Understanding the Impact of Policy, Regulation and Governance on Mobile Broadband Diffusion

In information and communication technologies (ICTs) have created a global environment in which citizens from more developed countries have greater access to mobile broadband Internet services. The research question posed in this study is: Do national policy initiatives, regulatory measures, or governance practices increase a nation's mobile broadband diffusion? There is little research that has analyzed the impact of these factors on bridging the mobile broadband digital divide in highly developed or developing countries. Our empirical findings show that when controlling for measures of wealth, education, and other factors, there is greater mobile broadband diffusion in countries that encourage competition in their broader telecommunications sector and practice sound regulation. In countries where open competition allows alternative ICTs to compete with each other, the presence of more expensive alternative telecommunication services also increases mobile broadband diffusion. Although theory suggests that sound regulation and sound governance should both positively affect mobile diffusion, we observe where this theory breaks down in practice. Specifically, outliers in our data set show that a few countries have achieved high levels of mobile broadband adoption even though they face significant problems with corruption in their government.