Regulatory Policy for Telecommunications in the Age of the Internet: Two-Sided Markets and One-Way Bets - by John Ure
Tue 05 May 2009 12:00pm
Seminar Room 2-3, Level 2 Manasseh Meyer
The telecommunications industry is facing a mid-life crisis. The vision of the 1990s when it was to be at the centre of the information society, the builder of the Information SuperHighway and keeper of its toll booths did not work out quite like that. In the age of the Internet, interconnection is universal and substitute channels of access are ubiquitous. By-pass of telecoms gateways is an established fact at both technical and commercial levels. The industry is still struggling to come to terms with these new realities. A good example which illustrates this were the 3G auctions in Europe and in parts of Asia around 2000. Operators made one-way bets on creating business models based upon control of the spectrum, without regard to the fact that in an Internet world, markets are two-sided, that is network economies are created mutually by the vendors and consumers. For this reason the "closed garden" models failed. more >>
