This paper employs firm-level panel data of 57 incumbent and entrant firms for 23 European countries in the decade from 2003 to 2012. We examine the impact of service- and facility-based competition on firm level investment as well as the strategic effects underlying infrastructure investment decisions. At the same time we explicitly model the structural dynamics of broadband investment using dynamic panel estimation techniques. We find that facility-based competition exerts a positive and significant impact on both incumbents and entrants implying that incumbents' and entrants' investment decisions are strategic complements. Moreover, this strategic complementarity is much more pronounced with respect to the entrants. Finally, we show that service-based competition appears to have no significant impact on the investment decision of incumbents and entrants and that there is no supportive evidence for the so-called "ladder of investment" hypothesis. With respect to the later phase of market regulation, service-based competition exerts a negative impact on entrants' investment. (authors' abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economics

This research presents an explanatory model for consumers' adoption of mobile services. This model uses the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology presented by Venkatesh in 2003 as a baseline and integrates the Perceived Enjoyment, Mobile Affinity, Perceived Price of Service and the Frequency of Mobile Usage as to investigate the Attitude and the Intention to Use mobile services. The proposed model was empirically tested using data collected from a field survey where 1095 respondents filled out the two pages questionnaire. A structural equation modeling approach was used to test the proposed model and later to develop a refined version throughout an exploratory phase. This version proved to corroborate most of the model structure resulting from the exploratory phase. Different combinations of estimators and data scale properties have been used throughout the testing phases. The main findings indicate that all relations proved to be significant in the model except for the one between Effort Expectancy and the Intention. Still as expected the relation between the Effort Expectancy and the Performance Expectancy is the most influential in the model followed by the influence of Enjoyment on the Attitude. As expected, clear gender differences were found specifically when it comes to Social Influence. Another interesting observation is that the adoption theories stemming from developed markets performed well in an emerging market. Besides the methodological and empirical testing, this research furnishes a review of the information systems adoption theories and provides a detailed description of the players in the mobile commerce industry with an insight into the evolution of the value chains over the last 10 years. Besides the methodological importance for researchers, this study seizes a managerial guidance for the Mobile industry players who are interested in emerging markets. (author's abstract)

Although the future socio-economic benefits of a new fibre-based ("next generation access", NGA) telecommunications infrastructure seem to be uncontroversial, most countries have to date only undertaken NGA investments on a small scale. Accordingly, a universal NGA coverage appears to be a rather unrealistic objective without government intervention. Indeed, many governments have already initiated diverse subsidy programs in order to stimulate NGA infrastructure deployment. We contend, however, that the current contract practice of fixing ex ante targets for network expansion is inefficient given the uncertainty about future returns on NGA infrastructure-based services and the public authorities' incomplete information about the capital costs of the network provider. This paper puts forward to delegate the choice of the network expansion to the NGA provider. Simple linear profit-sharing contracts can be designed to control the NGA provider's incentives and to put in balance the public objectives of network expansion and limitation of public expenditure. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers / Research Institute for Regulatory Economics