Evaluating a decade of mobile termination rate regulation

Christos Genakos and Tommaso Valletti

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We re-consider the impact that regulation of call termination on mobile phones has had on mobile customers’ bills. Using a large panel covering 27 countries, we find that the “waterbed” phenomenon, initially observed until early 2006, becomes insignificant on average over the 10-year period, 2002-2011. We argue that this is related to the changing nature of the industry, whereby mobile-to-mobile traffic now plays a much bigger role compared to fixed-to-mobile calls in earlier periods. Over the same decade, we find no evidence that regulation caused a reduction in mobile operators’ profits and investments.

Keywords: Mobile telephony; termination rates; waterbed effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D43 L5 L96 L98 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2014-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-eur and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60353/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Evaluating a Decade of Mobile Termination Rate Regulation (2015)
Working Paper: Evaluating a Decade of Mobile Termination Rate Regulation (2014)
Working Paper: Evaluating a decade of mobile termination rate regulation (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:60353

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