Search results

This paper aims to underscore how the digitization of content and the convergence in the telecommunications sector has prompted a wave of consolidation between telecom and content players.

Using interdisciplinary insights from competition policy and business strategy, the paper draws attention to the interplay between business model innovation and merger control in the converged telecoms sector.

Technological innovation and business model innovation led to the emergence of over-the-top (OTT) services. This innovation in turn led to two key effects, first, successful commercialization of content and the emergence of the “smart pipes” that in turn has led to the second effect, which is increased mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the converged telecommunications sector. Emergence of OTT with big data as a key advantage challenged the strategy and business models of the more established players, such as the AT&T, Time Warner, Liberty Global and Fox, which in turn led to the current trend of M&As in the sector.

This paper makes the following key contributions to the literature on M&As between the fixed/mobile and content players. First, it elucidates how the existing market players can benefit from competition policy, such as merger remedies to enter new and related markets. Second, it advocates that the US and the European competition authorities while assessing these M&As, take due account of innovation in business models, as business model innovation not only promotes innovation in the market but also enhances consumer welfare, considering that it offers the merged firm economies of scale and scope to offer better-quality goods and services at subsidized prices.

The purpose of this research is to identify five lessons of the Trinko decision and apply them to internet access issues.

The research identifies five lessons and then relates these lessons to access issues involving the internet.

Based on application of the lessons of Trinko, it is likely that access to the public internet will be maintained but it is uncertain as to what the nature of access requirements will be, if any, for private internets.

The research provides an economic analysis of the milestone legal decision in Trinko and applies the lessons of Trinko to access issues involving the internet.

Video distribution over the internet leads to heated net‐neutrality related debates between network operators and over‐the‐top application providers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze this debate from a new perspective that takes into account all of the assets that companies try to exploit in the so‐called battle for eyeballs in video distribution.

The systematic value chain analysis is used to determine the points along the value chain where net neutrality interacts with video distribution. The inputs to the analysis are the existing and proposed policy measures for net neutrality in Europe and in the USA, and a number of net neutrality incidents that have led to discussions earlier.

The paper finds that the current and proposed policy measures aimed at net neutrality each contribute to a certain extent to their intended effects. However, the analysis also shows that they are likely to lead to new debates in other parts of the value chain, as players try to compensate the loss of influence or revenue streams by rearranging the ways in which they exploit their assets.

Further and new debates are expected in the areas of peering and interconnection, distribution of resources between over‐the‐top and managed services and the role of devices with tightly linked search engines, recommendation systems and app stores.

The new perspectives offered by our value‐chain based analysis are valuable for policy makers who aim to promote net neutrality and simultaneously stimulate competition and innovation throughout the value chain.

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the implications of consolidation in the US cable industry in terms of deployment of advanced broadband services in local markets.

This study estimates a cable operator's deployment of advanced broadband services using a binary probit model of profits from advance broadband services.

This study finds that larger and more powerful multiple system operators are limited in the transfer of efficiency deployment of advanced broadband services in local markets; therefore, the implications of the efficiency of horizontal integration do not have significant meaning.

Previous literature examined the relationship between horizontal integration, rates and the quality of traditional video services. By examining the relationship between horizontal integration and deployment of advanced cable services in local markets and making a policy suggestion for further consolidations in the US cable industry, this study fills a gap in extant cable industry research.

Information security has increasingly been in the headlines as data breaches continue to occur at alarming rates. This paper aims to propose an Information Security Preparedness Model that was developed to examine how SME executives’ perceptions of security importance, implementation challenges and external influences impact their awareness and commitment to security preparedness.

Funded by the Department of Justice, a national survey of SME executives’ perceptions of information security preparedness was conducted. Using PLS-SEM, the survey responses were used to test the proposed Information Security Preparedness Model.

The results indicate that as perceptions of security importance and external influences increase, SME executives’ awareness and commitment to information security also increases. In addition, as implementation challenges increase, awareness and commitment to information security decreases. Finally, as security importance and awareness and commitment to information security increases, executives’ perception of security preparedness also increases.

Executive perceptions of information security were measured and not the actual level of security. Further research that examines the agreement between executive perceptions and the true state of information security within the organization is warranted.

Prior information security studies using Roger’s (1975, 1983) Protection Motivation Theory have produced mixed results. This paper develops and tests the Information Security Preparedness Model to more fully explain SME executive’s perceptions of information security.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the ways in which mobile operators in the USA that previously presented themselves as providers of essentially a single service have had to adapt to the requirements of a multi-play world that includes mobile and fixed-wire voice, broadband internet and Pay-TV.

The approach is empirical in its entirety and based upon a historical review of the actions of (primarily) the nationwide mobile operators in the USA. Account is taken of the actions of companies in what were historically separate spheres of business such as cable and satellite.

It can be seen that there has been a great deal of restructuring activity in the US mobile sector during the past decade driven by a number of factors such as the need to achieve scale and to provide high-date-rate transmission. However, in very recent times, the main driving force has been the need to gear up for the provision of multi-play services.

The next few years will see an acceleration of restructuring activity as previously independent companies link up voluntarily or via takeovers.

It can be argued that it is the evolving use of smartphones, especially among those aged under 30, that is a key reason why mobile operators are having to change their business models, rather than the reverse.

Regulators, in particular, appear to be stuck in a world in which different segments of the world of telecommunications continue to plough independent furrows. However, multi-play is the future of the sector and there has not so far been much attention paid to this phenomenon.

This paper aims to investigate two famous disasters at sea, the Titanic and the Concordia, separated by 100 years, based on a comparison and analysis of those historical events, demonstrating how lessons learned and training methods used in the hazardous marine environments of aircraft carrier operations, as well as the near-solo conditions of technical scuba diving, can be better implemented in managing a large ship at sea.

This study starts with a historical analysis of these two ship-wrecks, both large, technically advanced ships that sank due to poor leadership, a breakdown in command and panic. Next, the study compares and contrasts scuba with operations aboard an aircraft carrier, two different maritime scenarios, yet similar in that there are many hazards that may require split-second decisions with limited or no communication with others. Both these mind-sets and training approaches have direct application to leadership and disaster planning on a large ship by being focused on minimizing decisions under stress in order to reduce panic.

This study demonstrates the value and impact of training that minimizes decisions under stress and enable people to make decisions independently in the face of a loss of communications. Focusing on two famous naval accidents, our analysis shows how such training can prevent panic and disaster, and can have direct application to leadership and disaster planning on a large ship.

This study uniquely compares and contrasts many of the planning and decision-making strategies used for both aircraft carrier operations and technical scuba diving, and the need to be able to make split-second decisions without communicating to others, and how these approaches can be used to better train a commercial ship to respond to an unforeseen disaster at sea.

Social bots are prevalent on social media. Malicious bots can severely distort the true voices of customers. This paper aims to examine social bots in the context of big data of user-generated content. In particular, the author investigates the scope of information distortion for 24 brands across seven industries. Furthermore, the author studies the mechanisms that make social bots viral. Last, approaches to detecting and preventing malicious bots are recommended.

A Twitter data set of 29 million tweets was collected. Latent Dirichlet allocation and word cloud were used to visualize unstructured big data of textual content. Sentiment analysis was used to automatically classify 29 million tweets. A fixed-effects model was run on the final panel data.

The findings demonstrate that social bots significantly distort brand-related information across all industries and among all brands under study. Moreover, Twitter social bots are significantly more effective at spreading word of mouth. In addition, social bots use volumes and emotions as major effective mechanisms to influence and manipulate the spread of information about brands. Finally, the bot detection approaches are effective at identifying bots.

As brand companies use social networks to monitor brand reputation and engage customers, it is critical for them to distinguish true consumer opinions from fake ones which are artificially created by social bots.

This is the first big data examination of social bots in the context of brand-related user-generated content.