An Empirical Assessment of Competitive Entry in European Broadband Markets

Abstract:     
European broadband markets have developed over the last decade under an unbundling regulation that assumed that they were national in scope and that straight infrastructure-based entry was not feasible, so that the only way to reach full competition was for services-based providers to gradually climb a regulated “ladder of investment”. In this paper, we analyze the actual performance of both infrastructure and services-based entrants in Europe. We have found that there are two very different geographic markets within each country. In the largest area, full competition has been established: infrastructure-based entrants have been successful, despite regulatory handicaps, while services-based entrants only in very specific cases.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 33

Keywords: regulation, competition, broadband, access networks, infrastructure-based

JEL Classification: L96, L50, K23

working papers series