International Broadband Deployment: The Impact of Unbundling

Garcia-Murillo, Martha (2005): International Broadband Deployment: The Impact of Unbundling. Published in: International Journal of Digital Economics No. 57 (March 2005): pp. 83-105.

Abstract

This paper shows that unbundling an incumbent's infrastructure only results in a substantial improvement in broadband deployment for middle-income countries, but not for their high income counterparts. Our statistical analysis of approximately 100 countries showed that GDP per capita, population, competition and unbundling are all factors that can lead a carrier to provide broadband services in a country. The logit models show that unbundling has a significant positive impact on the availability of broadband services. The OLS analysis indicates that GDP per capita, population size, price, competition, the percentage of dial-up Internet users, and hosts all have positive effects on the number of subscribers. One implication of these results is that if a policy is to be implemented to promote broadband, it should either foster competition through unbundling and/or reduced prices. Efforts to develop local content can also improve broadband adoption.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Institution: Communications & Strategies
• Language: English
• Keywords: broadband; unbundling; competition
• Subjects: L - Industrial Organization > L4 - Antitrust Issues and Policies > L43 - Legal Monopolies and Regulation or Deregulation; L - Industrial Organization > L5 - Regulation and Industrial Policy > L51 - Economics of Regulation; L - Industrial Organization > L9 - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities > L96 - Telecommunications