This report was commissioned by Treasury in February 1999 as an input into its ongoing work programme on the regulation of network industries. Network industries are characterised by long-lived investments and increasing returns to scale. This raises two related concerns – protection of...

This report was commissioned by Treasury in February 1999 as an input into its ongoing work programme on the regulation of network industries. Network industries are characterised by long-lived investments and increasing returns to scale. This raises two related concerns – protection of...

This paper considers a central issue in telecommunications regulation. What rules, if any, should regulators put in place to provide incentives for timely and efficient investment in NGA while, at the same time, preventing monopoly abuse - either by taking monopoly rents from end users or...

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...

This paper considers the development of digital platforms, their economic role and the policy approach which should apply to them. Digital platforms are heterogeneous, so no flavour of ‘platform regulation' is likely to be appropriate across all platforms, whilst horizontal laws apply to...

Maintaining across-the-board restrictions is socially and economically costly, has adverse distributional impacts, and is poorly targeted in terms of protecting health and health care provision. Instead a win–win ‘Coasean’ social contract could be forged to protect older people and other...

There have been moves towards greater reliance on market mechanisms for spectrum management – auctions, trading, private band management and leasing – in North America, the EU and a number of other countries. Alongside these developments, regulators have applied administratively determined...