European Law and Regulation of Mobile Net Neutrality

Mobile is a rapidly growing and potentially major element of the future Internet, and its environment cannot be sensibly considered in isolation from fixed networks [2]. A note on terminology: Europe uses the term Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) while the United States uses 'wireless' Internet Service Providers (ISPs) [3]. 'Wireless' is somewhat more open in the United States. In Europe, mobile has always made special pleading for forms of self-regulation, as we will see. The article introduces mobile broadband, then considers net neutrality in the fixed environment including the new laws passed in November 2009 in the European Parliament, before considering the mobile net neutrality debate, the degree of price control regulation exerted on European mobiles and the MNOs' vigorous rear-guard anti-regulation defence. Finally, I look at the effects of this regulatory asymmetry and whether MNO calls for mobile to be treated differently from other ISPs can be justified. I conclude by examining what the effect of price and content control on mobile is likely to be for incentives for fixed ISPs and produce a result that I describe as the 'fixed' strategy

Valuing Access to U.S. Public Lands: A Unique Pricing Experiment

We report the findings of a unique nation-wide experiment to price access to U.S. public lands. In 2004, the U.S. Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act mandated the creation of a new annual pass to cover all federal recreation sites that charge an entrance or access fee. Our task was to assist federal policymakers in determining an appropriate price for this new pass. Toward that end, we administered a national telephone survey to over 3,700 households and used contingent valuation to estimate households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the new pass at different prices. Our innovative experimental design allows us to estimate three distinct components of hypothetical bias in order to calibrate our WTP estimates against actual purchasing decisions. In a sample of the general U.S. population – most of whom have little experience with similar federal passes – respondents tend to greatly exaggerate their WTP for the pass when contrasted with previous pass sales. A sample of recent pass purchasers, however, exhibits little bias, confirming other recent research showing that market experience can mitigate hypothetical bias. Calibrated for bias, our results indicate that the $80 pass price ultimately adopted by policymakers implies an increase of nearly 2.5$65, but a 4.5% loss in potential revenue absent any such pass.

Valuing Access to our Public Lands: A Unique Public Good Pricing Experiment

We report the findings of a unique nation-wide experiment to price access to our public lands. In 2004, the U.S. Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act mandated the creation of a new annual pass to cover all federal recreation sites that charge an entrance or access fee. Our task was to assist federal policymakers in determining an appropriate price for this new pass. Toward that end, we administered a contingent valuation phone survey to over 3700 households to estimate households willingness to pay (WTP) for the new pass at a variety of different prices. Our innovative experimental design allows us to estimate the degree of hypothetical bias in the sample and calibrate our WTP estimates to reflect actual purchasing decisions. In a sample of the general U.S. population most of whom have little experience with similar federal passes respondents tend to greatly exaggerate their WTP for the pass when contrasted with previous pass sales. A sample of recent pass purchasers, however, exhibits little bias. This confirms recent research showing that market experience can be an effective means to mitigate hypothetical bias.Land Economics/Use,

NGA, IP-Interconnection and their Impact on Business Models and Competition

Developments towards Next Generation Networks (NGN) have a strong impact on the design of the markets for electronic communications in general, but specifically on intercarrier relations with respect to interconnection and access. Due to the fact that competition in the European telecommunications environment has brought about alternative providers and their business models it is an interesting area to investigate how these business models will develop in an NGN environment and which (additional) business models may emerge in the future. To that end, the current paper looks at the development of different business models in the PSTN world and likely developments in the NGN world. This leads to conclusions with respect to requirements of the future regulatory framework of next generation networks in order to maintain the achievements of competition in the telecommunications area.NGN, business models, migration, competition, regulatory framework

NGA, IP-Interconnection and their Impact on Business Models and Competition

Developments towards Next Generation Networks (NGN) have a strong impact on the design of the markets for electronic communications in general, but specifically on intercarrier relations with respect to interconnection and access. Due to the fact that competition in the European telecommunications environment has brought about alternative providers and their business models it is an interesting area to investigate how these business models will develop in an NGN environment and which (additional) business models may emerge in the future. To that end, the current paper looks at the development of different business models in the PSTN world and likely developments in the NGN world. This leads to conclusions with respect to requirements of the future regulatory framework of next generation networks in order to maintain the achievements of competition in the telecommunications area.NGN, business models, migration, competition, regulatory framework.

Context-driven progressive enhancement of mobile web applications: a multicriteria decision-making approach

Personal computing has become all about mobile and embedded devices. As a result, the adoption rate of smartphones is rapidly increasing and this trend has set a need for mobile applications to be available at anytime, anywhere and on any device. Despite the obvious advantages of such immersive mobile applications, software developers are increasingly facing the challenges related to device fragmentation. Current application development solutions are insufficiently prepared for handling the enormous variety of software platforms and hardware characteristics covering the mobile eco-system. As a result, maintaining a viable balance between development costs and market coverage has turned out to be a challenging issue when developing mobile applications. This article proposes a context-aware software platform for the development and delivery of self-adaptive mobile applications over the Web. An adaptive application composition approach is introduced, capable of autonomously bypassing context-related fragmentation issues. This goal is achieved by incorporating and validating the concept of fine-grained progressive application enhancements based on a multicriteria decision-making strategy