Profiting in the info-communications in the age of broadband: lessons and new considerations

Who profits in the info-coms industry in the broadband age, and how? This paper looks at this question, decomposing the industry in terms of five complementary activities: (1) equipment provision, (2) network operation, (3) Internet access and service provision, (4) navigation and security provision, and (5) Internet content provision, which correspond to five different assets in the sense of Teece (1986). By focusing on two key stylized facts (SF1: “R&D and patent licensing are increasingly high in this industry, but the initiators of innovations have greatly changed over time”, and SF2: “Small, facilities-less companies emerged during the development of the Internet industry, but have generally performed badly as the industry has matured and broadband use has become widespread”) the paper analyses the robustness of Teece (1986) in its ability to provide a framework appropriate to the changes that have occurred in the broadband industry. The paper draws some lessons, and provides some new considerations related to the robustness of Teece's framework.