[Nets-seminars] Talk this friday 7th June 16:00 GS/102

[Richard G. Clegg]

Next Friday's talk is at 16:00 in GS/102 at 66-72 Gower Street.  The 
speaker is Professor Tommaso Valletti from Imperial College.

Title: Unbundling the incumbent: Evidence from UK broadband

Abstract
We consider the impact of a regulatory process forcing an incumbent 
telecom operator to
make its local broadband network available to other companies (local 
loop unbundling, or
LLU). Entrants are then able to upgrade their individual lines and offer 
Internet services
directly to customers. Employing a very detailed dataset covering the 
whole of the UK,
we find that over the course of time, many entrants have begun to take 
advantage of LLU.
However, unbundling has little or no effect on broadband penetration, 
compared to those areas
where the loops are not unbundled. LLU entry instead has a strongly 
positive impact on the
quality of the service provided, as entrants successfully differentiate 
their products upwards
compared to the incumbent. We also assess the impact of competition from 
an alternative
form of technology (cable) which is not subject to regulation, and what 
we discover is that
inter-platform competition has a positive impact on both penetration and 
quality.

Bio:
Tommaso Valletti has a magna cum laude degree in engineering from Turin 
and holds a MSc and a PhD in economics from the London School of 
Economics, where he also taught until 2001. He is Professor of Economics 
at Imperial College Business School, and also Professor of Economics at 
the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" (Italy). He is a Fellow of CEPR.

-- 
Richard G. Clegg,
Dept of Elec. Eng.,
University College London
http://www.richardclegg.org/