Consumer outcomes and price differentiation in UK telecoms

There has been growing attention in UK telecoms to the issue of fairness. In particular, there has been concern regarding 'loyalty penalties' (that is, a reversion to standard prices when initial discounts expire).

This paper by Robert Kenny & Brian Williamson argues that consumer outcomes in UK telecoms have been very positive. Further, price differentiation (and initial discounts in particular) are an absolutely standard feature of many markets. In telecoms initial discounts have great value since they both enhance competition (by acting as a negative switching cost) and encourage adoption.

Highlights of the paper are available as a presentation.

Global Patterns of Broadband Pricing

Over a number of years, Communications Chambers has prepared data sets of fixed and mobile broadband pricing around the world. (The most recent iteration is available here).

In this paper, we analyse the data we collected, looking at a range of issues including:

• How prices vary with GDP per capita
• The dynamism of different markets, based on the rate of change of tariffs
• How the unit cost of mobile data varies with data allowance, and how the marginal cost of fixed bandwidth varies
• The global distribution of fixed broadband line speed offered

Google International Broadband Pricing Study

Google have published our analysis on international fixed and mobile broadband prices.

The dataset (the fourth iteration we have prepared for Google) includes over 5,000 fixed and mobile broadband tariffs, from over 100 countries. 

You can access the datasets here.