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The purpose of this paper is to propose a guideline for the European Union (EU) to support high-speed broadband development based on economic frameworks and successful countries, Korea and Sweden. In the past decade, both policymakers and academic scholars have so far emphasised broadband policy mostly on the supply side. Increasing broadband adoption, nevertheless, is important for the EU to meet its Digital Agenda. Therefore, demand-side policy is also needed to stimulate high-speed broadband adoption in the EU.

This paper applies frameworks of network externalities and the information and communications technology ecosystem to provide a better understanding of the relationship between supply- and demand-side policies. In addition, Korea and Sweden, which are two successful countries in high-speed broadband development particularly their demand-side policy, are chosen as a comparative case study.

Both supply and demand sides are important to broadband policy to achieve the EU Digital Agenda 2020. It is also important for the policymakers to consider that demand-side policy should complement the implementation of supply-side policy, not substitute it. The demand side can be a great driver, especially with the development of content and applications for high-speed broadband.

This paper fills the research gap on broadband policy on the demand side which is currently limited in comparison to the supply-side studies.

This paper addresses the potential need for European public policy actions in the area of mobile communications, in particular of developments towards 4th generation networks (4G). The paper is based on work conducted for the EC/JRC/IPTS/ESTO project “The Future of Mobile Technologies in EU: Assessing 4G Developments”. The paper first reviews developments of 3G and 4G technologies in Japan, Korea, China and the USA. It briefly addresses potential costs and benefits of competition in infrastructures. The paper states that initiatives in Europe for technologies beyond 3G tend to address research issues, while players in Asia and the USA are aiming at sales of 4G‐equipment supposed to start as soon as possible. In conclusion, nine options for policy makers are presented, such as to stimulate 2.5G and 3G data markets, to analyse actual spectrum use, to continue analysing approaches competing with UMTS, to estimate costs and benefits of new approaches to spectrum regulation, and to evaluate steps towards frequency allocation.

New technologies challenge the traditional view that the radio spectrum must be tightly controlled and the new orthodoxy that a market‐based approach is the most efficient way to manage the spectrum. This article aims to make the case for collective use of the spectrum.

The paper draws on a range of literature, both technical and economic, as well as the authors' opinions to describe the economic context, market and other models for spectrum allocation, technological advances in signal processing, and the way forward for assessing future spectrum management policy, with particular reference to Europe.

Technical advances, from research in the commercial domain and from release of military research, combined with the increasingly important economic need to facilitate innovation in new radio technologies, demand a debate on a new approach to spectrum management policy.

The paper brings together the economic and technical arguments in favour of collective use of the radio spectrum and will be of value to academics, business and policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the determinant factors of switching behavior in the Thai cellular market before the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) policy is implemented.

A binary logit model and individual survey data from the National Telecommunications Commission 2009 are used to estimate the intention of mobile phone consumers to switch.

The results show that subscriber characteristics, including age, government officer, self‐employed, internet use, central region, and southern region, are significant in explaining the switching behavior of Thai mobile subscribers. They also indicate that the mobile operators' customers are confronted with different switching costs. The subscribers of the largest mobile operator have the highest switching costs. This study also shows that the largest mobile operators will gain more switching subscribers than smaller operators. The implementation of MNP will help to lower the switching costs of smaller mobile operators rather than of larger operators, as the subscribers of smaller operators are more likely to switch and move to larger mobile operators, as the larger operators provide better quality network coverage. The study shows that the expected impact of implementing MNP without national mobile roaming regulations would be worse for smaller mobile operators. The smaller operators need to compete on both price and quality improvement. In the short run, it would not be possible for the smaller operators to compete with the larger operators due to the inequality in the quality of network coverage.

The result is useful to developing countries considering implementing MNP regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a framework for discussion and future studies of the secondary use of electromagnetic spectrum.

The paper establishes some useful definitions and then systematically applies them to the secondary use case. This is extrapolated to develop a framework.

It is important to be careful to circumscribe discussions around secondary use, as each component of the framework poses different problems for implementation and research.

The paper proposes a way to structure the discussion of and research into secondary use of electromagnetic spectrum, which can apply significant clarity to future work in this area.

The aim of this paper is to explore the price plans offered by Thai mobile operators and analyse the role of demand characteristics in the development of new price plans. The paper also shows how demand affects a firm's degree of innovativeness in terms of the number of new price plans.

The empirical qualitative analysis is based on an original data set from several secondary data sources and includes all the price plans offered in the history of the Thai mobile communications market between 2002 and 2010.

The results show that mobile operators have introduced several innovative price plans to attract and retain their consumers. Although a greater number of price plans can increase competition among operators, some have complex combinations that may lead to confusion for consumers.

A price comparison programme should therefore be implemented by the telecom regulator to ensure that consumers receive correct and complete information about the price plans.

Most studies, by far, have not extensively discussed this mobile communications market in detail and the effect of innovation on competition between firms in the mobile communications industry, in particular the development of innovation in developing countries.

While the ICT industry as a whole is undergoing a potentially disruptive phase of development due to the convergence between information and telecom technologies and the rapid diffusion of internet‐related applications. Against this background the purpose of the paper is to analyse recent patterns of internal/indigenous and external diversification of prominent Finnish telecom firms using data on patents and strategic R&D alliances.

The methodology comprises of statistical analyses of patterns of patenting of Finnish telecom firms to capture the internal/indigenous nature of diversification, compared with patterns of external diversification based on a new database of alliances of Finnish firms.

The results indicate that the Finnish telecom industry has diversified its technological base in recent years. The industry appears internally/indigenously weak in internet‐related “new” telecom technologies and related applications. However, telecom firms have also extensively engaged themselves in complementary R&D alliances in these fields.

The paper carries important implications for policymakers and managers alike related to the sustainability of previous success of Finnish telecom. Limitation related to the use of Finnish patent data that might to capture software technologies sufficiently, and does not aim to/cannot capture the diversified technological competencies of Nokia on a global level.

The originality of the paper lies in the combination of patent and R&D alliances data, as well as the development of a concordance table to link technology classes to broader developments in the industry, for a novel and systematic analysis of the responsiveness of the Finnish telecom industry to ICT convergence

The purpose of this mainly conceptual paper is to analyze key changes in the institutional setting for standardization and to discuss what they indicate about further developments of the mobile sector. The intention is that this conceptual analysis will complement and contextualize the analysis of Nordic players found in the other papers of this special issue.

The paper is concerned with issues of industrial organization. The paper presents a treatment of industrial dynamics in them mobile telecom sector and the changing role of standards in it. We approach the substantial changes in the mobile telecom sector, focusing on the correspondence of the changes in the standards system to overall industry dynamics. Empirical information from the Symbian case is used to illustrate the hypothesis of standardization process and of the industry at large.

The paper identifies changing patters in the organization of technological standardization which represents a microcosm of the larger reorganization of the sector. Nordic actors, whose present position owes much to success in linking capabilities to sequential mobile standards. The paper draws out implications of the limits to “intergenerational leveraging” in standards.

The major contribution of the paper is to focus on changes in the organization of the standardization process in order to discuss the industrial dynamics of an industry which is undergoing a period of rapid change. Its reference to industrial dynamics perspective allows it to link the literature on dominant design to the field of standards research.

To analyse the past developments and future challenges of the Danish ICT industries with a focus on the mobile communications industry.

Data on ICT employment and usage is analysed from an innovation system perspective in a case study of the Danish ICT industries.

The Danish ICT sector is characterised by high skill levels and advanced demand while the supply side is lacking behind. However, opportunities is found in the emerging next generation mobile communication network standard due to a combination of a broad skill base, influence of US firms and relatively lesser vested interests in previous generation networks, standards and business models.

This paper is a part of a special issue on next generation mobile telecommunications networks – challenges to the Nordic ICT industries. This paper presents the past development and future challenges of the Danish ICT industries emerging from the mismatch between demand and supply.

An aspect of spectrum reform receiving increasing attention is the introduction of secondary markets for spectrum in order to enable more flexibility to reassign unused and underused spectrum to users that will use it more efficiently. This paper proposes to focus on the policy issues relating to the development of well‐functioning secondary markets for spectrum.

The paper reviews developments in the debate over secondary markets for spectrum. It draws together key elements from the academic literature, various government and government‐commissioned reports, and the practical experience of the few countries that have already introduced spectrum trading. There is considerable focus on concerns and potential costs relating to the introduction of spectrum trading and liberalisation. This has a constructive aim – to draw attention to the need to address such concerns in order to facilitate the development of spectrum trading.

While there is a persuasive case for spectrum trading, countries have been slow to introduce it because of a number of concerns. This paper identifies these concerns and the regulatory framework/policies needed to address them.

The paper distils the policy issues in the debate over spectrum trading and identifies the role that regulators will need to play in the introduction, facilitation and regulation of secondary markets for spectrum.