Competitive relationships between traditional and contemporary telecommunication services in Taiwan

This study sets out to examine the competitive relationships that exist within the telecommunications market using the niche theory on the personal gratifications and system gratifications dimensions. The findings from the analysis of 363 survey responses indicate that traditional and contemporary telecommunication services offer different specializations to satisfy their consumers. Overall, mobile telecommunication services partially replace wired services, on personal gratifications dimensions in particular. The system gratifications dimensions of the wired telecommunication services facilitate the existence of wired services. New telecommunication services (3G and VoIP) partially replace old telecommunication services (home landline and 2G) in providing greater satisfaction in entertainment. The results also demonstrate that VoIP does not impose competitive displacement effects on home landline, 2G, and 3G services. Limitation and suggestions are discussed.     

The diffusion of new telecommunication technologies

This article assesses the recent diffusion of new telecommunication technologies. Drawing upon an historical framework, the authors find that new technologies face significant barriers to rapid penetration in the home and office. Data on cable television, electronic text services, teleconferencing and alternative video distribution technologies are analysed to highlight the constraints facing the growth of new telecommunications services.     

Managing and modeling the price reduction effect in mobile telecommunications traffic

As needs for telecommunications services diversify, an increasingly wide range of services is becoming available in the market. Service price reduction is one strategy used by service providers to retain existing subscribers. A price reduction for one service, however, can affect the individual-level usage for other services. Price reductions can also be imposed on a service provider by regulation. For these reasons, understanding how price reductions affect service usage is of growing importance to the telecommunications industry for purposes of pricing and tariff development. In this paper, an individual-level usage model for telecommunications services is developed and the effects on usage of a price reduction are analyzed. The model is applied to age-stratified aggregate traffic data for a Korean mobile telecommunication service provider. Finally, a 0-1 integer programming model is proposed for choosing which market segment should be targeted with a price reduction to minimize revenue loss. These models can be applied to market segmentation and price reduction strategy.     

The characteristics of videos on demand for television programs and the determinants of their viewing patterns: Evidence from the Korean IPTV market

Korea's video-on-demand (VOD) market is led by pay TV service providers, especially internet protocol television (IPTV) service providers, and VODs for television programs (TV-VOD) represent the largest share of VOD in the country. TV-VOD is therefore of strategic importance to providers in terms of their current sales share and future growth. Focusing on the time-shift characteristics of TV-VOD and the serial complementarity of television programs, this study examines how various factors such as the characteristics of paid vs. free VOD services, and the average and variance of broadcast ratings affect VOD viewing patterns. An empirical analysis was conducted using data for TV-VODs of all television programs broadcast by major Korean broadcasters in 2015. The key findings are as follows: (1) There is an inverted-U shape relationship between broadcast ratings and TV-VOD views. This implies that there exists a positive window effect between the original broadcast and TV-VOD, with an exceptional substitution effect in segments with very high ratings. (2) Even if the average ratings are similar, there are more VOD views for programs that have a large fluctuation in ratings between episodes, mainly due to serial complementarity. (3) In terms of the distribution of VOD views over time, the initial concentration is higher in paid VOD packages and dramas, which implies that immediate decay appears for TV-VOD content because of subscriber preferences for novelty and the serial nature of drama shows. The study concludes with various implications for VOD service providers and policy makers.     

US TV networks' response to new technology

The US television networks, so long the dominant force in US broadcasting, have seen their market shares and profits begin to fall as the new telecommunication services increase their penetration rates and fractionalize the viewing audience. In response to this competitive challenge, the networks have increased their offerings of news, bid high prices to retain the rights to professional sports, and decreased their reliance on theatrical movies. More importantly, the networks have themselves expanded into the new technologies in a number of different areas.     

Factors influencing the user acceptance of digital home services

Digital home services provide multimedia entertainment, communication, and healthcare services to the public in order to make their lives more convenient. Many articles predict that the digital home service market will be huge and that many will take advantage of this situation. The purpose of this paper is to identify the future market for digital home services in South Korea by exploring the existing critical information and literature. This study proposes a conceptual model for assessing the adoption of digital home services, for which survey data from 600 heads of households in Korea were collected and used to test the proposed model. This paper also examines customer characteristics and their relationship with the acceptance of digital home services. First, the findings indicate that infra-service is mainly determined by age, region, job, family type, house type, and attitude towards adoption of new products. Second, home entertainment service is also significantly affected by gender, age, region, family type, family member, house type, and attitude towards adoption of new products. Third, home healthcare service was positively affected by gender, region, job, and usage period of high-speed internet. This study may provide companies with valuable guidelines for the implementation of digital home services.     

What is the magnitude of fixed–mobile call substitution? Empirical evidence from 16 European countries

This paper investigates the degree of fixed–mobile call substitution (FMCS) within different European countries. We use quarterly data from 2004 to mid-2010 on 16 mainly Western European countries. By applying dynamic panel data techniques, we are able to estimate short- and long-run elasticities of the telecommunication usage prices on the fixed-line call demand. The own-price and cross-price elasticities found give strong empirical evidence for substitutional effects towards mobile services. In particular, the estimated cross-price elasticities of the mobile price on the fixed-line call demand are relatively large compared to other studies.     

Regulating audiotex: Lessons for the future development and oversight of electronic information and telecommunication services

Much can be learned from the audiotex experience regarding the future regulation of automated, recorded, live conversation and fax-based information and entertainment telecommunication services. Audiotex has raised a number of ‘carriage v content’ issues with significance for value-added multimedia services more generally. In addition, audiotex has led policy makers and practitioners alike to wrestle with the challenges posed to traditional, industry-focused regulatory regimes by the convergence of the telecommunications, broadcasting, computing and publishing industries which lies at the heart of the development of multimedia services. This paper draws heavily on events in two of the most developed domestic audiotex markets (the UK and the USA) in discussing four lessons which it is suggested both industry players and regulatory bodies take from the audiotex experience in considering the future development and oversight of electronic information and telecommunication services.     

The political economy of the Korean telecommunications reform

South Korea proclaimed a gradual economic liberalization ever since the early 1980s. Regardless of her vow to do so, however, most of liberalization efforts turned out to be a sheer rhetoric. In sharp contrast, genuine market liberalization and regulatory reforms are being introduced in the telecommunication sector, which is unprecedented in the Korean economic history. Why and how could Korea pursue such a full scale market liberalization and regulatory reforms in the telecommunications sector? Though it is argued that a regulatory convergence in economic management is found in everywhere in the world, the particular speed, scope, and/or processes of a country’s telecommunication reform cannot be understood correctly without examining the structures and institutions of the Korean political economy and of the telecommunications industry. This paper examines the causes and consequences of the Korean telecommunication reform by analyzing the relevant institutional changes both in domestic and international, which largely affect the interaction among those involved in the process of market liberalization and regulatory reforms.     

How will telecommunications bundles impact competition and regulatory analysis?

In this article, one makes two points about the impact of bundles on competition and regulatory policy. First, one argues that the growing importance of bundles requires an adjustment in the current framework of relevant product markets for individual services, and that the traditional tools of competition policy, namely the SSNIP test, can be adjusted to deal with these new circumstances. Second, one argues that the technological and behavioral changes, underlying the emergence of bundles, call for a shift of emphasis in regulatory policy from ensuring access to the incumbent’s fixed telecommunications network services to ensuring access to television content.     

产业融合:产业发展及经济增长的新动力

在信息化进程中，出现了电信、广播电视和出版等部门在数字融合基础上的产业融合。这是对传统产业体系的根本性改变，成为一种新的产业革命。产业融合导致了许多新产品与新服务的出现；开辟了新市场，使更多的新参与者进入；增强了竞争性和新市场结构的塑造；促进了资源的整合；带来了就业增加和人力资本发展；并派生出信息产业发展的巨大增值机会。因此，产业融合成为产业发展及经济增长的新动力。随着产业融合在整个经济系统中越来越具有普遍性，它将导致产业发展基础、产业之间关联、产业结构演变、产业组织形态和产业区域布局等方面的根本变化，对整个经济与社会产生综合影响。     

Buyer Brokers: Do They Make a Difference? Their Influence on Selling Price and Search Duration

This study focuses on the role of buyer brokers in the home-buying process by examining the effects of brokerage representation on home selling prices and search duration. The results of this study indicate that real estate brokers, no matter the type, have no independent effect on home prices. The principal effect of broker intermediation is a reduction in buyer search time, compared to for-sale-by-owner transactions. The most important finding, however, is that buyer agents are more effective at reducing search time for their clients than more traditional seller agents or non-agent facilitators.     

Strategic action and customer mobility: Antecedents and consequences of strategic actions in the Korean mobile telecommunication service industry

This paper investigates the sources and consequences of strategic actions in the Korean mobile telecommunication service industry. Based on competitive dynamics research and an organizational learning perspective, it suggests hypotheses and tests them with monthly data on service providers’ competitive and alliance actions, as well as statistics on monthly subscribers during 2002–2007. We show the positive effects of a firm’s own experience, other firms’ strategic actions, and firms’ alliance tendencies on the likelihood of firm-level competitive action and alliance. We also find that negative performance feedback accelerates the mimetic influence of rival firms’ competitive actions and that positive performance feedback strengthens the momentum effect of a firm’s own alliance experience on the likelihood of alliance. Both competitive actions and alliances appear to influence customer mobility across firms in a complex manner. Based on customer mobility data, this study finds that alliances increase market dynamism, that is, customer mobility. It also shows that competitive actions, in general, serve to effectively attract switching customers from rivals. This study partially answers questions regarding the triggers of competitive actions and alliance activities among mobile telecommunication service providers and their performance consequences.     

Does the growth of mobile markets cause the demise of fixed networks? – Evidence from the European Union

The increasing usage of mobile communication and the declining demand for fixed line telephony in Europe make the analysis of substitutional effects between fixed and mobile networks a key aspect for future telecommunication regulation. Using a unique dataset which contains information on all 27 European Union members from 2003 to 2009, we analyze substitutability between fixed and mobile telecommunication services in Europe by applying dynamic panel data techniques. We find strong empirical evidence for substitution from fixed to cellular networks throughout Europe. In addition, the paper reveals resulting policy implications.     

Introducing the Vista system

In February 1978, Bell Canada initiated the pilot demonstration of an experimental system called ‘Vista’, which provides immediate and on-demand access to information and communication services, using a conventional telephone line and an adapted television receiver. Users will be able to acess computer-based information sources using the home television as the display for text and simple graphics in colour.     

Nexus between telecommunication infrastructures,economic growth and development in Africa: Panel vector autoregression (P-VAR) analysis

This study examines the causal-effect relationship between telecommunication infrastructures, economic growth and development in selected African countries. It further estimates the trivariate impacts of telecommunication infrastructures, economic growth and development in the region. The analysis considers a panel of forty-six African countries from 2000 to 2015. To measure economic growth, real gross domestic product serves as the proxy, while economic development is measured by the Human Development Index, and telecommunication infrastructures by a composite index of telecommunication computed from mobile line, fixed line and internet access penetration via principal component analysis (PCA). The empirical results suggest the existence of a bidirectional long-run relationship between telecommunication infrastructures, economic growth and development. The causality tests reveal that there is feedback causality between telecommunication infrastructures, economic growth and development. Telecommunication infrastructures promote economic growth and development in Africa and vice versa. Thus, there is need to promote inclusive and holistic policies that will enhance digital provide, economic growth and development simultaneously in Africa. An increase in telecommunication infrastructures will encourage aggregate output and standard of living to move in the same direction in Africa.     

Inequalities of opportunity in the access and use of telecommunication services in Togo

The liberalization of the telecommunications sector in Togo aimed at ensuring access to a better quality of telecommunication services at affordable prices to everyone. While the liberalization policy has increased competition in the sector and reduced significantly telecommunication services prices charged to costumers, statistics on the access and use of telecommunication services in Togo reveal disparities with respect to individuals' socio-economic characteristics which could be an indication of the existence of inequalities of opportunities in the access and use of these services.This paper investigates the inequalities of opportunity in the access and use of telecommunication services in Togo using a parametric approach. The results of estimations indicate that, inequalities of opportunities are larger for men and the elderly than respectively women and youths and are more pronounced in urban areas and regions such as the Plateaux and Savanna regions. Moreover, the circumstance variables such as the ‘place of residence’ and the ‘region’ are the key variables in explaining the inequalities of opportunities in the access and use of telecommunication services in Togo. So, policies toward reducing inequalities of opportunity in the access and use of telecommunication services in Togo should be designed with regards to men, the elderly, and people living in urban areas and regions such as the Plateaux and Savanna regions.     

Measuring the impact of telecommunication services on rural and remote communities

The potential benefits that telecommunication services bring to rural and remote communities are generally perceived as beneficial though difficult to ascertain. This article reviews the rationale and elements for measuring the impact of telecommunication services on rural and remote communities, and proposes some concrete ways forward based on current practice.     

Are OTT messaging and mobile telecommunication an interrelated market? An empirical analysis

OTT messengers such as Facebook and WhatsApp have gained wide popularity among mobile users while the traffic of text messaging is in strong decline. As such, there is a debate over whether both services are interrelated and constitute a joint product market, which has important implications for the current wave of mergers in the mobile industry and regulation policy. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to provide an empirical analysis of how the consumption of OTT messengers affects demand for text messaging and mobile voice services. We make use of an innovative dataset which includes very detailed information on smartphone usage in Norway and consider a novel approach to address this question which is embedded in the complexity of two-sided markets. Interestingly, our findings suggest that OTT messengers complement demand for traditional mobile telecommunication services for this context. Consequently, both markets are interrelated but do not constitute a joint market from the perspective of competition policy in Norway. Moreover, we find an explanation for why reductions of text messaging usage have been so drastic in some countries and an analogous development for mobile voice is rather unlikely. Finally, our empirical results provide a new perspective on the modelling of consumer utility in communication networks in the theoretical literature.