The EU regulatory framework for electronic communications services distinguishes between markets that are susceptible to ex ante regulation and those that are subject to competition law alone. The paper lays out the methodology for identifying relevant markets that may be considered for ex ante...

I examine cost forecasts for 49 fiber-optic and wireless networks funded by the Recovery Act. I find that grantees did not systematically underbid for projects. They did, however, underestimate and overestimate costs with nearly equal frequency, and escalate costs on average by 202 percent in...

In order to avoid over-regulation, some countries have experimented with what might be called threat-based regulation. The idea is - similarly to the contestable market model - that actual regulation may not be necessary as long as the threat of regulation is credible. In that case, so the idea,...

The government of South Africa has issued a draft policy to accelerate network deployment. The legal basis is to be the Electronic Communications Act (ECA), but the policy intrudes into areas of property ownership and the powers of municipalities. Consequently, there would be no legal basis for...

When the Internet was in its nascency, the Federal Communications Commission rejected calls to impose traditional "common carrier" regulation designed for a monopoly telephone world. Instead, the agency classified broadband Internet access as an "information service" under Title I of the...

The assessment of future mobile data and spectrum demand is an important policy and business strategy question. The orthodox approach to these linked questions starts from a mobile data traffic projection to infer spectrum demand and value. However, future mobile data demand is uncertain, and...

This paper explores a bootstrap modelling approach to estimating the value of mobile, spectrum and data demand. A mobile data forecast is not required, since data growth is modelled endogenously. The approach also dispenses with the notion of a “spectrum crunch” since data demand responds to...

Experiences and laws from other countries are one of the main inputs that regulators across the world use when they have to design a regulatory framework for their countries. This approach, that might be reasonable when markets are similar enough, is however unsuitable when US or European-like...

The purpose of this POLICY BULLETIN is evaluate the link between the FCC's Triennial Review and the erosion of market cap in the telecommunications industry by applying standard empirical tests to measure the effects of the Triennial Review on the stock returns (and, consequently, the market...

For the past twenty-five years, the U.S. Government has increasingly looked to antitrust—rather than regulation—to protect consumers in the Internet Ecosystem. There is a growing school of thought that an antitrust-only approach has failed and is ill-suited for the Internet Ecosystem. Reform...