Call for Papers

What next for European telecommunications?

The next ITS conference aims to address issues that are highly relevant to Europe’s dynamic telecommunications market. One debate that has emerged within the European Union (EU) focuses on the structure and regulation of its telecommunications sector. The fragmented nature of the market, with 28 national markets and regulators, is preventing the emergence of the sort of telecommunications industry that the EU needs if it is to prosper in today’s global information based economy.

Operators lack the scale economies necessary to fund their investments in infrastructure or to develop new services and products. The national nature of markets complicates the regulatory process, and prevents the emergence of EU wide operators. But what should happen next? Should, for instance, the EU encourage through whatever measures necessary a single market in telecommunications? In such a single market, a new institution will have to be empowered to take over the role of national regulatory authorities at the European level. Consolidation, primarily in mobile but perhaps also in fixed, could result in larger operators able to fund the necessary investment. Though as operators consolidate, the long-standing mantra of the more operators the better, would be cast aside, requiring the emergence of a new form of regulatory intervention in telecommunication markets.

It is also unclear whether the creation of a single market would result in increased investment by operators. Arguably, there could be less infrastructure investment, at least in the short term, as operators acquire one another across Europe. This would delay the infrastructure investment sought, prolonging the digital divides that exist across the EU. Nor, for that matter, is it clear how the creation of a single market would encourage innovation in new services and products. Across the EU many national online markets are dominated by European versions of American websites, while a range of foreign manufacturers now dominate the handset market. And not only are OTT providers like Netflix having a disruptive impact on European content markets, but they are also highlighting the value of content over infrastructure that places further challenges on Europe’s telecommunications operators.

These and other topics will be addressed with at the 26th European Regional Conference in San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Papers and panel sessions in the following areas are called for:

Regulation – its implementation, form and future development
The impact of regulation on operator strategy and investment
Operator strategies – consolidation, investment and innovation
The contribution of telecommunications to economic growth and development
The impact of OTT, its regulation and future development
Convergence – technological, economic and regulatory
The interaction between content and telecommunication markets – development, bundling and convergence
Broadband – spectrum and mobile broadband, funding and forms of infrastructure investment
The development and socio-economic impact of mobile applications
Mobile markets – national roaming, convergence with fixed, the challenges of mature markets
Overcoming digital divides – infrastructure, services and applications
The provision of telecommunication services to marginalised communities
Innovative business models
Demand, consumers, consumer protection and privacy
Innovative new services – e-health, m-health, e-education etc.
Online markets – the value of personal and location data, children as online actors,
Big data – tools and techniques of collecting and analysing large datasets, socio-economic consequences of big data
Net neutrality – debates, challenges and future
Internet governance and the control of content and customers

Submissions on other topics are also welcomed.

Authors of selected papers from the conference will be invited to submit to special issues of Telecommunications Policy as well as other international peer-reviewed academic journals.

Important dates:

10 February 2015: Deadline for abstracts and panel session suggestions
12 March 2015: Notification of acceptance
10 June 2015: Deadline for final papers and panel session outlines
24-27 June 2015: ITS 2015 Regional Conference in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain

Submission of abstracts:
Abstracts should be about 2 pages (800 to 1000 words) in length and contain the following information:

Title of the contribution
A clear statement of the research question
Remarks on methodology adopted in the paper
Outline of (expected) results
Bibliographical notes (up to 6 main references used in the paper)

All abstracts will be subject to blind peer review.

On-line submission:
ITS 2015 Spain is using the Easychair online submission System.

To submit an abstract through Easychair, please use the following link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=its2015spain

Alternatively, the submission webpage can be accessed via our conference website at: Submission

If you do not have an account with Easychair, you must set one up.
If you have used Easychair as an author or reviewer for a previous conference, you can reuse your existing password and account.

Please ensure that your abstract is anonymous. You will be invited to provide your personal information in a different section.

If you have questions please contact
its2015spain@easychair.org.

ITS:

Brigitte PREISSL, German National Library of Economics, Hamburg, Germany
Jason WHALLEY, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

CfP as pdf