maverick
Farmwide – a lost maverick
A maverick is a disruptive operator that forces incumbents to make non-trivial changes to their business models. The disruption can be through innovation or pricing.
The previous article explained how the UK and the European Union were prepared to block a merger of two mobile operators to preserve a maverick and competition.
Australia is a smaller market with fewer operators. But, there was a potential maverick internet operator in Farmwide, which was not nurtured as it might have been.
DISCLAIMER – I want to distance myself from the headline CommsWire put to my column. Farmwide was not murdered and indeed survives today; though not as an ISP.
To read about Farmwide, click Economuse 2016-05-27
Australia – Few players and no mavericks
This column discusses the importance of disruptive or maverick operators to drive innovation and price competition in mobile and fixed networks. Two days after the attached opinion piece was published in CommsWire, the European Commission supported Ofcom’s decision to block the merger of 3UK and O2; see
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1704_en.htm
The opinion piece below also discusses the lack of competition in Australian mobile and fixed broadband markets. Ofcom’s research suggests that mobile prices may up to 20% higher than they could be in Australia.
For more, see Economuse 2016-05-09