The Determinants of the Global Mobile Telephone Deployment: An Empirical Analysis

This study aims to analyze the global mobile phones by examining the instruments stimulating the diffusion pattern. A rigorous demand model is estimated using global mobile telecommu-nications panel dataset comprised with 51 countries classified in order to World Bank income categories from 1990-2007. In particular, the paper examines what factors contribute the most to the deployment of global mobile telephones. To construct an econometric model, the number of subscribers to mobile phone per 100 inhabitants is taken as dependent variable, while the following groups of variables (1) GDP per capita income and charges, (2) competition policies (3) telecom infrastructure (4) technological innovations (5) others are selected as independent variables. Estimation results report the presence of substantial disparity among groups. Additionally GDP per capita income and own-price elasticity comprised with call rate, subscription charges, are reported. The analysis of impulse responses for price, competition policies, and technological innovations such as digitalization of mobile network, mobile network coverage indicates that substantial mobile telephone growth is yet to be realized especially in developing countries. A new and important empirical finding is that there are still many opportunities available for mobile phone development in the world pro-poor nations by providing better telecom infrastructure.Mobile Phone Adoption, 3G, Technological Innovations, Competition Policy, Panel Data Analysis, Digital Divide

Has the European ICT sector a chance to be competitive ?

The ICT sector is featured by technical progress, convergence and systems integration. This leads to risks of monopolization regimes at the core with higher competition regimes at the periphery. Moreover, some specific component of the system may be essential for its evolution. In particular, networking to some extent creates the system, while software (notably operating systems) is the “glue” which holds it together. In this context, the European ICT industry is potentially smashed between the cost advantages of Asian countries such as China, and the inventiveness and dynamism of the US industry. The way out of this difficult situation is to create in Europe the conditions of restoring knowledge accumulation. By concentrating on an ambitious project of open source software production in embarked and domestic systems, Europe could reach several objectives: to make freely accessible an essential facility of networks, to stimulate competition, to help reaching the Lisbon objectives and to restore the European competitiveness in ICT.information and communications technologies ; industrial policy ; competition regimes ; knowledge based society ; open source

SMEs e-business behaviour: a demographics and strategic analysis

The aim of this research was to understand the strategic uses of e-business systems and technologies by classifying companies and particularly small and medium businesses according to demographics as well as e-business behavior variables.The study was based on data from a large quantitative survey of European E-business W@tch for the period 2007 using questionnaire interviews (N=409). We employed two-step cluster analysis, multinomial logistic regression and stepwise descriminant analysis as the most appropriate methods for our analysis. The findings revealed six clusters associated to e-business adoption. The six groups differ in terms of demographic characteristics as well as e-business applications they use. We found that the following clusters exist: (a) Leaders: large companies that extensively use ebusiness in a strategic manner (b) innovators: use e-business in an way that allows them to innovate and differentiate from other companies (c Beginners: small and medium companies across all sectors that only recently start to use e-business (d) Unready Adopters: micro and small companies that lag behind (e) Late Adopters: small-size companies but larger that the Unready Adopters, that appear not to be interest in the advances of ICTs and (f) Laggards: micro companies with little use of e-business.The results of our survey can positively contribute to managers aiming to take advantage of technological advances in electronic business as well as to any researcher who study e-business management and applications