Broadband Adoption Research Articles

How important are mobile broadband networks for the global economic development?

Since the beginning of the 21st century mobile broadband has diffused very rapidly in many countries around the world. This paper investigates to what extent the diffusion of mobile broadband has impacted economic development in terms of GDP. The study is based on data for 135 countries (90 countries once controlling for capital, employment and human capital) for the period 2002–2014. The results show that there is a statistically significant effect from mobile broadband on GDP both when mobile broadband is first introduced and gradually as mobile broadband diffuses throughout different economies. Based on a two stage model we are able to conclude that on average a 10 percent increase of mobile broadband adoption causes a 0.8 percent increase in GDP. Moreover, once we control for the years since mobile broadband was introduced, we find that the economic effect gradually decreases over time. For the country with median average growth of mobile broadband penetration, this implies that the economic effect has disappeared 6 years after introduction (if introduction is defined as a mobile penetration of 1 percent).

Digital Economy Focus

Papers in the September 2018 issue of the Journal provide an interesting mix of public policy debate, technology and the communications for the America’s Cup Challenge defence held in Fremantle, Australia. The public policy papers cover fixed broadband adoption and economic growth in ASEAN and a framework to demystify machine to machine spectrum regulation. A technical paper on bitmaps and bitmasks provides an insight into the latest tools and techniques. The history of Australian telecommunications paper on the America’s Cup communications solution provides an insight into what was a successful and difficult to achieve outcome for one of the world’s major sporting events. The Journal welcomes contributions.

Digital Economy Focus

Papers in the September 2018 issue of the Journal provide an interesting mix of public policy debate, technology and the communications for the America’s Cup Challenge defence held in Fremantle, Australia. The public policy papers cover fixed broadband adoption and economic growth in ASEAN and a framework to demystify machine to machine spectrum regulation. A technical paper on bitmaps and bitmasks provides an insight into the latest tools and techniques. The history of Australian telecommunications paper on the America’s Cup communications solution provides an insight into what was a successful and difficult to achieve outcome for one of the world’s major sporting events. The Journal welcomes contributions.

The Strength of Absent Ties: Social Integration via Online Dating

We used to marry people to whom we were somehow connected. Since we were more connected to people similar to us, we were also likely to marry someone from our own race. However, online dating has changed this pattern; people who meet online tend to be complete strangers. We investigate the effects of those previously absent ties on the diversity of modern societies. We find that social integration occurs rapidly when a society benefits from new connections. Our analysis of state-level data on interracial marriage and broadband adoption (proxy for online dating) suggests that this integration process is significant and ongoing.

Stimulating broadband adoption: state-owned companies versus tax exemptions – the Brazilian case

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a new methodology to assess the economic and social impacts of policies to promote mass access to the internet in fixed broadband. The authors apply the methodology to the Brazilian broadband market.Design/methodology/approachFor this purpose, municipal information concerning the provision of EILD is used, and then a stylized model of definition of service penetration based on information regarding the price, the distribution of income and the number of households served is proposed.FindingsThe results indicate that cost reduction policies are more effective than measures to promote competition through the introduction of state-owned enterprises in the telecommunication market for broadband service. On the other hand, the results also indicate that the federal and state governments face a dilemma between broadband policy and tax policy.Originality/valueThis is a new and original methodology to model the broadband market demand, which is useful to assess the impact of regulation policies in the sector as well as structural changes in that market.

Supporting rural Small and Medium-sized Enterprises to take up broadband-enabled technology: What works?

The last 15 years have seen major changes in the availability and usage of broadband in the UK. Despite these improvements, rural areas continue to lag behind urban areas for broadband connection speeds – a divide that is exacerbated by lower rates of broadband adoption among rural Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). This paper examines the experiences of SMEs that have participated in a publicly funded programme designed to stimulate demand for broadband in the rural region of Lincolnshire, UK. Drawing on interviews conducted over two periods of policy intervention (2003–2006 and 2010–2015) it examines the variety of business support approaches used and identifies the effects of these on use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) innovation, and sales within participating SMEs. The results show that while training events provide entry-level support for broadband use, more intensive support such as 1:1 advice and ICT grants leads to the significant changes within the business. Direct access to new technology in spaces such as Technology Hubs is identified as particularly important for rural SMEs. The paper concludes by identifying some common features of the business support that bring about the greatest benefits to SMEs in rural areas.

Enhanced predictive modelling process of broadband services adoption based on time series data

In this paper, the importance of the predictive modelling process of broadband services adoption is described. A detailed overview of different analytical models used for prediction, i.e., fitting and forecasting processes of broadband services adoption are presented. Furthermore, a comparison of several analytical models commonly used for prediction of broadband adoption is conducted. In order to more accurately fit to the existing broadband adoption time series data, and to forecast the future broadband services adoption paths, the features of the most accurate common predictive models have been identified for different phases of broadband services adoption. Considering the given results, usage of additional models in the predictive modelling process is analyzed. The objective of these analyses is set to improve the accuracy of the existing predictive modelling process. The accuracy of the predictive modelling process using additional models is tested and compared in different phases of broadband adoption. The model which gives the most accurate results is identified. Finally, in order to enable the usage of this model within a whole broadband service life cycle, as well as to include a greater number of explanatory parameters in predictive modelling process, an enhanced predictive modelling process is proposed.

Go for Gigabit? First Evidence on Economic Benefits of (Ultra-)Fast Broadband Technologies in Europe

The literature on the effects of telecommunications infrastructure investments find positive macroeconomic effects, however, it is severely constrained because it could hitherto only analyze investment up to “basic” broadband but not up to the newer generations of “fast” and “ultra-fast” broadband; in particular there is no such evidence available at the EU level so far. Utilizing a comprehensive panel dataset of EU27 member states for the period from 2003-2015, we estimate a small but significant effect of fiber-based ultra-fast broadband over and above the effects of basic broadband on GDP. Adoption of hybrid-fiber fast broadband is incrementally to basic broadband insignificant. Our cost-benefit analysis implies that policy intervention – as foreseen by the European Commission in its public policy targets – is only justified for coverage and adoption levels of around 50% of fast or ultra-fast broadband, whereas for 100% coverage levels we find net losses to society. Thus, it appears that – for the time being and according to the policy principle of “technological neutrality” – a combination of basic broadband, fast and ultra-fast broadband entails the largest economic net benefits to society.

An Evaluation of the Connected Nation Broadband Adoption Program

Closing the digital divide and increasing broadband adoption within households and communities continue to be goals of government and nonprofit groups. While a large number of studies have examined policies and programs aimed at improving broadband infrastructure availability, little analysis to date has focused on evaluating efforts to increase adoption. One of the most well-known programs emphasizing adoption is Connected Nation, which has partnered with 14 states to provide local curricula aimed at raising residential internet connection rates. This analysis uses a generalized difference-in-difference methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of the Connected Nation program that took place in 5 states during 2012 and 2013. While the results indicate no significant initial impact, there is evidence of a linear effect resulting in increased adoption 2 to 4 years after the program began. This paper represents a rigorous evaluation of one of the most well-known adoption-oriented programs, and emphasizes that measurable impacts of such efforts may not accrue over the short term.

Diversity and digital divide: Using the National Broadband Map to identify the non-adopters of broadband

The Internet has become an integral part of the everyday life for many Americans, yet a sizable gap still exists in household broadband adoption. Previous studies of the digital divide were restricted by the lack of sufficiently granular data on broadband availability and adoption. Recent efforts of NTIA and the FCC have made it possible for scholars to perform an exhaustive analysis of broadband diffusion. This paper examines differences in fixed location broadband adoption rates among households of various demographic and socio-economic characteristics and in different geographic locations utilizing the FCC's census tract level adoption data, demographic data from American Community Survey and the census block level broadband availability data from NTIA. Ordered probit models are estimated and used to conduct simulations in order to analyze the determinants of the broadband adoption rate. The results indicate that, although available in most tracts, the lack of broadband availability can still be a deterrent to its adoption. Furthermore, simulations indicate that, in non-metropolitan areas, policies targeting broadband availability would have a larger impact on adoption than policies targeting income or education, for instance. Additionally, where broadband is available, the census tracts with more educated, wealthy and older people who have more choices of broadband providers have higher fixed broadband subscription rates. The positive impact of older population on adoption rate contradicts the conventional belief that the older generation is left behind. Drawing from the previous literature, the older population may be more likely to have a home broadband subscription through traditional technologies, while their younger counterparts, who adapt to new technologies quicker, may be subscribing to mobile broadband.

Fiber to the Countryside: A Comparison of Public and Community Initiatives in the UK

Smart farming, e-health and e-commerce are just some of the multiple opportunities that digitisation offers to rural communities and businesses. Their ability though to participate in the digital economy is often compromised by a lack of high-speed connectivity. Despite the numerous initiatives launched over the years to promote broadband diffusion, such as BTOP in the US and BDUK in the UK, a large proportion of the rural population in the United States and the European Union (EU) are still unable to connect to fiber and 4G networks. As new measures in support of rural broadband have recently been announced by the US government and the EU, further research is needed to understand what business models and public policies are most likely to close the digital divide in rural areas. The evaluation of past initiatives can provide useful insights to enhance the effectiveness of future interventions. Drawing on research presented by Shaffer and Strover et al. at TPRC 2017, this paper further explores how community-led and public initiatives can contribute to promoting the adoption of broadband. Our analysis focuses on two projects deploying fixed broadband networks in the rural United Kingdom: Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) and Connecting Cumbria. The former is a cooperative fiber-to-the-home network financed and built by local residents in the Northwest of England, while the latter is a public-private partnership between British Telecom and Cumbria County Council, providing fiber broadband in areas excluded from commercial deployments. These case studies exemplify how the combination of top-down and bottom-up initiatives enabled the UK to expand the coverage of superfast broadband (defined in the UK as being a download speed of at least 30 Mbit/s) from 22% to 66% of the rural premises between 2014 and 2017. Based on participant observation and interviews with multiple stakeholders, this paper explores the business models adopted by these initiatives and compares their outcomes in terms of broadband coverage and adoption. Despite achieving its coverage goals, Connecting Cumbria did not fully meet the expectations of rural communities, still unsatisfied with the speed available or even unable to access fast broadband. Some villages decided to join B4RN and subsequently leveraged their own skills and financial resources to build a community FTTH network covering every premise. In both cases, the management of expectations and the engagement with broadband users emerged as key success factors. These case studies offer unique insights into the performance of community-led initiatives and public-private partnerships, thereby contributing to the ongoing research and policy debate on the role of local communities and public authorities in broadband markets. By analysing the interplay between public sector, private suppliers and local communities, this research also provides useful recommendations for policymakers and practitioners dealing with the rollout of rural broadband. Furthermore, it contributes to the ongoing research on the adoption of innovation in peripheral areas, by exploring how digital skills develop and disseminate in rural communities.

Investigation of Factors Influencing Mobile Broadband Adoption in Gurgaon Province of Southern Haryana

Investigation of Factors Influencing Mobile Broadband Adoption in Gurgaon Province of Southern Haryana

Growth prospects, market challenges and policy measures: evolution of mobile broadband in Pakistan

PurposeThe paper aims to explore the long-term prospects of mobile broadband adoption in a developing country. The supply-side and demand-side policy measures are recommended to counter the challenges to broadband adoption.Design/methodology/approachMethodologically, this study uses document analysis to explain secondary data including growth statistics, trade literature and previous scholarly research. Based on the growth statistics of broadband and the informed market insights, the research discusses the prevailing market threats and recommends counter measures to improve the long-term prospects of broadband propagation.FindingsThe growth of mobile broadband is settling down in Pakistan due to various barriers like cost, literacy, security and unavailability of local content. Collaborative efforts are required by the government, the service providers and the people to enhance the adoption of broadband service and secure economic benefits of the broadband.Practical implicationsThe research offers useful implications for managers and policymakers in Asian and African developing countries; the policy measures discussed here may serve as guidelines for them in the design of their own policies regarding broadband supply and demand.Originality/valueThe study makes an effort to examine the broadband growth in a developing country on the basis of both quantitative and qualitative aspects. The research endeavors to fill the gap on the particular scholarship of research covering potential uptake of broadband services and the effects of constraining elements to broadband adoption in a developing country.

Using critical realism and reflexivity to explain broadband non-adoption in rural Australia

Australia is conducting a substantial nationwide provision of broadband. It is primarily a fixed line network but includes wireless and satellite networks in more remote areas. The rollout is under the control of the NBN Co, whose goal is ensuring access to fast broadband for all Australians. The NBN Co has recently recognized the importance of adoption by including premises activated as a KPI alongside service provision. Coverage and adoption reflect the two faces of the NBN rollout – as a technical program and as a social program. Adoption will be the ultimate measure of the success of the NBN as a social program. Ubiquitous Internet adoption across all sectors is necessary to maximize the promised benefits. The adoption of broadband is an important first step in achieving this. International experience suggests that broadband adoption is plateauing and this has prompted our proposal that there needs to be focus on non-adoption rather than adoption. We suggest that it is important to be able to explain the mechanisms by which individuals respond to the promise of the Internet. Only by so doing can we address issues. We contend that there needs to be more focus on those disenchanted or disinterested “non-users” who are never likely to adopt without specific targeted strategies. We argue for a critical realist perspective, more particularly reflexivity, to better represent the adoption context and to provide a grounding for explanations of the causes behind the decision not to adopt. We also propose possible common-sense strategies to reverse non-adoption.

Tariff diversity and competition policy: drivers for broadband adoption in the European Union

While second-degree price discrimination is standard in commercial practice in many industries, consumer advocates and public interest groups have reacted with skepticism to tendencies to move away from flat rates and introduce greater tariff diversity. This paper uses time-series data to provide an empirical analysis of how the differentiation of broadband tariffs with respect to retail prices affects fixed broadband subscription. The empirical analysis is based on a unique dataset of 10,200 retail broadband offers spanning the 2003–2011 period and including 23 EU member states. Results show that an increase in tariff diversity provides a significant impetus to broadband adoption, wherefore demands by several public interest groups to limit price discrimination in broadband markets should be viewed with some caution as reduced price discrimination may come at the cost of lower penetration rates.

Cultural, Economic and Societal Impacts on Users’ Behaviour and Mobile Broadband Adoption Trends

The diverse range of Internet enabled devices both mobile and fixed has not only impacted the global economy but the very fabric of human communications and lifestyles. The ease of access and lowered cost has enabled hitherto diametrically opposed people to interact and influence each other globally. The consequence of which is the dire need to address the way culture affects interaction with information systems across the world. The many facets of which encompasses human behaviour, socio-economic and cultural factors including lifestyles and the way of interaction with the information system. The study group involved participants from Bangladesh and the United Kingdom to ascertain the users’ behavioural patterns and mobile broadband technology diffusion trends.

The Internet of Things as an accelerator of advancement of broadband networks: A case of Thailand

The advanced development of broadband access is an inevitable step toward supportive daily lives and sustainable economic growth. However, the decisive outcome of the development relies heavily on the demand side. Consumer choice among advanced Internet broadband technologies will determine the achievement of the development. This study aims to illustrate that consumer decisions on choices of advanced Internet access are influenced by the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) applications. A bivariate probit model is applied to examine the effects of IoT, consumer's individual characteristics, and their current use of networks on their decision pertaining to the choice of advanced Internet access. Using Thailand as a case study, the result indicates that the emergence of IoT applications accelerates the adoption of both advanced mobile broadband (5G) and advanced fixed broadband (FTTH). This finding may help policy makers to optimize the future direction of the Internet infrastructure development in Thailand, and also countries in a similar stage.

The relationship investigation between factors affecting demand for broadband and the level of satisfaction among broadband customers in the South East Coast of Sabah, Malaysia

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between factors that affecting the demand for broadband and the level of satisfaction. Previous researchers have found that the adoption of broadband is greatly influenced by many factors. Thus, in this study, a self-administered questionnaire was developed to obtain the factors affecting demand for broadband among broadband customers as well as their level of satisfaction. Pearson correlation, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test were used for statistical interpretation of the relationship. This study shows that there are better relationships between several factors over demand for broadband and satisfaction level.

Exploring additional determinants of fixed broadband adoption: policy implications for narrowing the broadband demand gap

ABSTRACTUsing data from the survey ‘Aspects of daily life’ conducted on Italian individuals in 2014 by the Italian Institute of Statistics, we propose new evidence on the factors that encourage the adoption of fixed broadband, a topic relevant for the reduction of the so-called broadband demand gap. We estimate a probit model through the two-step Heckman procedure for the selection bias, and find that, besides the already studied socio-demographic determinants, Internet-capable devices other than personal computers, as well as recreational (essentially video contents) and cloud-related uses of the Internet, have a relevant positive role. Policies aimed at fostering the diffusion of smart homes and more generally of the Internet of things at the residential level might be very effective in favouring fixed broadband adoption, provided that the network be neutral, not discriminating between data based on their contents and/or the destination device, and that possible foreclosing behaviours in the access to (premium) contents be properly and promptly addressed.

Estimating willingness-to-pay for broadband attributes among low-income consumers: Results from two FCC lifeline pilot projects

Recent studies have confirmed that broadband adoption (as opposed to simply having access to broadband infrastructure) is positively linked with economic growth. In light of this, federal policy efforts have switched from focusing mainly on the provision of infrastructure to more explicit adoption-oriented efforts. One of those efforts was the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Low-income Broadband Lifeline Pilot Projects, which ran from 2013 to 2014. The program worked with 14 private telecommunications firms to subsidize household broadband adoption for low-income households by providing discounted monthly and equipment costs. Low-income households are an important component of the broadband adoption puzzle: between 2003 and 2013, the adoption gap between low-income and high-income households actually increased by 5% points. This paper focuses on two specific FCC Broadband Lifeline Pilot projects that allowed consumers to make choices among different options, such as data allowance, speed, and wireless vs. wired connections. Conditional logit models are used to develop estimates of consumer’s willingness-to-pay for specific broadband attributes. The results indicate that low-income consumers have a preference for smartphone connections (versus aircards) – and that this effect is even more pronounced for those households earning less than $20,000; that low-income consumers have a preference for wired connections (versus wireless); and that there is evidence that low-income consumers are willing to pay for an extra GB of data each month – but not for the speed of their connection.