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The ambitious government initiatives currently underway to accelerate broadband development indicate a major shift from the consensus that prevailed during the 1990 s in the telecommunications sector. To what extent does this change represent a return to the period before market liberalization and the privatization of government‐run telecom services? What are the main objectives of national broadband plans and which policy tools are best suited to achieve them? This paper aims to analyze these questions through a comparative analysis of the goals, policy instruments and network‐deployment models of the most relevant national broadband plans adopted in Latin America.

The paper takes the form of a comparative analysis of the goals, policy instruments and network‐deployment models of the most relevant national broadband plans adopted in Latin America.

Common patterns and key differences between the initiatives adopted in five countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) are identified and compared to those deployed in developed countries. Variations in the strategies adopted are linked to national differences in economic endowments and the broader processes of political change in Latin America.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper making this comparative analysis.

This paper aims to offer an analysis of the market structure in the mobile telephony market in Latin America and its impact on its development. Given the importance of mobile services as a mean of ICT access to low income groups, the objective behind this analysis is to understand how the trend in market structure may impact the use of mobiles by low‐income sectors of the population in Latin America.

The paper analyses the process of consolidation that the region experiences today in the mobile market and identifies the effect this concentration has had on mobile welfare indicators such as penetration. It examines the links between variables associated with market concentration and known to influence mobile penetration such as tariffs, pricing strategies and spectrum allocation.

The results do not identify a strong association between market concentrations and pricing, which appears to contradict standard textbook reasoning. However, there appears to be a strong correlation between prices and radio spectrum allocation; countries that have a very low spectrum allocation are the ones that have the highest prices.

The value of this analysis lies in the identification of a straightforward regulatory policy suggestion that supports results form other empirical studies; regulators need to allocate more spectrum in order to promote competition.

Digitization is defined as the social transformation triggered by the massive adoption of digital technologies to generate, process, share and transact information. This paper seeks to present a methodology followed to calculate the Digitization Index, a concept originally developed by Booz & Company, the global management consulting firm, with the support of the authors.

This index consists of six elements capturing Ubiquity, Affordability, Reliability, Speed, Usability and Skill and 24 sub‐indicators measuring tangible parameters of perceived digitization metrics.

The index indicates that countries are clustered as Digitally Constrained, Emerging, Transitional or Advanced, with varying degrees of contribution of digitization to economic growth. The Index is used to assess the situation of Latin American countries in terms of their progression to digitally advanced societies. In this context, the areas to focus on in the formulation of Latin America digital agenda are outlined.

Until now, most indices that measure progress towards this new era have focused primarily on metrics such as wireless telephony penetration, access to the internet and broadband adoption. The paper argues that these indices, even those that are more comprehensive in scope (Network Readiness Index by the World Economic Forum, or the Digital Opportunity Index by the International Telecommunication Union) capture only a portion of the ongoing transformations.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss literature and empirical evidence on regulatory independence especially in telecommunications and to suggest reforms of this institution.

The paper comprises a survey of the literature plus new empirical evidence on de facto independence.

The study finds that independence has a positive and significant, but modest, impact on network penetration, once de facto issues and endogeneity are taken into account.

De facto independence can only be superficially approached with quantitative methods and the instruments used to correct for endogeneity are far from perfect.

Regulatory agencies may find ways to improve their effectiveness.

The paper provides ideas on how to solve the dilemma between expertise and accountability in the particular field of telecommunications regulation.

The paper provides data about the vulnerability of independent regulation in telecommunications in Latin America until 2010.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact on mobile demand of an asymmetric regulation policy introduced in the year 2009 in Colombia. It aims to do this by estimating demand models for mobile services during the 2005 to 2011 period.

The economic analysis uses two‐stage least squares and ordinary least squares (OLS) econometric techniques. The paper models minutes used in Colombia as a function of prices, income, a time trend and a regulation dummy variable. The study controls for endogeneity issues in the price variable by using two instruments: Colombia's exchange rate COP – USD and the Producer Price Index.

The paper finds a price elasticity of demand and an income elasticity of approximately ‐0.66 and 0.30, respectively, within the range of previous findings in the literature. The study estimates that the introduction of the asymmetric regulation on the incumbent mobile's on‐net and off‐net prices reduced demand for mobile services and caused a loss in consumer surplus of approximately USD 108 million.

The paper presents the first empirical analysis of a regulatory policy affecting prices at the retail level on consumer's welfare in the mobile sector in Colombia. It advises policy‐makers in the telecommunication sector to use caution when regulating mobile markets' prices because the costs of this regulation can be significant.

This study aims to explore the telecom regulations and telecom reforms of different countries in the context of consumer complaints and grievance handling. The telecom dispute resolution mechanisms of countries such as Australia, the USA, the UK and India are studied. This qualitative research is carried out for the three major telecom markets: Australia, the USA and India.

Here, research is conducted in two stages. In the first stage, the telecom policies of the major telecom markets, their ombudsman policies and consumer grievance redressal mechanisms are studied. In the second stage, the qualitative analysis of the three telecom markets, Australia, the USA and India, is conducted through in-depth interviews, the questionnaire method for telecom customers and secondary research.

Telecom customer satisfaction is significantly higher in countries with the telecom ombudsman as a system of telecom governance redressal. This study dedicates significant importance to the distinctiveness of the grievance resolution systems in different countries and suggests recommendations for improving the mechanisms. The recommendations given in the research study emerge as the output of interviewing telecom experts, academicians and researchers and court judges.

This study has partial limitations as primary research was carried out only in selected countries with limited participants.

This study is useful for policymakers, regulators and think tanks in the telecommunications sector.

The resolution of individual customer grievances is significant to the telecom industry and all participants. A well-oiled grievance redressal system enhances the trust among the service users and aids in the industry’s growth. Further practical assessment of redressal offered by different telecom operators can be used for benchmarking, and it can create an onus on telecom operators for timely and adequate redressal of consumer complaints. In certain countries with a well-developed alternate dispute resolution (ADR) mechanism, the service offerings of telecom operators and the quality of services are deemed to be better than those without such an ADR. The research aims to bring in the positives of ADR systems from specific telecom markets and suggest the effectiveness of such ADR for countries such as India, which has over 1.17billion active subscribers. This research aims to aid responsive communication with telecom consumers in the overall telecom industry, which can bolster telecom consumers’ confidence and help the industry grow sustainably. Discussing perspectives on telecom dispute resolution in various conferences and discussing use-cases of innovative dispute settlements can act as stimuli in this space. As ADR procedures are conducted in the shadow of the law, a dispute resolution framework must have a buy-in from the government, telecom experts, the judiciary and private telecom stakeholders. This can only help achieve a framework that can reap the benefits of various ADR/ODR processes facilitating better access to justice, including cost-effectiveness, swiftness, a broader reach for dispute resolution and improved efficiency of dispute resolution.

Previous studies have focused on the study of telecom reforms and mechanisms in a particular country and there was a limited comparison with other countries’ mechanisms. Also, there has been minimal research in this area in recent years. This paper contributes to analyzing the effectiveness of the telecom ombudsman framework in Australia, the USA, the UK and India. It also studies the reforms and consumer grievance-handling mechanisms in a few other countries. It also gives well-researched recommendations for improving the consumer grievance resolution system.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the profile of use of gerontechnology in Spanish older adults considering their age group (60–70; 71–80 and over 80 years) and to discern whether groups of subjects with similar characteristics can be established to ascertain which factors are behind the profile of frequent gerontechnology use.

A quantitative study is presented to understand the profile of use of gerontechnology in Spanish older adults. The sample comprised 497 participants (aged between 60 and 94 years).

The results show that, even though most participants consider technology to be useful in their daily lives, there is still a lack of knowledge on how to use it, especially among older subjects. This highlights the importance of promoting technological cocreation initiatives such as senior living labs.

Other researchers are encouraged to include the voices of older adults using gerontechnology in further studies.

If we want to increase the acceptance of technology by older adults, we must first let them take part in the design of the technologies they will use.

This research provides promising data that should merit attention to contribute to the well-being and quality of life of older adults in a society where currently technology is a key part in every sphere of our daily life.

The value of this research lies in the implications of “aging in place” studies today.

This study aimed to examine how Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data have been used to support scientific discoveries in biomedical and health sciences, and provide insight to researchers who are interested in using MEPS regarding collaborations and dissemination of research output.

A bibliometric approach was used to systematically examine the publications that used MEPS data and were indexed by PubMed and Web of Science (WoS). Microsoft Excel and bibliometric tools (WoS and VOSviewer) were utilized for quantitative and bibliometric network analysis. The measures were investigated on the total number of publications by year, research categories, source journals, other datasets/databases co-used with MEPS, funding sources, collaboration patterns, and research topics.

A total of 1,953 eligible publications were included in this study with the numbers growing significantly over time. MEPS data were primarily used in healthcare services, public environmental and occupational health research. The journals that published the most papers using MEPS were all in the healthcare research area. Twenty-four other databases were found to be used along with MEPS. Over 3,200 researchers from 1,074 institutions in 25 countries have contributed to the publications. Research funding was supported from federal, private, local, and international agencies. Three clusters of research topics were identified among 235 key terms extracted from titles and abstracts.

Our results illustrated the broad landscape of the research efforts that MEPS data have supported and substantiated the value of AHRQ's effort of providing MEPS to the public.