Determinant of Mobile broadband subscription

Other conference contribution, 2010

To realize societal benefits from mobile broadband deployment, national regulatory agencies (NRAs) seek to influence market conditions and thereby stimulate subscription growth. This study attempts to provide guidance to NRAs by identifying the factors that determine mobile broadband subscription via econometric modeling of a unique sample of 44 national 3G markets during 2001-2008. Mobile broadband subscription is modeled as dependent on the economic arguments of gross domestic product per capita (to proxy personal income), fixed broadband subscription, lagged mobile broadband subscription, mobile network coverage and the mode of spectrum licence assignment. The study finds that per capita income, fixed broadband subscription and lagged mobile broadband subscription enhance subscription. In particular, the positive relationship observed between fixed and mobile broadband subscriptions indicates that goods are complements at this early stage of network evolution. More generally, the results suggest that NRAs may improve welfare by encouraging both fixed and mobile broadband network diffusions.