Managing Real Options in Television Broadcasting

Book Review
Laurent BENZONI and Patrice GEFFRON (Eds)
A collection of Essays on Competition and Regulation with Asymetries
in Mobile Markets
Ed. Quantifica, Paris, 2007, 145 pages
by Edmond BARANES
This is a work that brings together several recent economic examinations of
the mechanisms and consequences of the exogenous "asymmetries"
between operators competing in mobile markets. Providing an international
perspective, the book includes contributions from academics and regulatory
authority representatives, offering up their views on the impact on
competition of positive externalities (network and "club" effects) and on the
leverage obtained by differentiated interconnection tariffs in situations of
competition between operators of different sizes.
The conclusions deliver a reminder of the necessity of facilities-based
competition sustained by numerous, independent operators, and the virtues
of and need for the adoption of a careful and nuanced approach to
asymmetrical regulatory measures – governing the establishment of
asymmetrical call termination tariffs according to the markets’ structural
balance being one area open to immediate application.
COMMUNICATIONS & STRATEGIES, no. 67, 3rd quarter 2007, p. 195.
196
No. 67, 3rd Q. 2007
Summaries
Olivier BOMSEL
Gratuit !
Du déploiement de l'économie numérique
Ed. Gallimard, Coll. Folio actuel, 2007, 305 pages
Never before has "free" been so ubiquitous, so prized and so hotly disputed
as in the digital age. This singular historical and economic phenomenon is
often associated with the ongoing decline in data processing and transport
costs but, more than anything, it derives from "network effects": thanks to the
extended arena of application of binary coding, the usefulness of digital
innovations (internet, search engines, mobile phones, electronic payment
systems, TV, etc.) increases with the growth of the user population. As a
result, a critical mass of users needs to be conquered as quickly as possible,
through carefully chosen subsidies and creators of irreversibility. Result? A
shift in the source of financing but also of the guaranteed income, the
conflicts of interest. Users are no longer being offered things cheaper, as in
back in the days of Fordism and price-driven competition, but rather for free,
the deployment catalyst, thanks to which monopolies emerge, enabling the
dominance of Microsoft, the success of Google, the spread of mobile
telephony, of peer-to-peer networks…
A powerful economic weapon, free is no longer collective subversion, but
rather a private tool serving corporations. Its mechanisms are increasingly
subtle, more violent, more questionable than the promises surrounding
them. In whose interest is it to give? How do the shifts operate? To what
end, to whose benefit, in search of what impact?
Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Informatique et Droit
Ed. Bruylant, Bruxelles
No. 28, Alexandre CRUQUENAIRE (Ed.), La protection des marques sur
Internet, 2007, 164 pages
No. 29, Etienne MONTERO & Dominique MOUGENOT (Eds), Phenix – Les
tribunaux à l'ère électronique, actes du colloque du 8 février 2007, 249
pages
No. 30, Maris DEMOULIN (Ed.), Les pratiques du commerce électronique,
2007, 191 pages