The television struggle : an assessment of over-the-top television evolutions in a cable dominant market

Traditional television screens have lost their monopoly on television content. With a helping hand of digitalization, the introduction of ever more screens in our lives and increasingly faster network technologies, a wide variety of alternative screens and sources of television content are trying to conquer a piece of the audiences' viewing time. This evolution calls for new kinds of services and has the potential to change the current television market. This paper assesses the evolution of over-the-top television services in Flanders, a cable dominant market in which several OTT TV services emerged during the past two years. By presenting an analysis of the market and the results of a large scale end-user survey (n: 1,269) we provide insights on the future of OTT TV and its impact on the current television ecosystem. In the Flemish market, both traditional broadcasters, the channels themselves and new market entrants are launching OTT TV services. These market evolutions are being related to user expectations and usage patterns in order to assess the challenges for future television. This also allows to make assumptions on future scenarios regarding so-called "cord- cutting" behaviour. Because of the high adoption of triple play bundles and fierce competition between the two dominant television distributors, a large scale video cord-cutting scenario is highly unlikely for the Flemish television market. Although OTT TV might gain importance, it will be hard for 'OTT TV-only' services to replace the traditional television distributors

Innovation and the Evolution of Market Structure for Internet Access in the United States

How and why did the U.S. commercial Internet access market structure evolve during its first decade? Commercial Internet access market structure arose from a propitious combination of inherited market structures from communications and computing, where a variety of firms already flourished and entrepreneurial norms prevailed. This setting nurtured innovative behavior across such key features as pricing, operational practices, and geographic coverage. Inherited regulatory decisions in communications markets had a nurturing effect on innovative activity. On-going regulatory decisions also shaped the market’s evolution, sometimes nurturing innovation and sometimes not. This narrative and analysis informs conjectures about several unique features of U.S. market structure and innovative behavior. It also informs policy debates today about the role of regulation in nurturing or discouraging innovation behavior.

Productivity Questions for Public Sector Fast Fibre Network Financiers

Fast internet access is widely considered to be a productivity-enhancing factor. However, despite promises of substantial gains from its deployment, the evidence from recent empirical studies suggests that the productivity gains may not be as large as originally hypothesised. If substantiated, these findings suggest that current government plans to apply significant sums to bring forward the deployment of fast fibre networks (e.g. in both Australia and New Zealand) may not generate returns to the extent anticipated by their sponsors. Drawing upon the original ‘computer productivity paradox’ literature, this paper develops a critical questioning framework to assist policy-makers in identifying the salient productivity issues to be addressed when making the decision to apply scarce public resources to faster broadband network deployment. Using multiple literatures, the framework highlights the nuanced and highly complex ways in which broadband network speed may affect productivity, both positively and negatively. Policy-makers need to be satisfied that, on balance, government-funded investments in faster networks will likely generate the anticipated net benefits, given the significant uncertainties that are identified.Internet, broadband, productivity, public investment