Conventional wisdom assigns primacy to content production, with distribution as the commodity adjunct. But is this perspective correct? The paper looks both analytically and empirically at this question, and concludes a. that distribution is the dominant factor; and b. that the trends in both...

Kenya is about to embark on an important reform to expand banking to millions of poor households by enabling third-party retail agents as a low-cost distribution alternative to branches. However, this initiative risks being undermined by the mobile network operator (MNO) Safaricom, which...

This paper investigates the incentives to invest in improving the quality of service (as distinguished to investment in a new activity) in telecommunication industry. This kind of investment is very important in telecommunication industry because of the rapid technological progress that makes...

The local authorities, in particular via Delegations of Public Utility (DPU), develop telecommunications infrastructures which often duplicate infrastructures of the incumbent operator. Such infrastructures are financed partly by public subsidies which must allow competition to develop, even in...

The Scottish Government has issued a prospectus for independence, should it win a plebiscite in September 2014. It plans independence to be in March 2016, together with accession to membership of the European Union. Its proposed arrangements for the regulation of broadcasting are presently very...

This article provides an overview of the competitive issues surrounding online platforms. The general theme is that while much has been made of the structural features of online platforms there is little hard evidence that these are durable monopolies. Nonetheless, there are concerns about the...

Is monopoly the inevitable market outcome for a network industry without regulation? Policy related to network communications industries historically has been based on the assumption that the characteristics of these industries will lead to high concentration, and ultimately monopoly. However,...

Do switching costs reduce or intensify price competition in markets where firms charge the same price to old and new consumers? The answer is theoretically ambiguous because a firm prefers to charge a higher price to previous purchasers who are "locked-in" and a lower price to unattached...

One important concern for the upcoming and highly-complex voluntary incentive auctions for broadcast television spectrum is the degree to which the largest mobile wireless providers will be allowed to participate. Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice encouraged the Federal Communications...