Solving the 'Broadband Problem': A Challenge for Regulators or Producers?

Abstract

Utilising population-based national Internet infrastructure purchase and utilisation figures from a country with high dial-up Internet use, wide availability and low prices of broadband infrastructures, but low levels of broadband uptake, this paper finds evidence for the existence of an applications-based demand-side constraint slowing the diffusion of broadband technologies. Moreover, the applications-based explanation can account for many of the differences in broadband uptake across OECD countries. The paper concludes that the solution to the broadband diffusion problem more likely lies in analysing the production and utilisation of information than in studying and regulating information transfer and transportation infrastructures.