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Kingdom of Nokia tells a fascinating story of corporatism in Finland. How did the mobile phone giant Nokia make the Finnish elite willing to serve the interests of the company? Nokia became a global player in mobile communications in the 1990s, and helped establish Anglo-Saxon capitalism in Finland. Through its success and strong lobbying, the company managed to capture the attention of Finnish politicians, civil servants, and journalists nationwide. With concrete detailed examples, Kingdom of Nokia illustrates how Nokia organised lavishing trips to journalists and paid direct campaign funding to politicians to establish its role at the core of Finnish decision-making. As a result, the company influenced important political decisions such as joining the European Union and adopting the euro, and further, Nokia even drafted its own law to serve its special interests. All this in a country considered one of the least corrupt in the world. Carl-Gustav Lindén is an Associate Professor of Data Journalism at the University of Bergen and Associate Professor (Docent) at the University of Helsinki. Lindén’s background is in journalism, and he was a business journalist working for newspapers, magazines, and television until 2012, when he turned to academia. Vertaisarvioitu peerReviewed

Der Telekommunikationsmarkt hat sich zu einem äußerst dynamischen, innovationsund technologiegetriebenen Markt entwickelt. Die Lebenszyklen der Telekommunikationstechnik sind heute vergleichsweise kurz, die Technik entwickelt sich zunehmend in Sprüngen weiter. Der Ende der 90er Jahre eingeführte Regulierungsrahmen zielte auf Privatisierung, Marktöffnung und Schaffung von Wettbewerb ab und löste das alte Monopolregime ab. Mit rapide zunehmendem Bandbreitenbedarf, der Konvergenz verschiedener digitaler Kommunikationstechnologien und der zunehmenden wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung des Internets stellt sich die Frage, wie sich die Telekommunikationsmärkte in der Zukunft entwickeln werden und welche Rolle die Regulierung in diesem Prozess spielen sollte. Stark wachsende Datenverkehre, neue Dienste und Plattformen stellen hohe Anforderungen an den Ausbau der Breitbandinfrastruktur. Das regulatorische Umfeld muss diesem dynamischen Charakter des Wettbewerbs in technologie- und innovationsgetriebenen Märkten mit ausreichender Flexibilität Rechnung tragen. Digitale Plattformen, die die typischen Kennzeichen zweiseitiger Märkte aufweisen, prägen die moderne Internetökonomie. Konvergenz erfordert, dass das Marktverständnis erweitert und die gesamte digitale Wertschöpfungskette umfassen sollte. In einem schwierigen wirtschaftlichen Umfeld müssen Anreize für Investitionen geschaffen werden, die den Ausbau der Breitbandinfrastruktur vorantreiben. Telecommunication markets have evolved into extremely dynamic, innovative and technology-driven markets. Modern telecommunications technologies and products are characterized by short life cycles, as the advancement of these technologies continues in leaps and bounds. The regulatory framework introduced at the end of the 1990s aimed at privatization as well as the creation of open markets and competition replacing former monopoly structures. With rapidly increasing bandwidth requirements, the convergence of diverse digital communications technologies and growing commercial significance of the Internet, the question arises how telecommunications markets of the future will develop and what role regulation ought to have in this process. Strong growth in data traffic as well as new services and platforms induce the need for the expansion of broadband infrastructures. The dynamic nature of competition in innovative and technology-driven markets has to be reflected by an intelligent and flexible regulatory environment. Digital platforms with the characteristics of two-sided markets shape today's Internet economy. Convergence calls for a better understanding of market structures that should comprise the entire digital value chain. In a challenging economic environment, it is imperative to create incentives for investment that will foster the expansion of broadband infrastructures.

Am Beispiel der IKT-Wirtschaft zeigt sich, dass junge Unternehmen stärker als etablierte dazu neigen, bei ihren Produkt- und Verfahrensinnovationen auch neue IKT-Lösungen zu entwickeln und anzuwenden. Start-ups der IKT-Wirtschaft spielen damit nicht nur eine wichtige Rolle für die technologische Entwicklung innerhalb ihrer eigenen Branche. Da es sich bei der IKT um eine Querschnittstechnologie handelt, trägt sie vielmehr mit ihren Innovationen auch wesentlich zur gesamtwirtschaftlichen Technologieentwicklung bei.

Las telecomunicaciones se basan firmemente en un conjunto de teoremas fundamentales. Teorema de Fourier, que permite tratar cualquier forma de onda como si fuese una sumatoria de ondas senos y cosenos. Teorema de muestreo de Nyquist, mediante el cual un único canal puede llevar más de una señal. Teorema de Shannon, con el que se relaciona el ruido de un canal y su ancho de banda con la máxima capacidad teórica del canal empleado. A partir de los toremas nombrados y del conocimiento de los parámetros básicos de las señales: amplitud, frecuencia y fase se tiene acceso a todo el edificio de las comunicaciones digitales modernas. El presente trabajo se desarrolla mediante el uso de gráficos y representaciones de las formas de onda en función del tiempo y del espectro de las señales en función de la frecuencia, lo que facilita la comprensión de los conceptos tratados. Se hace especial mención a un tema que suele ser motivo de confusión como ser las velocidades de propagación y de transmisión y la relación entre frecuencia y longitud de onda. Se busca así un firme entendimiento de conceptos tales como el ancho de banda, los filtros y el armado de tramas.

Die Einführung neuer Endkundentarife für den festen Internetzugang durch die Deutsche Telekom hat die Netzneutralitätsdebatte erneut befeuert. Dabei geht es um die Frage, ob Endkundenanbieter bei der Übertragung von Daten im Internet bestimmte Dienste oder Inhalte gegen ein vom Sender oder Empfänger zu zahlendes Entgelt priorisieren dürfen. Sowohl auf nationaler als auch auf europäischer Ebene wurden Verordnungsentwürfe vorgelegt, die ein offenes Internet sicherstellen sollen. Dieser Beitrag untersucht zum einen, inwieweit Internetvolumentarife wie die der Deutschen Telekom tatsächlich Netzneutralitätsfragen aufwerfen. Zum anderen wird der nationale Entwurf einer Netzneutralitätsverordnung ebenso wie die entsprechenden Regelungen im Verordnungsentwurf der Europäischen Kommission einer ersten kritischen Würdigung unterzogen. The net neutrality debate concerns the differential treatment of data on the Internet and the pricing models used by enduser internet service providers (IPSs). In particular, end-user ISPs may want to prioritize certain services and charge on the sender or the receiver side for this activity. In the policy debate it is asked whether regulatory intervention is warranted to restrict such behavior. The introduction of new end-user tariffs for fi xed-line Internet access by Deutsche Telekom has heated up the debate in Germany. At the national level, the German Ministry of Economics and Technology has prepared a draft regulation on net neutrality, which aims at limiting the differential treatment of data transmission on the internet including the access networks and, thus, to protect the 'Open Internet'. The European Commission has prepared an alternative draft regulation for a single European market in telecommunications, which contains provisions for an 'Open Internet'. In this article, the authors investigate the extent to which the new tariff structure by Deutsche Telekom relates to the net neutrality debate. They also provide a fi rst critical analysis of the proposals by the German Ministry of Economics and Technology and the European Commission.

This paper takes advantage of a quasi-natural experiment in Peru by which the privatized telecommunications company was required by government to randomly install and operate public pay phones in small rural towns throughout the national territory. Using a specially designed household survey for a representative sample of rural towns, it is possible to link access to telephone services with household income. It was found that, regardless of the income measurement, most characteristics of public telephone usage are positively linked with income. Remarkably, the benefits occur at both non-farm and farm income levels. Not only do the findings hold when using instrumental variables, but they are also further confirmed when using propensity scores matching methods.

This paper fills a void in the issue of determinants of privatization prices by concentrating in one industry across many countries. This has not been done before, as the literature has only focused on (i) many industries in one country, (ii) a single industry in one country, and (iii) many industries in many countries. We complement a recently released database with newly collected data, and we are able to cover 84 telecommunications privatizations, which account for nearly 80 percent of the sector in terms of value. Our findings are consistent with the little existing work on privatization prices, as our best policy prescription is primarily to concentrate on the transparency and cleanliness of the privatization process, as sale methods do matter. We show that government administration of labor downsizing may result in adverse selection, as the best workers are the first to leave when given the opportunity.

We value rating-triggered step-up bonds with three methods: (i) the Jarrow, Lando andTurnbull (1997, JLT) framework, (ii) a similar framework using historical probabilities and(iii) as plain vanilla bonds. We find that the market seems to value single step-up bondsaccording to the JLT model, while it values multiple step-up bonds as plain vanilla bonds.Further, step-up feature market premiums are more volatile than JLT and historical premiums,and the JLT model approximates market premiums always better than the historical method.Finally, most step-up bonds offer a cushion against rating migrations via dampened pricemovements.

Should state-owned enterprises change chief executive officer before privatizing? We test competing views on this question by complementing a recently released database with newly collected data. We are able to cover 77 telecommunications privatizations, which account for nearly 80 percent of the sector in terms of value. We find that CEO replacement will improve performance in the telecommunications industry before privatization as measured by penetration, operating efficiency, and profitability. CEO change before privatization does appear to have real consequences in firm performance before privatization. Moreover, findings are consistent with previous research that links CEO replacement and an increase in privatization prices

This research examines the effects of privatization transaction strategy on enterprise performance in developing economies. Focusing on trade sale privatization, we use an event-driven data strategy and time-series regression techniques on data covering fixed-line telecommunications operators between 1980 and 1998. The results show performance benefits are realized when privatization trade sales introduce large-block foreign shareholdings and hybrid forms of governance, such as joint ventures or consortia. These hybrid governance structures capture more complex ownership effects during privatization restructuring, particularly when compared with the dispersed shareholdings of share issue privatization, which show no discernable effect on performance. We argue traditional financial models are too focused on large-scale market-driven mechanisms at the expense of institution-building mechanisms, and as such fail to capture important contributors to performance improvement. We advance a comparative institutional lens to better understand how "firms effects" matter for privatization restructuring and performance.

This paper examines the financial and operating performance of 31 national telecommunication companies in 25 countries that were fully or partially privatised through public share offering between October 1981 and November 1998. Using conventional pre- versus post-privatisation comparisons, we find that profitability, output, operating efficiency and capital investment spending increase significantly after privatisation, while employment and leverage decline significantly. However, these univariate comparisons do not account for separate regulatory and ownership effects (retained government stake), and almost all telecoms are subjected to material new regulatory regimes around the time they are privatised. We examine these separate effects using both random and fixed-effect panel data estimation techniques for a seven-year period around privatisation. We verify that privatisation is significantly related to higher profitability, output and efficiency, and with significant declines in leverage. However, we also find numerous separable effects for variables measuring regulation, competition, retained government ownership and foreign listing (on U.S. and U.K. exchanges). Competition significantly reduces profitability, employment and, surprisingly, efficiency after privatisation, while creation of an independent regulatory agency significantly increases output. Mandating third party access to an incumbent's network is associated with a significant decrease in the incumbent's investment and an increase in employment. Retained government ownership is associated with a significant increase in leverage and a significant decrease in employment, while price regulation significantly increases profitability. Major efficiency gains result from better incentives and productivity, rather than from wholesale firing of employees and profitability increases appear to be caused by significant reductions in costs—rather than price increases. On balance, we conclude that the financial and operating performance of telecommunications companies improves significantly after privatisation, but that a sizeable fraction of the observed improvement results from regulatory changes—alone or in combination with ownership changes—rather than from privatisation alone.

In 1997, France Télécom, the French telecommunications firm, went through a partial privatization. The government offered current and prior France Télécom employees the opportunity to buy portfolios of shares with various combinations of discounts, required holding periods, and levels of downside protection. We adapt a neoclassical model of investment decision-making that takes into account firm-specific human capital and holding period restrictions to predict how employees might respond to the share offers. Using a new database that tracks over 200,000 eligible participants, we analyse the employees' characteristics and their decisions regarding (a) whether to participate; (b) how much to invest; and (c) what form of stock alternatives they selected. The results are broadly consistent with the neoclassical model. However, the amount of funds invested in the stock plans seems driven by a different set of forces than the decision to participate. While former employees and retirees are less likely to participate in the offering, they tend to invest more than others conditional on participating. We suspect that this phenomenon reflects a 'threshold effect', which we attempt to measure. Employees forewent benefits equal to one to two months' salary by failing to participate. Finally, we find that the characteristics of the average chosen portfolios are broadly consistent with theoretical predictions from our neoclassical model, but almost all potential participants underweighted the most valuable asset, a decision hard to reconcile with rational portfolio choice.

Im vorliegenden Beitrag soll das Regulierungsrisiko für den Unternehmenswert der Telekom AG inhaltlich begründet und näherungsweise quantifiziert werden. Die Quantifizierung des Risikos wird mit Hilfe des Shareholder-Value-Ansatzes vorgenommen, indem ein unmittelbarer Zusammenhang zwischen dem freien Cash Flow der Telekom AG und unterschiedlichen Regulierungsszenarien hergestellt wird. Die Wettbewerbsintensität und die von der Regulierung gesetzten Anreize stellen aus Sicht der Telekom AG eine mögliche Gefährdung ihrer Marktposition dar; je mehr Spielräume der Wettbewerb erhält und je geringer die interne Effizienz ist, desto niedriger wird der Wert des ehemaligen Monopolisten sein.