We evaluate the welfare effects of the Roam-Like-At-Home regulation, which drastically re-duced the price of accessing the mobile internet for EU residents when traveling abroad in the European Economic Area. Estimates from individual-level usage data suggest that consumer surplus increased by...

Im Rahmen des vorliegenden Diskussionsbeitrags wird die Angebots- und Wettbewerbsentwicklung auf dem deutschen Festnetzmarkt im Zeitraum 2017 bis 2020 analysiert. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Untersuchung der Preisentwicklung von Double-Play-Tarifen (Internet + Telefon) für private Endnutzer in...

This paper investigates the impacts of the current roaming rules on domestic competition and welfare. We consider a model for two countries in which each country has two operators that compete in the retail market for access services and also in the wholesale market for roaming. We first derive...

The roam-like-at-home regulation (RLAH) eliminated all mobile roaming surcharges to Eu-ropean consumers travelling within the European Economic Area (EEA). We measure the causal impact of the regulation on EEA roaming traffic, using the Rest of the World as a control group. We find large and...

We empirically assess the impact of the EU roaming regulation on mobile operators' average revenues per user (ARPU) and retail prices. Using a differences-in-difference approach, hedonic price regressions and detailed operator and plan-level data we find that the regulation decreased mobile...

We empirically assess the impact of the EU roaming regulation on mobile operators’ average revenues per user (ARPU) and retail prices. Using a differences-in-difference approach, hedonic price regressions and detailed operator and plan-level data we find that the regulation decreased mobile...

We develop a consumer level demand model of telecommunications and broadcasting services considering an exhaustive set of alternatives available to consumers including bundled services. We then estimate switching costs associated with bundling. Previous studies consider restricted choice sets...

As a case study of an ex-post evaluation of regulations, in this paper I evaluate the ‘uniform settlement rate requirement', a regulation that was introduced in 1986 and that was applied to the international telephone market in the U.S. for more than 20 years. In a bilateral market between the...

International Mobile Roaming (IMR) is a service whereby a user who subscribes to mobile telecommunications services in one country is able to use his or her mobile device in other countries. For many years, governments around the world have expressed concerns that the price of IMR services...

We evaluate the impact of mobile operators merger on unitary price of data and voice by using country-level observations on data retail revenue, cellular data traffic, voice retail revenue, outgoing voice minutes. Using difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we estimate the effect of...

I develop a multiproduct nonlinear pricing model where a firm sells both discrete and continuous goods/services to consumers with multidimensional heterogeneity. I derive the optimal selling mechanism and provide primitive conditions under which different bundling strategies arise. Exploiting...

In theory, network profits are independent of the reciprocal termination rates when operators charge nondiscriminatory call prices (Laffont, Rey and Tirole, 1998). Additionally, termination rates can be used to subsidize subscriber acquisition cost. This issue is typically known as a "waterbed...

Since June 15, 2017, mobile network operators in the European Economic Area may not impose surcharges for making telephone calls, sending text messages, or using data services in other EEA countries. The regulation was designed to create a digital domestic market without adversely affecting...

In this paper, we assess the impact of competition and regulation on prices of mobile services in France. We estimate hedonic price regressions using data on tariff plans offered by the main mobile telecommunications operator in France between May 2011 and December 2014. In this time period, the...

Cross-country price comparison is a useful, but often deceptive exercise. The paper addresses the underlying methodological challenges, offering a practicable solution, which is both sound enough and meaningful for the comparison of mobile broadband prices on different markets. Both the simple...

Cross-country price comparison is a useful, but often deceptive exercise. The paper addresses the underlying methodological challenges, offering a practicable solution, which is both sound enough and meaningful for the comparison of mobile broadband prices on different markets. Both the simple...

Mobile phones have been central to ICT innovation since the introduction of the smartphone and constant-quality prices are a barometer of their economic impact. Official consumer price indices (CPIs) indicate that impact differs wildly across countries: For the 2008-2018 period, average annual...

This textbook characterizes the economics of telecommunication services from an engineering perspective. The authors bring out the fundamental drivers of the industry and characterize networks from a graph theoretic perspective, including random, small world, and scale free networks. The authors...

Providing internationally comparable measures on prices of communication services has been a core task of the OECD through its Working Party on Communication Infrastructures and Services Policy (WPCISP) for decades. Currently, the majority of broadband services in OECD countries are based on...

Introduction -- Characteristics and Characterization of Information Networks -- Drivers of the Telecommunication Industry -- Graph Theoretic Characterization of Communication Networks -- Small World and Scale-free Networks -- Characterization of Telecommunication Traffic -- Bandwidth and...

On 25 November 2015, the European Union enacted new rules for international mobile roaming (IMR) under Regulation 2015/2120, which seeks to implement a Roam Like at Home (RLAH) regime among the member states of the European Union. Questions remain, however, as to whether it is possible to...

The European Commission (EC) draft Regulation (2016)2 on wholesale roaming market proposes a massive decrease of the regulated roaming wholesale price caps for data with a drop from €5ct/MB to €0.85 ct/MB to enable the abolition of retail roaming surcharges in Europe by 15 June 2017....

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has over the last six years, in line with other regulators in many jurisdictions, reduced call termination rates (the price one operator charges another to complete a call between two networks) by more than 80%. A key question is...

Cross-country price comparison is a useful, but often deceptive exercise. The paper addresses the underlying methodological challenges, offering a practicable solution, which is both sound enough and meaningful for the comparison of prices on different markets. The simple and methodologically...