Next Generation Access and Digital Divide: Opposite Sides of the Same Coin?

Cosimo Dolente, John Joseph Galea and Claudio Leporelli

No 9, 21st European Regional ITS Conference, Copenhagen 2010: Telecommunications at new crossroads - Changing value configurations, user roles, and regulation from International Telecommunications Society (ITS)

Abstract: Geographical averaging of retail and wholesale prices could distort incentives for bypass entry in both the metropolitan and the high-cost areas. The two-instrument approach to universal service support, proposed in (Armstrong, 2001), could enhance efficiency, through competitive and technological neutrality. Alternatively, the industry support to high cost areas could be substituted by redistributive fiscal measures or public subsidies. Using evidence from Italy we suggest that tackling demographic, educational, and income inequalities is necessary, even in low cost areas, to support further broadband penetration. We estimate logistic regressions of Internet and broadband use at home, and show that a substantial increase of broadband penetration is possible in Italy only if specific platforms and applications are made available to older and less educated households. Therefore, a critical mass of services could help reaching the critical mass of users that make Next Generation Access Networks viable.

Keywords: Infrastructural Digital divide; Cultural Digital Divide; Geographical crosssubsidies; Efficient bypass; Critical mass of services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L51 L96 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/44342/1/9_dolente_galea_leporelli.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:itse10:9

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 21st European Regional ITS Conference, Copenhagen 2010: Telecommunications at new crossroads - Changing value configurations, user roles, and regulation from International Telecommunications Society (ITS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().