1. Monthly archive
  2. May 2016

May 2016

Chairman Wheeler: Comcast’s TV app proves the FCC is right about set-top boxes

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is a fan of Comcast's plan to bring its TV service to customers without traditional set-top boxes.

Comcast putting set-top box functionality into Samsung smart TVs and Roku devices without charging a monthly set-top box fee "points the way forward" and proves that industry complaints about proposed FCC rules are misguided, Chairman Wheeler said. "I think that what Comcast just did is proving our point that you can take a third-party device, put set-top box functionality into it, and protect copyright, protect the economic ecosystem, not have to rebuild the network, and all these other horrible things that the industry has [claimed would happen]," Chairman Wheeler said. "That is the essence of our proposal, that you can safely move content to a third-party device."

Comcast hits back at FCC chair on box comments

Comcast criticized Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s argument that the company’s initiative to let certain customers access its Xfinity platform through Samsung smart televisions bolstered Wheeler's case for reforms to the set-top box market.

What level of competition intensity maximises investment in the wireless industry?

This paper investigates the relationship between competition and investment in the wireless industry from a dynamic perspective.

Using firm level data and instrumental variable estimation strategy, it finds that the relationship is inverted-U shaped. The investment maximising intensity of competition is reached when operators' gross profits represent 37 or 40 per cent of their revenues, depending on whether capital expenditures are normalised by the number of subscribers. This finding means that investment increases with competition as long as operators' profits are above the thresholds of 37 or 40 per cent of their revenues. Under these thresholds, there is a tradeoff between competition and investment. The paper also finds a significant long run effect of competition on investment which amplifies the short run effect by a factor of 3–4.

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