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Welfare Analysis of Regulating Mobile Termination Rates in the UK with an Application to the Orange/T-Mobile Merger

2012; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.2176134

1556-5068

Merger and Competition Analysis

We present a calibrated model of the UK mobile telephony market with four mobile networks; calls to and from the fixed network; network-based price discrimination; and call externalities. Our results show that reducing mobile termination rates broadly in line with the recent European Commission Recommendation to either pure long-run incremental cost; reciprocal termination charges with fixed networks; or & (i.e. zero termination rates), increases social welfare, consumer surplus and networks' profits. Depending on the strength of call externalities, social welfare may increase by as much as £ 990 million to £ 4.5 billion per year, with Bill & Keep leading to the highest increase in welfare. We also apply the model to estimate the welfare effects of the 2010 merger between Orange and T-Mobile under different scenarios concerning MTRs, and predict that consumer surplus decreases strongly.