Theo Dunnewijk

A brief history of mobile communication in Europe

Since the introduction of mobile telephony in the early 1950s in Europe, US and Japan the demand for this service exploded. It seems that the latent demand for mobile telecommunication services for decades continued to be very strong. After the introduction of cellular technology the capacity of the services became able to meet the massive demand. Next and future generations of mobile telecommunication technologies bring increased transmission speed and more versatile services. This forces network operators to organise multi sourced information flows supplied by service providers to increase the network effect of the system instead of providing the network infrastructure and leave the content to the users as in pure voice telephony. The drivers and inhibitors behind the emergence and recent developments of mobile telecommunications systems in Europe, are highlighted in this paper. Liberalisation of the telecom markets in Europe drove new entrants to the market and curbed excessive pricing. However, in recent years the lack of challenging service is the main cause for the wavering development of newer generations of mobile telecommunication services.

Empirical Analysis of the Competitive Trade Position

This chapter describes the current state and trends of the internationalisation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) activities in EU25 from a quantitative point of view. In this chapter, internationalisation is defined simply as the quantity of international trade among nations. The focus is on European Union (EU) member states and other countries such as, Korea, Japan, and the US. The aim of this chapter is to reveal the possible drivers behind the trade in ICT goods and services. Although trade with countries such as China and India is taken into account, an explanation of these developments through an investigation of underlying forces is not possible due to severe data limitations. For instance, information on labour productivity and R&D investment per sector are often not available for many non-OECD countries, let alone for a time series analysis. The latter is necessary to depict the dynamics of trade in ICT goods and services.

Governance Forces Shaping Economic Development in a Regional Information Society: A Framework and Application to Flanders

The ‘knowledge economy’ is a concept commonly deemed too ambiguous and elusive to hold any significance in current economic debate. This valuable book seeks to refute that myth. Presenting an important collection of views, from a number of leading scholars, this innovative volume visibly demonstrates that knowledge and information are a prime resource in driving the dynamics of an economy.