Broadband: What do consumers want? Examining willingness-to-pay

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Recently, fourth-generation mobile networks have gained traction. Those new mobile services offer speed comparable to existing fixed broadband access. This convergence in speed of mobile and fixed broadband puts in question the need for consumers to be subscribed to two separate services for fixed and mobile access. This study investigates the willingness-to-pay for mobile broadband as well as consumers' willingness to give up speed for the flexibility of having their “regular” internet access with them. A choice experiment is designed before analyzing the results from the experiments by estimating a random utility model and using the coefficients to analyze competitive strategies in the market. The analysis of the data shows that mobile capabilities seem to matter more to consumers than additional speed.