IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/itse13/88516.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How to price the unbundled local loop in the transition from copper to fiber access networks?

Author

Listed:
  • Neumann, Karl-Heinz
  • Vogelsang, Ingo

Abstract

In many countries worldwide access networks are in the transition from copper to fiber access. During the transition phase copper and fiber networks are operated in parallel. All regulators facing this situation of technological change have to decide how to price unbundled access to the copper loop in this transition phase. Should they keep the usual forward looking long-run incremental cost standard charge, or should they move to some different approach? The authors propose to price copper access based on the modern equivalent asset (MEA) of fiber access. Since fiber access is superior to copper access, the cost of fiber access (as a basis for pricing copper access) should, however, be corrected by the performance delta between copper and fiber access. Instead of using quality of service (QoS) differences, the authors determine the performance delta based on the market valuation of services provided over the copper and fiber access represented by the end-user prices of services and corrected by cost differences downstream of the access provision. Under this approach an access seeker becomes indifferent (on the margin) between using the copper or the fiber access network and wholesale pricing (or regulation) becomes competitively neutral towards technology choice between copper and fiber access and does not distort the platform competition towards cable. To test its practicability numerical simulations of the approach are performed by means of a quantitative competition model. The model analysis suggests that the approach leads to unique and robust results. Its main conclusion is that the method tends to be conservative relative to the theoretical case of pure vertical product differentiation, meaning that the measured performance delta underestimates the theoretical performance delta.

Suggested Citation

  • Neumann, Karl-Heinz & Vogelsang, Ingo, 2013. "How to price the unbundled local loop in the transition from copper to fiber access networks?," 24th European Regional ITS Conference, Florence 2013 88516, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:itse13:88516
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/88516/1/77409124X.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Neumann, Karl-Heinz & Vogelsang, Ingo, 2013. "How to price the unbundled local loop in the transition from copper to fiber access networks?," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 893-909.
    2. Mandy David M. & Sharkey William W., 2003. "Dynamic Pricing and Investment from Static Proxy Models," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(4), pages 1-37, December.
    3. von Ungern-Sternberg, Thomas, 1991. "Monopolistic Competition on the Pyramid," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(4), pages 355-368, June.
    4. Bourreau, Marc & Cambini, Carlo & Doğan, Pınar, 2012. "Access pricing, competition, and incentives to migrate from “old” to “new” technology," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 713-723.
    5. Gerald R. Faulhaber & Gary Madden & Jeffrey Petchey (ed.), 2012. "Regulation and the Performance of Communication and Information Networks," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14325.
    6. Steffen HOERNIG & Stephan JAY & Werner NEU & Karl-Heinz NEUMANN & Thomas PLÜCKEBAUM & Ingo VOGELSANG, 2012. "Wholesale Pricing, NGA Take-Up and Competition," Communications & Strategies, IDATE, Com&Strat dept., vol. 1(86), pages 153-174, 2nd quart.
    7. Evans, Lewis T. & Guthrie, Graeme A., 2005. "Risk, price regulation, and irreversible investment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 109-128, February.
    8. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    9. Briglauer, Wolfgang & Vogelsang, Ingo, 2011. "The need for a new approach to regulating fixed networks," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 102-114, March.
    10. Evans, Lewis T. & Guthrie, Graeme A., 2005. "Risk, price regulation, and irreversible investment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 109-128, February.
    11. Degraba, Patrick, 2003. "A Bottleneck Input Supplier's Opportunity Cost of Competing Downstream," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 287-297, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tselekounis, Markos & Orfanou, Georgia & Varoutas, Dimitris, 2014. "Coexistence of copper and fiber unbundling: Access charges and investment incentives," 25th European Regional ITS Conference, Brussels 2014 101400, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    2. I. Vogelsang, 2015. "Will the U.S. and EU telecommunications policies converge? A survey," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 42(2), pages 117-155, June.
    3. Neumann, Karl-Heinz & Vogelsang, Ingo, 2013. "How to price the unbundled local loop in the transition from copper to fiber access networks?," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 893-909.
    4. Tselekounis, Markos & Varoutas, Dimitris & Martakos, Drakoulis, 2014. "A CDS approach to induce facilities-based competition over NGA networks," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 311-331.
    5. Vogelsang Ingo, 2013. "The Endgame of Telecommunications Policy? A Survey," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 64(3), pages 193-270, December.
    6. Vogelsang, Ingo, 2017. "The role of competition and regulation in stimulating innovation – Telecommunications," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(9), pages 802-812.
    7. Viktória KOCSIS & Paul de BIJL & Rob van der NOLL & Bert TIEBEN, 2015. "Reconsidering ex ante Regulation in the Dutch Electronic Communications Market," Communications & Strategies, IDATE, Com&Strat dept., vol. 1(98), pages 61-83, 2nd quart.
    8. Tselekounis, Markos & Xylogianni, Eirini & Varoutas, Dimitris & Martakos, Drakoulis, 2013. "Geographically differentiated NGA deployment," 24th European Regional ITS Conference, Florence 2013 88533, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vogelsang Ingo, 2013. "The Endgame of Telecommunications Policy? A Survey," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 64(3), pages 193-270, December.
    2. Hoernig, Steffen & Jay, Stephan & Neumann, Karl-Heinz & Peitz, Martin & Plückebaum, Thomas & Vogelsang, Ingo, 2012. "The impact of different fibre access network technologies on cost, competition and welfare," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 96-112.
    3. Blum, Ulrich & Growitsch, Christian & Krap, Niels, 2006. "Network Investment and the Threat of Regulation – Preventing Monopoly Exploitation or Infrastructure Construction?," IWH Discussion Papers 7/2006, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    4. Peter Broer & Gijsbert Zwart, 2013. "Optimal regulation of lumpy investments," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 177-196, October.
    5. I. Vogelsang, 2015. "Will the U.S. and EU telecommunications policies converge? A survey," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 42(2), pages 117-155, June.
    6. Lewis Evans & Graeme Guthrie, 2006. "Incentive Regulation of Prices When Costs are Sunk," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 239-264, May.
    7. Ingo Vogelsang, 2012. "Incentive Regulation, Investments and Technological Change," Chapters, in: Gerald R. Faulhaber & Gary Madden & Jeffrey Petchey (ed.), Regulation and the Performance of Communication and Information Networks, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Hahn, Robert & Evans, Lewis, 2010. "Regulating Dynamic Markets: Progress in Theory and Practice," Working Paper Series 4052, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    9. Lewis Evans, 2004. "The efficiency test under competition law and regulation in the small distant open economy that is New Zealand," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(2), pages 241-264.
    10. repec:vuw:vuwscr:18958 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Guthrie, Graeme, 2020. "Regulation, welfare, and the risk of asset stranding," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 273-287.
    12. Balmera, Roberto E. & Ünverb, Mehmet Bilal, 2016. "Cooperative investment in next generation broadband networks: A review of recent practical cases and literature," 27th European Regional ITS Conference, Cambridge (UK) 2016 148657, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    13. repec:vuw:vuwscr:19155 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Balmer, Roberto E., 2014. "Geographic regulation and cooperative investment in next generation broadband networks," 20th ITS Biennial Conference, Rio de Janeiro 2014: The Net and the Internet - Emerging Markets and Policies 106889, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    15. Balmera, Roberto E. & Ünverb, Mehmet Bilal, 2016. "Geographic regulation of next generation broadband networks: A review of practical cases and recent literature," 27th European Regional ITS Conference, Cambridge (UK) 2016 148656, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    16. Balmer, Roberto E., 2015. "Geographic regulation of next generation broadband networks: A review of practical cases and recent literature," 26th European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2015 127125, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    17. Jamasb, Tooraj & Pollitt, Michael, 2008. "Liberalisation and R&D in network industries: The case of the electricity industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(6-7), pages 995-1008, July.
    18. Michele Moretto & Paolo M. Panteghini & Carlo Scarpa, 2008. "Profit sharing and investment by regulated utilities: A welfare analysis," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(4), pages 315-337, December.
    19. Borrmann, Jörg & Brunekreeft, Gert, 2020. "The timing of monopoly investment under cost-based and price-based regulation," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    20. Dominik Schober & Stephan Schaeffler & Christoph Weber, 2014. "Idiosyncratic risk and the cost of capital: the case of electricity networks," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 123-151, October.
    21. Lee, Dongyeol, 2015. "Regulating termination charges in asymmetric oligopolies," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 16-28.
    22. Nagy, Roel L.G. & Hagspiel, Verena & Kort, Peter M., 2021. "Green capacity investment under subsidy withdrawal risk," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Copper access; Fiber to the home (FTTH); Modern equivalent asset; Long-run incremental costs (LRIC); Performance delta;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:itse13:88516. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.itseurope.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.