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    <title>EconStor Community: International Telecommunications Society (ITS)</title>
    <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/44243</link>
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      <title>EconStor</title>
      <url>http://www.econstor.eu/retrieve/56950</url>
      <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/44243</link>
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      <title>Mobile wholesale and retail price interplay: The somewhat contrary case of South Africa in Africa</title>
      <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/72549</link>
      <description>Title: Mobile wholesale and retail price interplay: The somewhat contrary case of South Africa in Africa
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Stork, Christoph; Gillwald, Alison
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: This paper analyses the link between termination rate reductions and retail prices. It draws on in-depth case studies of South Africa, Namibia and Kenya where regulators have reduced termination rates towards the cost of an efficient operator. To varying degrees these have all led to lower retail prices and a significant market expansion. While both Namibia and Kenya, experienced significant retail price reduction following substantial termination rate reductions, the case of South Africa demonstrates that termination rate reductions are not automatically passed through to consumers. In South Africa only the second reduction in March 2012 allowed smaller operators to reduce their off-net prices to a level could tempt subscribers from dominant operators to switch. The case studies confirm that retail prices do not go up in response to termination rates going down, in CPNP (calling-party's-network-pays) markets as contended by dominant mobile operators. This is also in contrast to a body of academic literature stating that termination rates and mobile retail prices constitute a two-sided market and that termination rate reductions will lead to a so called waterbed effect. This study draws on a database of all prepaid products available in 46 African countries which were collected monthly for the period January 2011 to June 2012. The OECD price basket methodology is used to compare prices between countries and between operators. In-depth face-to-face interviews on termination rate regulations were also held with regulators in Kenya, Namibia and South Africa. The analysis is further supplemented with an analysis of audited financial statements of dominant operators in each market, namely Vodacom South Africa, MTN South Africa, Telkom South Africa, MTC2 in Namibia, and Safaricom in Kenya.</description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:58:59 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Empirical study on ICT use and business strategy for innovation among Japanese SMEs</title>
      <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/72548</link>
      <description>Title: Empirical study on ICT use and business strategy for innovation among Japanese SMEs
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Idota, Hiroki; Bunno, Teruyuki; Tsuji, Masatsugu
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: ICT is expected to play an important role for innovations in Japanese SMEs. In this paper, how ICT use promotes innovation is clarified. In addition, what kind of business strategy SMEs should follow is attempted to achieve innovation by focusing on the behavior of the top management as well as employees. A mail survey was conducted in February 2012 to innovative SMEs. An ICT advancement index is constructed based on the sales management system, groupware, internal SNS and SCM. Logistic regression analysis is applied for verifying the four hypotheses by using the ICT index. The results obtained reveals that SNEs that used ICT for new product development such as collecting customers' needs achieve more product as well as process innovation. And it is confirmed that SMEs which positively share information using ICT achieve more process innovation. And top management should demonstrate the leadership, and manage the product innovation process through top-down including the promotion of ICT use. On the other hand, not only the manager but also the employees have to act flexibly and autonomously to share information by ICT are important in the process innovation that is required to restructure existing business processes.</description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:58:59 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Seeking the Best Practices in rural agricultural informatization: Evidence from China's Sichuan Province</title>
      <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/72547</link>
      <description>Title: Seeking the Best Practices in rural agricultural informatization: Evidence from China's Sichuan Province
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Liu, Chun
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: Informatization, a policy of integrated telecommunications development, is regarded as one of the driving forces behind the Chinese government's new socialist countryside program. Various national and provincial programs have been initiated to connect the agricultural communities to the information highway. Most of the existing studies are conducted at the national level, which largely neglects the fact that China's unique central-provincial-local institutional arrangement makes the provincial/local government not only the implementers of center-initiated projects but also the initiators of informatization programs specific to their territory. This paper studies Sichuan province because its geographic and economic features make it an ideal site. Moreover, Sichuan probably has the widest variety of agricultural informatization programs among all the provinces in China because of the relief efforts after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake by various entities. It is now imperative to critically revisit those programs to find out their status and identify the factors for both their successes and failures. This paper aims to complement the existing rural informatization research in China with a comprehensive provincial/local-level analysis, using an analytical framework that evaluates the performance and sustainability of major ongoing agricultural informatization programs. This paper will identify the best practices for rural development in other countries.</description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:58:59 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Diverse paths in improving broadband availability: Deductive inference from the perspective of neo-institutional economics</title>
      <link>http://hdl.handle.net/10419/72546</link>
      <description>Title: Diverse paths in improving broadband availability: Deductive inference from the perspective of neo-institutional economics
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Authors: Mitsuyama, Nahoko; Mitomo, Hitoshi
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Abstract: This paper aims at deducing how different owner-management relations of operators lead them and a regulator to make different decisions with regard to broadband, by adopting an approach of neo-institutional economics and a model based on game theory. Out of five modes that Aoki (2010) proposes as types of corporate organization, H- and S-modes are studied in this research, which used to be typically observed in general in the United States and Japan respectively. First, it is deduced that operators in each mode makes different decisions on broadband businesses affected by the respective natures of owner-management relations. Then a model of unbundle regulation game is applied to both modes, and combinations of best strategies for each are found to be exactly the opposite: (no unbundle regulation, no additional broadband investments, no entrance) for the regulator, the incumbent and the competitor in H-mode case, while (unbundle regulations, additional investments, entrance) in S-mode. Short case studies of the United States and Japan support the model's validity temporarily, though closer investigations are required. This result indicates that the owner-management relations of operators can determine the effectiveness of unbundle regulation, and suggest that they should be taken into account when practitioners examine possible measures.</description>
      <pubDate>Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:58:59 GMT</pubDate>
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