Enhancing Broadband Penetration in a Competitive Market

In spite of the exponential growth of IP traffic, broadband market is suffering from a stagnation which limits Internet penetration and discourages investors/operators from deploying access infrastructures in sparsely populated areas because of low (or negative) rate of return and unsustainable operation costs. Although perfect competition is not a suitable model to describe Internet access market, the economic equilibrium between supply and demand curves in a competitive market can be used to discuss the issues of Internet penetration and infrastructure sustainability and to envisage new business models that could be applied to enhance them. This is the purpose of this paper.