The impact of alternative public policies on the deployment of new communications infrastructure: A survey

Wolfgang Briglauer, Stefan Frübing and Ingo Vogelsang

No 15-003, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Our survey reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on all alternative policies to promote the deployment of new fiber-based communications infrastructure. Since such investment is expected to induce substantial positive externalities, dynamic efficiency becomes a particularly important policy goal. The available policies refer to i) different kinds of ex ante sector-specific regulations including cost-based access regulations as well as softer regulations such as regulatory holidays or geographically differentiated regulations, ii) deregulatory approaches based on effective competition law implementation and competitive market structures including allowance of co-investment models, and iii) public subsidies to cover non-profitable ('white') areas. Our survey identifies the most significant research gaps, finding that numerous studies related to the impact of access regulations exist, whereas only a much smaller branch of literature addresses the impact of competition policies, and even fewer studies analyze the impact of public subsidies on new communications deployment. Moreover, our work allows for a generic framework for policy recommendations that identifies the comparative advantages of the individual policy options for different market structures and for varying degrees of externalities. We find that public subsidies are the dominant policy alternative in white areas, whereas access regulations can be the preferred policy in white or 'grey' areas, where only monopoly structure or co-investment models lead to private investment. Deregulatory policies might be preferable in grey areas, if there is sufficient pressure from competitive outside options and if competition law is strong. Finally, deregulatory policies including soft regulation are the dominant policy in 'black' areas, where several independent infrastructure operators exist.

Keywords: survey; policy framework; investment; new communications infrastructure; regulation; competition; subsidies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L43 L44 L96 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/106173/1/815371039.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Alternative Public Policies on the Deployment of New Communications Infrastructure – A Survey (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:15003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().