Control and Value in Mobile Communications : A Political Economy of the Reconfiguration of Business Models in the European Mobile Industry

The emergence of software platforms and internet-like end-to-end architectures in mobile communications systems, as well as the expected breakthrough of a range of alternative wireless network technologies, are causing intense pressure on the dominant technological and business set-up in the mobile industry. A strong current in business and academic literature is arguing that the 'open and modular' internet architectures will (or should) wipe away the current 'closed and integrated' telecommunications architectures. It is often implied that, as a result, (mainly US-based) internet and IT firms are bound to make significant inroads into the telecommunications market. By contrast, others anticipate that the advantages in terms of quality and security offered by integrated telecommunications architectures will allow mobile operators to dominate the mobile internet and to capture a major share of all service revenues in this context. In this PhD thesis, it is hypothesised that there is no automatic mirroring between technical modularity and market unbundling, and that, instead of relying on any outright 'open' or 'closed' strategy, the mobile industry is increasingly bound to employ 'open but not open' platform business models, in order to combine advantages of diversity and complementarity with advantages of control and coordination. A business model is redefined as the 'architecture' of a specific business, i.e. the way in which control and value parameters are balanced within a network of collaborating firms. This approach aims to contribute to the revitalisation of the political economy of ICT (re)design, which stresses that control configurations, power relationships and different forms of bias pervade technological architectures, and that they profoundly influence the individual, societal and economic value generated through these architectures. On the basis of a range of real-life cases as well as two series of in-depth interviews with decision makers and strategists in the European mobile industry, a number of strategically viable business models are identified, and the implications for the set-up of mobile communications are outlined