Investitionstätigkeiten zwischen sektorspezifischer und staatlicher Regulierung am Beispiel des Ausbaus neuer Telekommunikationsnetze

Fiber-deployment of next generation access (NGA) networks is currently a large challenge for both, sector-specific regulators as well as national governments. Although the future socio-economic importance of new (“second generation”) telecommunications networks is likely to be uncontroversial, the related investment activities have taken place only to a small extent to date. Accordingly, under current conditions a nationwide coverage appears to be a rather unrealistic idea. This work intends to identify the most important factors of previous NGA investment activities and discusses the underlying institutional European framework for electronic communications markets. The discussion covers sector-specific ex ante regulation as well as the role of public subsidies. Our work also incorporates a case study of 27 EU countries with latest data on potentially relevant competition and regulatory indicators. Our case study employs simple correlation analysis and is complemented by a descriptive intercontinental cross-comparison in terms of public funding. The results show that the latter seems to have had the strongest impact on NGA deployment, especially, for countries with long-established (“first generation”) copper-wire infrastructure. In contrast, previous sector-specific regulation has turned out to be of secondary relevance so far. Although the results are preliminary due to limited data availability, they appear to be of central importance for the future design of sector-specific regulation as well as public policy.