When the European Parliament on 27 October rejected the proposed amendments to the snappily titled ‘proposed regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down measures concerning open internet access and amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and … Continue reading →

Interchange fees have been the focus of regulatory interest for quite some time. Originally, the concern has been that interchange fees were used to over-promote the use of cards. Now, commentators begin to worry about there being too few rather than too many card payments. Supposedly, both problems are cause by excessive interchange fees. Does this make sense? Continue reading →

With the exception of the semi-finals and the final, the games of the FIFA World Cup are available in Singapore only to pay TV subscribers, and at a substantial cost. More generally, Singaporeans have to pay a lot for premium football, and Arisa Siong looks at whether this might suggest that some action is needed to bring down prices. Continue reading →

Network outages have attracted substantial fines in Singapore – but what can be done to make networks more resilient? Arisa Siong looks at options for reducing the chances of customers being left without connectivity and discusses the recent proposals for a heterogeneous network put forward by the Singaporean Infocomm Development Agency. Continue reading →

Residential customers in Singapore make good use of the country’s well developed fibre networks, but smaller businesses have so far been more reluctant to switch away from copper-based broadband. The government has decided to provide incentives for SMEs to switch to fibre. Arisa Siong looks at the detail. Continue reading →

Over-the-top (OTT) applications such as Skype, WhatsApp or Viber seem to be set to replace traditional communication methods such as voice calls or text messages. Mobile operators seeing their service revenues shrink are facing tough choices. Arisa Siong looks at the relationship between OTT apps and the networks that support them. Continue reading →

The European Commission has updated its Guidelines on state aid for broadband networks. Public money is in all likelihood required to ensure that the Commission’s ambitious Digital Agenda targets can be achieved, and given the state of public finances, it is more important than ever that the money that is being spent will have the greatest impact. Christian Koboldt looks at whether the Guidelines provide the right incentives for how to spend it.

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Modern combinatorial auctions support very flexible spectrum packaging in the interest of promoting efficiency. But is there a limit on how complex lot structures can become without jeopardising the effectiveness of the process? Hans Ihle and Dan Maldoom explore this question. Continue reading →

The Swiss multi-band auction, completed earlier this year, has attracted attention not just because it included the greatest number of bands to date, but also because it has produced prices that might at first sight look difficult to explain. However, as Christian Koboldt explains, the results only show how the format works to achieve efficiency. Continue reading →

The Danish Digital Dividend auction is a shining example of how auctions can be used for allocating coverage obligations – in this case alongside radio spectrum. Arisa Siong explains this unique design and its results in more detail. Continue reading →