Impact of bundling of ICT services on regulation

Abstract

PurposeOperators are launching bundles of services to retain customers and improve ARPU but regulators and competition authorities need to ensure fair competition. The objectives of this article are to present the reasonability of ex‐ante and ex‐post intervention and the methodologies and imputation test that might be considered by national regulatory agencies (NRAs) and national competition authorities (NCAs) to guarantee effective competition.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology from a regulatory standpoint consists of analyzing the impact that margin squeeze might have on the level of competition. It is based on estimating how costs and retail prices will evolve over time. The methodology aims to predict how margins will evolve taking into consideration the number of subscribers and network costs.FindingsThe increasing number of convergent offers, the roll out of new technologies that allows the commercialization of new services and applications and the transformation in the access network means that the methodology used by the NRAs/NCAs to analyze the offers of vertically integrated operators should be revised.Originality/valueThe paper highlights the need for a new methodology to assess anti‐competitive behavior arising from bundling and identifies factors that should be taken into account.