Recent OECD reports

In advance of the Seoul Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy, two useful reports were released:

• This report on convergence is a nice summary of the implications of NGNs, with ideas for regulators to consider.
  
• This statistical profile to support discussions at the meeting.
  

In addition, this report was released as an outcome of the ministerial meeting, as well as the Seoul Declaration.

Mobile termination fees and regulation

This item is interesting, and supports one Robert Horwitz's points about the regulated industry seeking regulation. The rationale in this case is:

The FCC held a full hearing to consider a wireless industry proposal that would essentially federalize the regulation of ETFs. Big Wireless would give consumers a break on these fees, which sometimes go as high as $200. In exchange, the FCC would send a note to the judges overseeing various state-level trials recommending that they shut them down, potentially saving wireless giants billions of dollars.

The economic motivation in this case is quite clear!

The Future of Digital Convergence

I will be giving a talk on this subject shortly. As a dry run, I made this podcast ...



I welcome your input!

Carriers hike non-EU roaming rates

I have been sitting on this story for a while. The lesson is that firms respond to regulation in many different ways:

European wireless carriers have sharply raised prices for making and receiving calls outside the European Union to compensate for regulator-imposed lower tariffs within the EU, a market research firm said.

Informa Telecoms and Media said on Friday roaming charges had risen as much as 163 percent since the EU capped rates last year at 0.49 euros ($0.76) a minute for making calls abroad in the 27-nation bloc and 0.24 euros for receiving them.

The average price of a call home by an Italian subscriber in Russia was 3.67 euros a minute in 2006, but this has risen 25 percent to 4.58 euros, Informa said.

For customers in most European countries, the cost of roaming in Africa, China, India, Japan, the Middle East, Russia and the United States has risen, the Informa data showed.

Wireless households

This item is interesting, even if the source (the Center for Disease Control) is a bit unusual. The picture says it all ...



but the quote is also worthwhile:

In the last 6 months of 2007, nearly one out of every six households (15.8%) did not have a landline telephone, but did have at least one wireless telephone. Approximately 14.5% of all adults-more than 32 million adults-lived in households with only wireless telephones; 14.4% of all children-more than 10 million children-lived in households with only wireless telephones.

The percentage of adults living in wireless-only households has been steadily increasing. During the last 6 months of 2007, more than one out of every seven adults lived in wireless-only households. One year before that (that is, during the last 6 months of 2006), fewer than one out of every eight adults lived in wireless-only households. And 2 years before that (that is, during the last 6 months of 2004), only 1 out of every 18 adults lived in wireless-only households.

The percentage of adults and the percentage of children living without any telephone service have remained relatively unchanged over the past 3 years. Approximately 2.2% of households had no telephone service (neither wireless nor landline). Approximately 4 million adults (1.9%) and 1.5 million children (2.1%) lived in these households.