20 in-depth interviews with young, urban and educated Russians.

Mobile telecommunication operators routinely charge subscribers lower prices for calls on their own network than for calls to other networks (on-net discounts). Studies on tariff-mediated network effects suggest this is due to large operators using on-net discounts to damage smaller rivals. Alternatively, research on strategic discounting suggests that small operators use on-net discounts to advertise with low on-net prices. We test the relative strength of these effects using data on tariff setting in German mobile telecommunications between 2001 and 2009. We find that large operators are more likely to offer tariffs with on-net discounts but there is no consistently significant difference in the magnitude of discounts. Our results suggest that tariff-mediated network effects are the main cause of on-net discounts.

Competition policy attempts to address the potential for market failure by encouraging competition in service markets. Often, in wireless communication service markets, national regulatory authorities seek to encourage entry via the spectrum assignment process. Instruments used include the assignment mode (auction or beauty contest), setting aside licenses and providing bidding (price and quantity) credits for potential entrants, and making more licenses (spectrum blocks) available than there are incumbent firms (excess licenses). The empirical analysis assesses the effectiveness of these policy instruments on encouraging entry. The econometric results show that the probability of entry is enhanced by using auction assignments and excess licenses. Furthermore, quantity, but not price, concessions encourage entry.

The use of intelligent solution represents the key factor for developing both the logistics sector and the economic environment. This paper analyses the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and its role in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) especially in logistics and transport networks. The main objective is to demonstrate that RFID represents a solution for improving the transport networks and logistics sector by implementing various complex and intelligent solutions that can improve the actual economic environment.

This article proposes to redefine celebrity as a kind of capital, thereby extending Bourdieu’s field theory. This redefinition is necessary, it is argued, because one of the main limitations shared by current definitions of celebrity is their lack of explanatory power of the convertibility of celebrity into other resources, such as economic or political capital. Celebrity capital, or broadly recognizability, is conceptualized as accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media representations. In that sense, it is a substantial kind of capital and not a subset or special category of social or symbolic capital, the latter being defined as legitimate recognition by other agents in a social field. Rather than adding another definition of celebrity next to many others, the notion of celebrity capital proposed here should be seen as an attempt to integrate the existing approaches of celebrity into a single comprehensive conceptualization that can enable us to grasp this societal and cultural phenomenon better.

This study examines whether the impact of offline identities on computer-mediated communication is stable across different social contexts or whether it depends on which identity aspect is salient. Field experiments with 206 teenagers tested the influence of gendered, ethnic, youth and personalized identities on teenagers' chat behaviour and cognitions. The findings show that offline identity varies in its relation to Internet self-efficacy but not chat partner selection. Self-efficacy differed significantly between boys and girls when youth and gender identities were emphasized but not when stressing personal identity. Across conditions, teenagers were most likely to choose chat partners from similar ethnic and opposite sex backgrounds. This partly supports the Social Identification and Deindividuation framework and argues that offline identities impact online behaviour and self-perception but that this effect depends on which identity aspect is activated.

PurposeAlthough cloud computing has been heralded as driving the innovation agenda, there is growing evidence that cloud computing is actually a “slow train coming”. The purpose of this paper is to seek to understand the factors that drive and inhibit the adoption of cloud computing, particularly in relation to its use for innovative practices.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on a composite research base including two detailed surveys and interviews with 56 participants in the cloud supply chain undertaken between 2010 and 2013. The insights from this data are presented in relation to set of antecedents to innovation and a cloud sourcing model of collaborative innovation.FindingsThe paper finds that while some features of cloud computing will hasten the adoption of cloud, and its use for innovative purposes by the enterprise, there are also clear challenges that need to be addressed before cloud can be adopted successfully. Interestingly, the analysis highlights that many of these challenges arise from the technological nature of cloud computing itself.Research limitations/implicationsThe research highlights a series of factors that need to be better understood for the maximum benefit from cloud computing to be achieved. Further research is needed to assess the best responses to these challenges.Practical implicationsThe research suggests that enterprises need to undertake a number of steps for the full benefits of cloud computing to be achieved. It suggests that collaborative innovation is not necessarily an immediate consequence of adopting cloud computing.Originality/valueThe paper draws on an extensive research base to provide empirically informed analysis of the complexities of adopting cloud computing for innovation.

When do international treaties cause domestic policy adjustments? While previous research emphasizes the consequences of treaty ratification, we argue that the need to secure entry into force can induce states to change their policies already before ratification. If a state expects benefits from a treaty, it can increase the probability of foreign ratification by implementing policies that benefit pivotal domestic players within its partner country. Accordingly, studies that focus on policy change after ratification underestimate the importance of treaties and partly misconstrue the causal connection between treaties and policies. We test the theory against data on the relationship between North-South preferential trading agreements (PTAs) and automobile emission standards, finding that developing countries adopt automobile emission standards between the signature and ratification of North-South PTAs.

This paper describes the application of multi-agent systems for improving the transport networks. The growth of international traffic has created new problems in managing the passengers flow. Complex systems are needed to improve the management of transport companies that require new ways for finding solutions on improving their costs such as applying new methods and technologies. The main question that is addressed in this paper is: can the performance and economic status of the transport companies be improved by using multi-agent systems? In order to respond to this question I have presented in this article the main strategies that are used in the present for improving transport systems and a personal interpretation of these strategies.

Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die Vor- und Nachteile alternativer Allokationsmechanismen für das 900- und 1800-MHz-Frequenzspektrum, dessen Nutzungsrechte Ende 2016 auslaufen. Im Wesentlichen bestehen zwei Optionen. Zum einen die Möglichkeit der Verlängerung der aktuellen Nutzungsrechte, zum anderen eine (Neu-)Vergabe der Frequenzen. Die Entscheidung über die Vergabeform ist für die zukünftige Entwicklung des Mobilfunkmarktes in Deutschland von nicht unerheblicher Bedeutung. Wie wir argumentieren, ist - angesichts der Tatsache, dass aktuell kein Markteintritt zu erwarten ist - eine temporäre Verlängerung der bestehenden Lizenzen in Form der Einzelzuteilung eine adäquate Vorgehensweise, um den Wettbewerbern hinreichende Investitionsanreize durch ausreichende Planungssicherheit zu gewähren. Eine Vergabe in Form einer Auktion birgt hingegen erhebliche Risiken in Bezug auf künftige Investitionen und den damit verbundenen Ausbau der Breitbandkapazitäten. Eine temporäre Verlängerung der Nutzungsrechte bietet hingegen zudem den entscheidenden Vorteil, dass mögliche Wertinterdependenzen zwischen dem heute zur Verfügung stehenden 900- und 1800- MHz-Frequenzspektrum berücksichtigt werden können, wenn für die Frequenzrechte ab 2021 bzw. 2026 ein Gesamtvergabeverfahren mit dann weiterem zur Verfügung stehendem Spektrum durchgeführt wird.

We analyse the impact of regulation, industrial policy and jurisdictional allocation on broadband deployment using a theoretical model and an empirical estimation. Although central powers may be more focused and internalize interjurisdictional externalities, decentralized powers may internalize local horizontal policy spillovers and use a diversity of objectives as a commitment device in the presence of sunk investments. The latter may, for instance, alleviate the collective action problem of the joint use of rights of way and other physical infrastructures. In the empirical exercise, using data for OECD and EU countries for the period 1999-2006, we examine whether centralization promotes new telecommunications markets, in particular the broadband access market. The existing literature, in the main, claims it does, but we find no support for this claim in our data. Our results show that indicators of national industrial policy are a weakly positive determinant of broadband deployment and that different measures of centralization are either irrelevant or have a negative impact on broadband penetration.

We analyze the success of filtering as a solution to the spam problem when used alone or concurrently with sender pricing, receiver pricing, or both. We find that filtering alone may exacerbate the spam problem in terms of both the total number of spam message sent and the expected number of spam messages received, because it may cause the spammer to send multiple variants of his message to each customer in an attempt to evade the filter. Sender and receiver prices work as expected. The effectiveness of each instrument improves as the levels of other instruments are increased. Filtrage et tarification des courriels en tant que solutions au probleme de pourriels. On ana-lyse le succes du filtrage en tant que solution au probleme des pourriels quand c'est un arrangement utilise exclusivement ou conjointement avec des arrangements de tarification de l'expediteur ou du recipiendaire de courriels ou des deux. On montre qu'utilise exclusivement le filtrage peut exacerber le probleme des pourriels a la fois en termes du nombre de pourriels expedies, et du nombre de pourriels qu'on peut anticiper recevoir, parce que cela peut amener l'expediteur de pourriels a multiplier les variantes de ses messages a chaque recipiendaire dans le but d'echapper au filtre. La tarification de l'expediteur et du recipiendaire fonctionne comme prevue. L'efficacite de chaque instrument s'ameliore a proportion que le niveau d'utilisation des autres instruments s'accrot.

This article details the benefits and challenges of Insight Journalism, a community engagement and research methodology developed by the interdisciplinary Bespoke project. Based in two under-resourced urban neighbourhoods in North West England, Bespoke combined community media with participatory digital design by supporting local residents to create a series of 'old' and 'new' media outputs that were exhibited locally and used within an innovative design process. The digital designs inspired by the journalism were then built by the Bespoke team and deployed within the local area, where Insight Journalists evaluated their reception. Based on our experiences, in this article, we argue that Insight Journalism can provide a vital space for exploring salient civic and social issues, but must be understood as a process of building relationships and competencies, as well as a set of products including the mediated stories and digital designs that resulted from ongoing engagement. © 2013 Intellect Ltd Article.

The object of this paper is to complement theoretical ‘mobile penetration’ literature with empirical evidence in a dual manner: on the one hand, assess the income-redistributive effect of mobile phone penetration and; on the other hand, the instrumentality of good governance in this nexus. Main findings suggest an equalizing income-redistributive effect, with a higher magnitude in the presence of government quality instruments. It follows that, good governance is a necessary condition for a higher income-equalizing effect of mobile phone penetration. The empirical evidence which deviates from mainstream country-specific and microeconomic survey-based approaches is on 52 African countries. ‘Mobile phone’-oriented poverty reduction channels are also discussed.

In the paper the authors present an overview of the main worldwide development directions in the Smart Home solutions, review the Smart Home services, and give recommendations to potential Romanian and foreign investors in the establishment of such services in Romania. The homes and how people live and behave in them have evolved dramatically in the last fifteen years. Today, the authors are able to present a few major trends that revive the Smart Homes: social trends, digital addiction and the fact that global players see the home like the kernel of the digital atmosphere that surrounds us. The purpose was to identify an opportunity today, as these trends have a satisfying maturity degree.Studying various projects, authors were able to estimate that Smart Homes revenues will increase with 8-10 % per year until 2020 in Romania. These estimates include both direct revenues like home automation products/services and indirect revenues like maintenance of the new devices/services.

Among today’s modes of transportation, rail remains of great interest because of its explicit advantages arising from the fact that it is the least polluting and most environmentally friendly. These are just some of the reasons why, in recent years, the European Union strategies seek to develop and implement programs to revive Community’s rail transport. The paper makes a brief analysis of the economic impact of the implementation of information and telecommunication technologies in railway transport, technologies that can contribute significantly to the achievement of sustainable, competitive and reliable transport

Firms engage in foggy pricing when the menu of tariff options aims at profiting from consumer mistakes. The analysis of this paper concludes that the transition from monopoly to competition in the early US cellular telephone industry does not generally foster the use of such deceptive strategies. I offer three alternative measures to account for the fogginess of the menu of options offered by cellular carriers. All results are robust to the existence of uncertainty regarding future consumption at the time of choosing a particular tariff option, as well as to consumers' heterogeneity with respect to cellular telephone usage. (JEL D03, L11, L12, L13, L96)

This research analyzes the role of information and communication technology on export competitiveness of Thai small and medium-sized enterprises. It studies the effects of the relative uses of information and communication technologies on relative competitiveness, measured by relative market share of exports to the world, compared between Thailand and other countries in ASEAN except Singapore. Singapore is excluded from the study because it is a re-exporting country rather than a producing country. The result reveals that the relative uses of mobile phones and broad-band internet are positively affect the relative market share of exports to the world markets. However, the relative use of fixed telephone is insignificant to the improvement of the relative competitiveness.

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the Journal of Regional Science (2013). Volume 53, Issue 5(SI), pages 855-873. This paper studies the impact of physical distance and different relational proximity types on the formation of the Internet infrastructure. Although there is some anecdotal evidence on the 'end of geography' effect of the Internet, the relationship between physical space and the Internet has not been yet scrutinized. In addition, owing to the network nature of the Internet, the structure of the Internet infrastructure (the cyber-place) cannot be approached in a unidimensional way. Our paper builds upon recent studies in economic geography and relational proximities, and aims to study whether physical distance survives in virtual geography even after controlling for relational proximities. In order to do so, a unique and extensive database with geo-coded IP links is utilized. Based on this, a spatial interaction model with panel data specifications is constructed to study the impact of different types of proximity on the formation of cyber-place. The above analysis is framed by a complex network analysis exercise, which enhances our understanding of the complexity of the Internet infrastructure from a spatial network perspective. Our results indicate that physical distance, but also different relational proximities, have a significant impact on the intensity of the Internet infrastructure, highlighting the spatiality of the Internet.

We developed a model to analyze the short term relationship between mobile phone charges per rounded minute and per second, in a context where tariffs are freely determined. We assumed profit maximizing firms and an exponential distribution for mobile call duration. Among the results, we found that charges per second are significantly greater than charges per rounded minute, and lower average call duration is related to a greater difference between rates. The results of the model, calibrated with OECD estimates, are consistent with empirical evidence.

Seit einigen Jahren wird in Europa ein neuer Regulierungsansatz im Telekommunikationssektor diskutiert: weg von einer nationalen Betrachtungsweise hin zu einem subnationalen Ansatz, bei dem Gebiete mit ausgeprägtem Wettbewerb dereguliert werden. In den Diskussionen wurden zahlreiche Argumente mit Blick auf das Für und Wider einer regional differenzierten Regulierung ausgetauscht. Bislang gibt es jedoch noch keine empirischen Hinweise, wie sich die Wettbewerbssituation in den deregulierten Gebieten nach der Deregulierung weiterentwickelt. Die Untersuchung der lokalen Deregulierung des Markts für Breitbandzugänge für Großkunden im Vereinigten Königreich, das 2008 als erstes europäisches Land eine lokale Deregulierung eingeführt hat, zeigt, dass sich in deregulierten Gebieten der infrastrukturbasierte Wettbewerb tendenziell positiv weiterentwickelt hat. Sowohl der etablierte Netzbetreiber British Telecom als auch seine Wettbewerber investierten nach der Deregulierung eines Gebietes dort weiterhin vermehrt in Infrastruktur.

This study empirically examines long run relationship between investment in telecommunication and economic growth in selected Asian countries. We resort to econometric tests such as panel unit root tests and panel cointegration test purposed by Pedroni (1997, 1999) for annual data from 1990-2010 of 23 Asian countries. The empirical results suggest that there exists causality between economic growth and investment in telecommunication. Causality runs from investment in telecom to economic growth and not otherwise. Since telecommunication sector has an innate ability to contribute to economic growth in a dual fashion. Firstly, as a part of services sector and secondly as an expediter to other sectors of the economy. Policy recommendations are made on the basis of favorable findings in support of ICT-led growth.

We study departures from network neutrality through implementing a quality of service tiering regime in which an Internet service provider charges for prioritization on a nondiscriminatory basis. We find that quality of service tiering may be more efficient in the short run because it better allocates the existing network capacity and in the long run because it provides higher investment incentives due to the increased demand for priority services by the entry of new congestion sensitive content providers. Which network regime is the most efficient depends on the distribution of congestion sensitivity among content providers, but a guideline is that the regime that provides higher incentives for infrastructure investments is more efficient in the long run.

The most important issues in auction design are the traditional concerns of competition policy preventing collusive, predatory, and entry-deterring behaviour. Ascending and uniform-price auctions are particularly vulnerable to these problems, and the Anglo-Dutch auction a hybrid of the sealed-bid and ascending auctions may often perform better. Effective anti-trust policy is also critical. However, everything depends on the details of the context; the circum- stances of the recent U.K. mobile-phone license auction made an ascending format ideal, but this author (and others) correctly predicted the same for- mat would fail in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Auction design is not one size Þts all . We also discuss the 3G spectrum auctions in Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, and football TV-rights, TV franchise and other radiospectrum auctions, electricity markets, and takeover battles.

We use a classroom game, the `Wallet Game', to show that slight asymmetries between bidders can have very large effects on prices in standard ascending (i.e. English) auctions of common-value objects. Examples of small asymmetries are a small value advantage for one bidder or a small ownership of the object by one bidder. The effects of these asymmetries are greatly exarcabated by entry costs or bidding costs. We discuss applications to Airwaves Auctions and Takeover Battles including the Glaxo–Wellcome Merger.

There were enormous differences in the revenues from the European “third generation” (3G, or “UMTS”) mobile-phone license auctions, from 20 Euros per capita in Switzerland to 650 Euros per capita in the UK, though the values of the licenses sold were similar. Poor auction designs in some countries facilitated collusion between firms and failed to attract entrants. The sequencing of the auctions was also crucial. We discuss the auctions in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece and Denmark.

We usually assume increases in supply, allocation by rationing, and exclusion of potential buyers will never raise prices. But all of these activities raise the expected price in an important set of cases when common-value assets are sold. Furthermore, when we make the assumptions needed to rule out these ‘anomalies’ when buyers are symmetric, small asymmetries among buyers necessarily cause the anomalies to reappear.

We use a classroom game, the ‘Wallet Game’, to show that in standard ascending, i.e. English, auctions of close-to-common-values objects, even slight asymmetries between bidders can have very large effects on prices. Examples of small asymmetries are a small value advantage for one bidder or a small ownership of the object by one bidder; the effects of these asymmetries are greatly exacerbated by entry costs or bidding costs. We discuss applications to airwaves auctions and takeover battles including the Glaxo-Wellcome merger.

This paper reviews the part played by economists in organising the British third-generation mobile-phone licence auction that concluded on 27 April 2000. It raised 22 1/2 billion pounds ($34 billion or 2 1/2% of GNP) and was widely described at the time as the biggest auction ever. We discuss the merits of auctions versus "beauty contests", the aims of the auction, the problems we faced, the auction designs we considered, and the mistakes that were made.

We try in this paper to characterize the state of mobile phone market in Tunisia. Our study is based on a survey of foreign experience (Europe) in detecting collusive behavior and a comparison of the critical threshold of collusion between operators in developing countries like Tunisia. The market power is estimated based on the work of Parker Roller (1997) and the assumption of "Balanced Calling Pattern". We use then the model of Friedman (1971) to compare the critical threshold of collusion. We show that the "conduct parameter" measuring the intensity of competition is not null during the period 1993-2011. Results show also that collusion is easier on the Tunisian market that on the Algerian, Jordanian, or Moroccan one.

In recent debates about the ever-growing prominence of celebrity in society and culture, a number of scholars have started to use the often intermingled terms ‘celebrification’ and ‘celebritization’. This article contributes to these debates first by distinguishing and clearly defining both terms, and especially by presenting a multidimensional conceptual model of celebritization to remedy the current one-sided approaches that obscure its theoretical and empirical complexity. Here ‘celebrification’ captures the transformation of ordinary people and public figures into celebrities, whereas ‘celebritization’ is conceptualized as a meta-process that grasps the changing nature, as well as the societal and cultural embedding of celebrity, which can be observed through its democratization, diversification and migration. It is argued that these manifestations of celebritization are driven by three separate but interacting moulding forces: mediatization, personalization and commodification.

This model discusses mobile network operators' (MNOs) incentives to invest in their network facilities such as new 4G networks under various regimes of data roaming charge regulation. Given an induced externality of investments (spillovers) due to the roaming agreements it will be shown that MNOs, competing on investments, widely set higher investments for below cost regulation of roaming charges. Otherwise, if MNOs are free to collaborate on investments, they set higher investment levels for above cost roaming charges. Both below- and above cost charges may be preferred from a welfare perspective. Furthermore, the paper discusses e ects of the roaming charge regulation on roaming quality and MNOs' coverage.