Techno-economic analysis on Mobile Network Sharing contribution to social welfare at 4G-5G area in Hungary

Abstract

Telecommunication sector faces to parallel investments into both fixed and mobile (5G) networks, however return on investments lag behind profit expectations. Co-investment, like mobile network sharing is a cost efficiency enabler that may accelerate price decrease, may allow earlier, higher coverage and may improve capacity and quality parameters, like download speed, therefore altogether contributes to social welfare increase. The purpose of this paper to assess the Hungarian mobile network sharing that not cleared by the competition regulator, however has been placed in unchanged form for 8 years. The research question is to assess what is the connection between mobile network sharing and social welfare improvement at 4G - 5G mobile broadband rollout. The finding is that, majority of network sharing procompetitive effects allowing benefits, but anticompetitive effects not causing marked distortion. Affordable connectivity prices for information society roots in operators’ cost efficiency, however further research required to assess proper level of efficiency gains pass through to customers and appropriate level of access pricing to shared infrastructure for other rival operators in Hungary. Mobile Network Sharing’s benefits may outweigh potential drawbacks, but due to lack of regulatory clearance, 5G rollout launched without sharing, causing social welfare loss. The originality of the empirical research is despite network sharing not cleared, procompetitive advantages may outweigh anticompetitive ones.