Impact of mobile broadband in the mobile telecommunication industry

Abstract

The goal of this master’s thesis is to answer to the following research question: What are the relationships between mobile broadband and mobile telecommunication revenues and mobile broadband and market structure? My approach is econometric in nature. I developed two equations with the purpose of analyzing the impact of mobile broadband in the telecommunication industry and used the STATA program to regress the different models. For the first equation, I conducted a panel data approach of 34 OECD countries over the period 2009 and 2013. For the second equation, I used a cross section method of the same 34 OECD countries and for the year 2013. First, the results suggest that there exists a positive relationship between mobile broadband subscriptions and mobile telecommunication revenues which, in relative terms, is more sizeable than that of voice calls. This result demonstrates the growing importance of broadband mobile traffic for mobile operators. Second, there appears not to exist a statistically significant relationship between mobile broadband prices and market structure, an opposite result to that of Genakos, Valletti and Verboven (2017) for the mobile industry as a whole. This suggests that different and novel forms of competition may underlie the provision of mobile broadband services.

Date of Award	4 Dec 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ricardo Gonçalves (Supervisor)