Over the past two decades China has achieved eye-catching development in the provision of telephone and Internet services in its vast rural areas. With the literature's lopsided focus on Western nations, a cohesive paradigm in mapping the Chinese style of universal service policy remains...

Purpose - The paper looks at the formulation of the BMGF-VN project to examine which actors participated in the formulation of this project, how their interests were translated into this project, and what lessons may be drawn for the formulation and implementation of universal service policy in...

This paper analyses a business model for providing free basic-rate Internet to everyone with a data capable phone, living in mobile coverage areas. The model is called Freemium Internet. The term "freemium" refers to a well-known business model for digital services, where free services or...

Within a Generalized DiffServ architecture entrepreneurial flexibility for build-ing intelligent multipurpose traffic architectures enables the provision of a varie-ty of tailored traffic services for a wide range of heterogeneous application ser-vices. In order to solve the entrepreneurial...

Postal service volumes have diminished and the profitability of postal and courier activities has weakened in Finland in recent years. The study evaluates the development of the service volumes, profitability and employment of postal and courier activities until 2020. The distribution volumes of...

This study aims at investigating the order of magnitude of financial burden of the universal service obligation for the universal service provider, Itella, in the Finnish postal sector. It evaluates the difference between universal service provider’s profitability with the universal service...

The theory of fiscal federalism points out that decentralisation should be pursued in order to fit differences in individual preferences. However, the presence of externalities and the need of providing merit goods to citizens suggest that centralisation is likely to produce more efficient...

The theory of fiscal federalism points out that decentralisation should be pursued in order to fit differences in individual preferences. However, the presence of externalities and the need of providing merit goods to citizens suggest that centralisation is likely to produce more efficient...

The review of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) has recently been debated in the European Union (EU). Under discussion there was the extension of the current universal service definition to include broadband access, for which some theoretical and empirical support exists. In fact the...

The study develops a sector-overlapping definition of universal services including the postal and telecommunications sector. In a second step, the financial consequences are modeled.

Bei der Besteuerung nicht oder nur begrenzt handelbarer Dienstleistungen (wie z.B. lokale Postdienstleistungen) entfällt der Anpassungsdruck des internationalen Steuerwettbewerbs weitgehend, sodass etwaige Wettbewerbsverzerrungen insbesondere zwischen verschiedenen inländischen...

In the U.S. paying for priority arrangements between Internet access service providers and Internet application providers to favor some traffic over other traffic is considered unreasonable discrimination. In Europe the focus is on mini-mum traffic quality requirements. It can be shown that...

Bei der Besteuerung nicht oder nur begrenzt handelbarer Dienstleistungen (wie z.B. lokale Postdienstleistungen) entfällt der Anpassungsdruck des internationalen Steuerwettbewerbs weitgehend, sodass etwaige Wettbewerbsverzerrungen insbesondere zwischen verschiedenen inländischen...

In the U.S. paying for priority arrangements between Internet access service providers and Internet application providers to favor some traffic over other traffic is considered unreasonable discrimination. In Europe the focus is on minimum traffic quality requirements. It can be shown that...

Bei der Besteuerung nicht oder nur begrenzt handelbarer Dienstleistungen (wie z.B. lokale Postdienstleistungen) entfällt der Anpassungsdruck des internationalen Steuerwettbewerbs weitgehend, sodass etwaige Wettbewerbsverzerrungen insbesondere zwischen verschiedenen inländischen...