Firm and target country characteristics as factors explaining wealth creation from international expansion moves of mobile network operators

Although mobile network operators (MNOs) carried out numerous international expansion moves over the past 25 years industry-specific empirical research on shareholder reactions to such moves and on factors explaining differences of the wealth effects of international expansion moves is scarce. Using event study methodology, the present investigation empirically captured the impacts of 148 major expansion steps into foreign mobile communication services markets announced by 29 large MNOs during the period from December 1989 to December 2004 on “abnormal” market value changes of the expanding MNO. Further, it sought to explain differences in cumulative abnormal shareholder returns related to an announcement by four characteristics of the expanding firm (e.g., foreign experience) and nine characteristics of the country targeted by an internationalization step (e.g., cultural distance; intensity of MNO regulation).     

Royalties vs. upfront lump-sum fees in data communication environments

Mobile communications markets worldwide, today, are saturated, the number of mobile network operators (MNOs) in market is declining, mobile revenues are stagnant or falling, MNOs are becoming wireless Internet service providers, and economies of scope are strengthening. This paper challenges existing dominant views on spectrum assignment and license fee payments, estimates spectrum fees that MNOs would have paid under royalties and then compares them with upfront lump-sum fees actually paid by 3G licensees. This paper further proposes that governments need to consider assigning additional spectrum to incumbents as needs arise without using auctions and adopting royalties as a way of collecting spectrum fees should they collect them.     

The disruptive potential of PWLAN at the country-level: The cases of Germany,the UK,and the USA

This paper analyzes the impact of WLAN technologies for incumbent MNOs based on an empirical cross-country study of the players in the public WLAN-hotspot market using the theory of disruptive innovation and theoretical extensions for the industry- and country-level. The main research question to be analyzed is whether and why PWLAN has shown a disruptive or sustaining impact trend for incumbent MNOs in the hotspot markets of Germany, the UK, and the USA in recent years. The results imply that incumbent MNOs and new entrants have taken advantage of the opportunity provided by PWLAN, but the market success of both types of players varies between the countries analyzed. Incumbent MNOs dominate in Germany but not in the UK and the USA. The reasons for these country-specific differences were further investigated, and the results suggest that the analysis of disruptive potential in telecommunications needs to include country- and firm-specific factors, which are, again, largely influenced by the local regulation.     

The impact of regulating mobile termination rates and MNO-MVNO relationships on retail prices

A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) provides mobile telecommunication services by eluding the constraints of the radio communication infrastructure and establishing an agreement with a hosting network operator (HNO) for the use of its spectrum. Thus, MVNOs offer a wide range of mobile services and directly compete with every mobile network operator (MNO). This paper studies the economic justifications for potential regulatory intervention that defines the level of mobile termination rates (MTRs) and negotiations and agreements among MVNOs and HNOs. The results show that symmetric MTR reduction leads to competition growth among operators, forcing every operator to reduce retail prices and, consequently, to enhancing consumer welfare. The paper also finds that a collaborative strategy adopted by an HNO and an MVNO is advantageous for both and induces a reduction in retail prices, thus weakening other MNOs.     

Spectrum management reform: Rethinking practices

Unparalleled growth in wireless communications has increased the pressure for more spectrum to support more users, more uses and more capacity. To alleviate that pressure, major regulatory changes were introduced in several countries in two key areas of spectrum management, namely spectrum assignment and allocation. This paper analyzes those changes and discusses strategies and tactics for deregulating the use of radio spectrum. Spectrum management reforms are considered within the theoretical framework of transition economics, which is concerned with optimal reform speed and sequencing. The paper shows how Anglo-Saxon and European countries have been implementing gradual reforms. Meanwhile, Central American reformers have chosen a fast transition from command-and-control regulation to market mechanisms. Transition economics is used to evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of different spectrum reform strategies.     

Termination notice of mobile network operator customers after a tariff switch: An empirical study of postpaid subscribers in Germany

Proactive subscriber churn management strategies of mobile network operators (MNOs) require that steps are taken to keep customers before they hand over a formal notice of termination to their provider. Therefore, several studies have analyzed how MNO customers who gave a termination announcement differ from individuals who did not communicate this message. However, no work has examined such differences among subscribers who recently switched to another tariff of their MNO. Therefore, this paper explores socio-demographic, service consumption and tariff change differences between contract cancellation “announcers” and “non-announcers” in a sample of 1810 postpaid customers who had changed their rate plan not long ago. Cancellation announcers were more likely to be males who decreased their mobile voice consumption after their tariff switch, had already attempted to churn in the past, had moved from an unmetered to a metered rate type, paid higher monthly bill amounts and received no discounts on their current rate plan that was introduced on the market some time ago. Among subscribers who gave a termination notice, early (late) cancellation announcers were more likely to be older (younger) customers with a growing (shrinking) SMS consumption after their tariff switch, had not attempted (had already tried) to leave their current MNO in the past, and were in a rate plan that was (not) recently introduced. The findings contribute to the literature on mobile customer retention and have implications for practitioners and scholars.     

Spectrum auctions in a thin market: The Korean case

In 2010, the Korean government adopted spectrum auctions and introduced a market mechanism into spectrum management. However, the government has often been confronted with conflicts between diverse policy goals of spectrum auctions. A thin spectrum market, where only three incumbent MNOs bid for spectrum, has led to concerns that the government may fail to maximize revenues.Based on the past experiences in Korea, this paper examines the Korean government's choice of auction rules in the face of conflicting policy goals. This paper also recommends that the government implement the following regulatory reforms and consider the auction related measures to deepen its spectrum market or increase the number of bidders: (i) relaxation of foreign ownership restrictions, (ii) introduction of regional or site-specific spectrum licenses, and (iii) modification of auction formats. Spectrum markets tend to be thin in many countries, and the Korean experience may offer implications for those countries when they implement spectrum auctions.     

Impacts of mobile Internet use intensity on the demand for SMS and voice services of mobile network operators: An empirical multi-method study of German mobile Internet customers

Scholarly and business publications alike convey the message that past and future strong growth in mobile Internet (MI) access and service demand has solely positive commercial implications for mobile network operators (MNOs). This position neglects the possibility that increasing MI use intensity may lead to demand decreases for the highly profitable short messaging service (SMS) and mobile voice telephony. The extant literature provides few insights on relations between MI use intensity, on the one hand, and SMS as well as mobile voice call use intensities, on the other hand. This study developed hypotheses concerning the presence or absence of impacts of MI use intensity and circumstances of MI use (e.g., device type, tariff scheme) on the demand for SMS and mobile voice telephony at the individual customer level. The hypotheses were tested by analyzing actual use behaviors of 304 MI adopters in Germany, for whom objective use intensity data were extracted from the billing system of an MNO. These non-reactive measures were combined with responses collected from the adopters through a telephone survey. Multivariate regression results suggest that though MI use intensity significantly negatively affected both number of SMS sent and received, these effects were so small that their practical relevance is highly doubtful. Further, customers who used MI more intensively did not generate lower volumes of outgoing or incoming mobile voice connection minutes. Conclusions are drawn for MNO, telecommunications sector regulators and scholarly researchers seeking to explain the acceptance of mobile communications services.     

Expanding mobile wireless capacity: The challenges presented by technology and economics

As demand for mobile broadband services continues to explode, mobile wireless networks must expand greatly their capacities. This paper describes and quantifies the economic and technical challenges associated with deepening wireless networks to meet this growing demand. Methods of capacity expansion divide into three general categories: the deployment of more radio spectrum; more intensive geographic reuse of spectrum; and increasing the throughput capacity of each MHz of spectrum within a given geographic area. The paper describes these several basic methods to deepen mobile wireless capacity. It goes on to measure the contribution of each of these methods to historical capacity growth within U.S. networks. The paper then describes the capabilities of 4G LTE wireless technology, and further innovations off of it, to further improve network capacity. These capacity expansion capabilities of LTE-Advanced along with traditional spectrum reuse are quantified and compared to forecasts of future demand to evaluate the ability of U.S. networks to match future demand. Without significantly increasing current spectrum allocations by 560 MHz over the 2014–2022 period, the presented model suggests that U.S. wireless capacity expansion will be inadequate to accommodate expected demand growth. This conclusion is in contrast to claims that the U.S. faces no spectrum shortage.     

Roaming and investments in the mobile internet market

This model discusses mobile network operators' (MNOs) incentives to invest in their network facilities such as new 4G networks under various regimes of data roaming charge regulation. Given an induced externality of investments (spillovers) due to the roaming agreements it will be shown that MNOs, competing on investments, widely set higher investments for below cost regulation of roaming charges. Otherwise, if MNOs are free to collaborate on investments, they set higher investment levels for above cost roaming charges. Both below and above cost charges may be preferred from a welfare perspective. Furthermore, the paper discusses effects of the roaming charge regulation on roaming quality and MNOs' coverage.     

The degree of internationalization and the financial performance of European mobile network operators

Specific internationalization steps of single mobile network operators (MNO) such as the hostile takeover of the German Mannesmann corporation by the British Vodafone group have received substantial public attention. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of scholarly research using quantitative indicators to capture facets of the degree of business internationalization and associations between this internationalization extent and financial performance measures in a sample of major MNO originating from Europe. Therefore, this study gathered internationalization data from 14 European MNO for the 7-year period from 1997 to 2003. The firms had an overall proportionate mobile subscriber market share of 80.2% across 27 European countries at year-end 2003. Their average foreign revenue (subscriber) share rose from 11.4% (15.6%) in 1997 to 46.2% (52.2%) in 2003. The dispersion of degrees of internationalization in the sample was high and has remained fairly similar since 1999. No evidence of significantly positive associations between foreign revenues and subscriber shares on the one hand and three accounting-based criteria of MNO group financial performance on the other hand was found. This result is taken to imply that: (1) executives of MNO with high degrees of internationalization had not yet been successful in transforming potential into actual internationalization advantages; (2) more detailed studies on foreign market selection, entry modes, and management procedures balancing integration and autonomy requirements in running foreign MNO affiliates may uncover circumstances under which internationalization degree-performance associations for MNO are significant; and (3) national regulators should not feel obliged to implement special remedies to enhance the survival probabilities of less internationalized MNO.     

Metaheuristics for drilling operation scheduling in Taiwan PCB industries

Among all types of production environment, identical parallel machines are frequently used to increase the manufacturing capacity of the drilling operation in Taiwan printed circuit board (PCB) industries. Additionally, multiple but conflicting objectives are usually considered when a manager plans the production scheduling. Compared to the single objective problem, the multiple-objective version no longer looks for an individual optimal solution, but a Pareto front consisting of a set of non-dominated solutions will be needed and established. The manager then can select one of the alternatives from the set. This research aims at employing a variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm and a multiple ant colony optimization (MACO) algorithm to solve the identical parallel-machine scheduling problem with two conflicting objectives: makespan and total tardiness. In VNS, two neighborhoods are defined—insert a job to a different position or swap two jobs in the sequence. To save the computational expense, one of the neighborhoods is randomly selected for the target solution which is also arbitrarily chosen from the current Pareto front. In MACO, a two-phase construction procedure where three colonies are employed in each phase is proposed. These two algorithms are tested on a set of real data collected from a leading PCB factory in Taiwan and their performances are compared. The computational results show that VNS outperforms all competing algorithms—SPGA, MOGA, NSGA-II, SPEA-II, and MACO in terms of solution quality and computational time.     

Telemedicine competition,pricing, and technology adoption: Evidence from talk therapists

This paper examines how new telemedicine competitors affected incumbent health care providers during the first waves of COVID-19. Using data from the largest mental health provider search platform in Canada, I show that increased telemedicine competition in a market caused incumbent providers in that market to stop offering income-based discounts to patients. I isolate the causal effect of competition in a difference-in-differences framework, comparing providers before and after a supply shock on the platform that exogenously assigned some markets new telemedicine search results. I find that higher-quality providers are more likely to stop income-based discounts when facing new telemedicine entrants, while lower-quality providers are more likely to exit the platform, which is consistent with telemedicine providers competing for more price-sensitive patients. The results suggest that expanding telemedicine options had a heterogeneous effect on the affordability of care.     

Competition in wholesale markets: Do MNOs compete to host MVNOs?

This paper extends previous research examining wholesale market shares of mobile network operators (MNOs). This study demonstrates that wholesale market concentration has decreased over time because of the increase of competition of MNOs for hosting mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). However, differences in wholesale market shares between MNOs have not disappeared. We propose that those operators that are late entrants in a market and belong to an international group with a proactive attitude towards hosting virtual operators positively influences wholesale market shares of MNOs. The empirical analysis is based on a panel data from 2000 to 2010 corresponding to MNOs and virtual operators in five European countries with high development of the virtual mobile industry. By closely examining KPN we show how being an international mobile group specialising in the wholesale market across Europe has enabled it to exploit complementarities that exist between traditional and virtual businesses.     

Price caps with capacity precommitment

We examine the effectiveness of price caps to regulate imperfectly competitive markets in which the demand is uncertain. To that effect, we study a monopoly that makes irreversible capacity investments ex-ante, and then chooses its output up to capacity upon observing the realization of demand. We show that the optimal price cap must trade off the incentives for capacity investment and capacity withholding, and is above the unit cost of capacity. Moreover, while a price cap provides incentives for capacity investment and mitigates market power, it cannot eliminate inefficiencies. Capacity payments provide a useful complementary instrument.     

The response strategies of incumbent mobile network operators on the disruptive potential of public W-LAN in Germany

This paper examines how three incumbent mobile network operators (MNOs) in Germany responded in terms of their strategy to the emergence of the wireless local area network (W-LAN) technology and how they interpreted this potentially disruptive technology in their own strategic context. Additionally, prior empirical results and forecasts on the limited disruptive potential of W-LAN for the German MNOs lacked persuasive firm-level evidence to distinguish the real reason for the presented observations and analysis. So far it was unclear whether the observations were caused by successful response strategies of incumbent MNOs or by the inherent limited disruptive potential of the W-LAN technology. For this purpose case studies of three major MNOs in Germany were performed to assess and compare their respective response strategies. Using the theoretical framework of disruptive technology, the results were evaluated in a cross-case analysis to study how these firms interpreted and reacted to the potential disruptiveness of W-LAN. The results indicate significant differences for the respective MNOs between their perception of W-LAN as a potential disruptive technology, their strategic development processes inside the organisation to understand the potential impact of W-LAN on their respective business model, and to enforce an appropriate response strategy and structural implementation. This incumbent heterogeneity depends primarily on their idiosyncratic strategic and structural context. These findings reveal that the incumbent MNOs in Germany were aware of the disruptive technology concept but did not react in a theory-conform way. However, since W-LAN had a sustaining impact on the MNOs and their response strategies followed sustaining reaction patterns, earlier studies, which show a limited disruptive potential of W-LAN for the German MNOs, are supported.     

On regulations for 5G: Micro licensing for locally operated networks

Future 5G networks aim at providing new high-quality wireless services to meet stringent and case-specific needs of various vertical sectors beyond traditional mobile broadband offerings. 5G is expected to disrupt the mobile communication business ecosystem and open the market to drastically new sharing based network operational models. 5G technical features of network slicing and small cell deployments in higher carrier frequencies will lower the investment barrier for new entrants to deploy local radio access networks and offer vertical specific services in specific areas and allow them lease the remaining required infrastructure on demand from mobile network operators (MNO) or infrastructure vendors. To realize the full vision of 5G to benefit the society and promote competition, innovation and emergence of new services when the 5G end-to-end network spans across different stakeholders administrative domains, the existing regulations governing the mobile communication business ecosystem are being refined. This paper provides a tutorial overview on how 5G innovations impact mobile communications and reviews the regulatory elements relevant to 5G development for locally deployed networks. This paper expands the recent micro licensing model for local spectrum authorization in future 5G systems and provides guidelines for the development of the key micro licensing elements. This local micro licensing model can open the mobile market by allowing different stakeholders to deploy local small cell networks with locally issued spectrum licenses ensuring pre-defined quality guarantees for the vertical sectors’ case specific needs.     

Access regulation and infrastructure investment in the mobile telecommunications industry

While mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) increase competition in the mobile telecommunications industry, granting market access to MVNOs may have unwanted consequences. In particular, infrastructure investment by incumbent mobile network operators (MNOs) may be smaller. This paper examines the effects of MVNO entry and access regulation on the investment behavior of MNOs. It uses firm-level data for 58 MNOs in 21 OECD countries during 2000–2008. The results suggest that mandated provision of access is related to lower investment intensity of MNOs, while voluntary access provision has no effect. Although reduced investment incentives do not necessarily correspond to under-investment, this underscores the need for those countries where MVNOs are provided access to address the issue of investment incentives.     

Identifying airline price discrimination and the effect of competition

Empirical studies exploring the relationship between competition and price discrimination don’t generally consider the role of product differentiation or the asymmetric adoption of discrimination across firms. Using a customized empirical approach to examine the use of Saturday-night stayover discounts in the U.S. airline industry, I show that discounts are used more often when facing competitors that offer differentiated products but less often when competing with firms that don’t use discounts. Legacy carriers rarely use discounts when competing with Southwest or other low-cost carriers, but the presence of competing legacy carriers sometimes enhances the use of discounts.     

Allocative vs. technical spectrum efficiency

Achieving allocative and technically efficient spectrum management is a key aspect of deregulatory reforms in several OECD countries. However, reform legislation offers few clues as to how these objectives should rank when they conflict with one another. An ‘innocent’ prior acquisition of service-neutral spectrum at an efficiently run auction may prove allocative efficient but fail to be technically efficient if the spectrum is left fallow in the short term. Accountability for the productive usage of a public resource and pressures from short-term political cycles may induce regulators to mandate some minimal level of activity. Two plausible regulatory responses are considered: use it or lose it clauses and spectrum trading incentives. The former favours technical efficiency whilst the latter promotes allocative efficiency. The argument is formalised in a simple economic model buttressing the roles of uncertainty and transaction costs to assert the primacy of allocative efficiency over technical efficiency.