The Welfare Effects of Mobile Internet Access - Evidence from Roam-Like-at-Home

Martin Quinn, Miguel Godinho de Matos and Christian Peukert ()

No 9612, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We evaluate the welfare effects of the Roam-Like-At-Home regulation, which drastically re-duced the price of accessing the mobile internet for EU residents when traveling abroad in the European Economic Area. Estimates from individual-level usage data suggest that consumer surplus increased by 2.77 EUR/user/travel day. A decomposition shows the heterogeneous impact of the regulation on different user segments. We estimate that around half of the gains stem from a reduction in deadweight loss, i.e., new users accessing the mobile internet. We further show that the impact of the regulation varies with usage intensity abroad and at home, by the nature of the trip (leisure vs. business), and by content type. We discuss implications for content providers and other policy areas such as net neutrality.

Keywords: Telecom; mobile data; roaming; regulation; consumer surplus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 L51 L96 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ore, nep-pay and nep-reg
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Related works:
Journal Article: The Welfare Effects of Mobile Internet Access: Evidence from Roam-Like-at-Home (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9612

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