Here is a selection of the Digital economy reports published in December 2014. Enjoy the reading!
DIGITAL ECONOMY & BROADBAND
The Boston Consulting Group releases a new report on the contribution of the mobile Internet sector to the economy. This sector generates annual revenues of €92 billion and a consumer benefit, or surplus, of about €770 billion in the countries of the EU5—Germany, France, the UK, Italy, and Spain. The mobile Internet has created 250,000 jobs in these five countries. It also explains the main trends for the future.
The report, commissioned by GSMA to Frontier Economics, analyses how the mergers could impact positively the users by lowering prices, enhancing quality of services and increasing the coverage of mobile networks. It also issues recommendations on the remedies that should be applied in mergers cases.
This highly debated report is an analytical study from the European Parliament at the request of the IMCO (Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee). It is a complete background on the debate over network neutrality, including technological, economic, and public policy aspects, but also the implications for European public policy.
As Broadband is considered key to inclusive growth, this report gathers a wide perspective on the broadband public policies applied to access to broadband in Latin America. Its aim is to provide useful information and benchmark data for those countries working on access to Broadband plans.
INTERNET
The Akamai State of the Internet Report, Akamai, December 2014.
The well-known Akamai report gives us a good overview on the main data concerning Internet use worldwide, including the level of readiness of countries for streaming 4K video, mobile connection speeds and broadband adoption rates, and also levels of IPv6 adoption.
Very broad analysis of the use of Internet in America through a large survey covering 5 subject areas such as users online, media use & trust, consumer behavior, communication pattern, social effects.
WebIndex report 2014-15, World Wide Web Foundation, December 2014.
Short but fruitful report (15 pages) showing what Internet could bring to societies nowadays. Inequality in different areas exist and with an adequate public policy plan, these inequalities could decrease.
INDICATORS
The International Communications Market Report, OFCOM, December 2014.
As issued every year, the UK regulator issues its report where it compares UK data with other countries on the progress made on communications and on digital markets. It is published alongside with the “European Broadband Scorecard”.
PERSONAL DATA POLICY
This report contributes to bridging the gap between the legal framework and the available technolog-ical implementation measures by providing an inventory of existing approaches, privacy design strat-egies, and technical building blocks of various degrees of maturity from research and development. Starting from the privacy principles of the legislation, important elements are presented as a first step towards a design process for privacy-friendly systems and services.
Thousands of experts to ask them to predict the future of privacy in America and found they were divided on whether or not a secure, trusted privacy-rights infrastructure would be in place by 2025.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Leveraging Entrepreneurial Ambition and Innovation: A Global Perspective on Entrepreneurship, Competitiveness and Development, WEF, December 2014.
This report studies the relationship between entrepreneurship and combining two data sets: the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index data, which ranks the economic competiveness of 144 economies and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s assessment of entrepreneurial activity across 70 economies.
It also highlights the factors that should be taken by policymakers and governments (the type of entrepreneurial economy in which entrepreneurship policy is being conducted, the specific entrepreneurial outcome to be achieved and the levers available to achieve a specific outcome).
The report analyses the entrepreneurs and their businesses in nine Latin American countries, with the objective of determining the relevant characteristics that define the different types of Latin American entrepreneurs. It adopts a sociologic and psychological perspective.
