New empirical approaches to telecommunications economics: opportunities and challenges

Since the last decades of the 20th century, technological changes have been widely observed in the semiconductors and software sectors. The innovations of the electronic computing and user-friendly programs have revolutionised how firms and individuals carried out their daily business. In the early years of the new century, however, the informational industrial revolution is undergoing a second coming (von Tunzelmann, 2003). The massive spread of cheap and mobile always broadband-connected devices that allow for distributed content creation is transforming the social roles and relations traditionally associated with the informational industrial revolution paradigm.