A Regulatory Roadmap to Incentivize Investment in New High-Speed Broadband Networks

This paper takes the European Electronic Communications Code proposed by the European Commission in 2016 as the motivation and background for a regulatory roadmap to incentivize investment in next generation access (NGA) broadband networks. After a discussion of the Code´s objectives and policy tools and the authors´ own assessment of competitive safeguarding functions and of externalities generated by NGA investment, the roadmap is presented as a conceptual tool for orienting regulatory policies based on the distinction between black, grey and white geographic areas. For each region policies are ranked, based on the expected impact on investment, size of externalities and the strength of competitive safeguards. While the roadmap presents the various cases and policy options, the regulators and politicians would have to gather the necessary information in order to identify the relevant points on the roadmap.

Briglauer, Wolfgang and Ingo Vogelsang (2017), A Regulatory Roadmap to Incentivize Investment in New High-Speed Broadband Networks, DigiWorld Economic Journal 106 , 143-160