Author: Kazuya Kurihara
Graduation Year: 2007
Advisor: D. Linda Garcia, Ph.D.
Reader: Mark MacCarthy, Ph.D.
Date: 23 May 2007
Link to Thesis: Kazyua Kurihara thesis.pdf
In the past few years, the telecommunications policies in many developed countries have gone through substantial changes and modifications due to the advent of broadband technologies to support the Internet. Although most developed countries recognize the benefits of advanced Internet infrastructures, the levels of deployment differ from country to country. What accounts for the differences in the broadband diffusion rate? Although many other factors can affect the deployment outcomes of broadband technologies, a country’s industrial policies are clearly a major influence. This thesis asks: How do industrial policies serve to determine deployment outcomes of broadband?
To answer this question, the thesis employs a comparative, qualitative analysis, looking at the three cases of the United States, Japan and Germany from the period 1996 to 2006. To analyze these cases, this paper proceeds as follows: First, it generates a conceptual framework for relating government policy, industry structure, and deployment outcomes. This framework will identify the common points of reference and their relationships to one another that will guide the narrative in each of the case studies. The three subsequent chapters will examine the case of the U.S., Japan and Germany. The cases were selected because they not only provide a geographical perspective, but they also capture policy diversity. The final chapter will characterize the findings as they relate to the research questions.
This thesis addresses that a country’s industrial policies significantly affect the deployment outcomes of broadband technologies. In addition, it presents three other findings: 1) The country’s policy environment for the telecommunications industries is decidedly reflective of the country’s historical context and the pattern of its general government-industry relationships. 2) Given different tendency towards industrial policies, there will be some variance in countries’ industrial policies and financial support for broadband deployment. 3) Three country’s histories of competition policies have shown that even the same policy decisions, such as facility-sharing regulations, can generate considerably different policy outcomes, due to different industry structures and the path-dependent historical events.