Convergence and Triple Play Bundling : An Empirical Assessment for European Telecommunications

Digital convergence is quickly leading to various telecommunications and media sourcing triple play services of voice, television and internet. This article describes the extent to which bundling strategies have been recently deployed by access providers, and their impact on competition in Western Europe. Generally speaking, we observe that the business sorting effect of bundling is larger than that of business stealing for triple-play in Western Europe. The sorting effect does not however compensate for the extra competition arising from the full convergence of access provision