This paper tests whether households that are offered broadband service for the first time tend to delay in taking it up. Using cross-sectional data on broadband take-up and socioeconomic characteristics of small areas in Ireland, linked to GIS data on ADSL availability, I find that local...

The relationship between technical progress and price competition is a controversial issue in economics. This paper highlights the fact that investment in technical progress is an authentic type of competition which benefits the consumers rather than the industry. This type of competition exists...

The mobile broadband (MBB) in Swedish market has become a more attractive opportunity for service providers, with growing demand for ubiquitous broadband connectivity after the mobile operators got 3G license in 2000. MBB seems to have more advantage compare to Fixed broadband (FBB) in term of...

Geographical averaging of retail and wholesale prices could distort incentives for bypass entry in both the metropolitan and the high-cost areas. The two-instrument approach to universal service support, proposed in (Armstrong, 2001), could enhance efficiency, through competitive and...

In order to create incentives for Internet traffic providers not to discriminate with respect to certain applications on the basis of network capacity requirements, the concept of market driven network neutrality is introduced. Its basic characteristics are that all applications are bearing the...

Typically, incumbent providers enjoy a demand-side advantage over any entrant. However, market entrants may enjoy a supply-side advantage in costs over the incumbent, since they are more efficient or operate on innovative technologies, such as the voice of internet protocol (VoIP) telephony....

Switching costs increase the rigidity of consumers demand and lessen competition between firms, effects that are particularly relevant in the mobile voice services market. This paper characterizes the most important mobility restrictive factors for consumers in this market, presenting specific...

In this paper, we examine welfare implications of switching from a neutrality regime to a network management regime. While in the former a network provider or an integrated ISP should transmit data with a-bit-is-a-bit principle, in the latter it is allowed to differentiate its connection quality...

This paper explores how consumers react towards price differentiation between on-net and off-net calls in mobile telecommunications - a pricing policy that is common in many mobile telecommunications markets. Based on a survey of 1044 students we demonstrate that some consumers may suffer from a...

This paper examines the effects of various price-cap rules on peakload pricing. The issue recently gains practical importance in regulated network industries. The formal approach reveals that efficiency properties of various price-cap rules are, notwithstanding some problems, fairly good. A...