Two essays on the telecommunication convergence

Abstract

The competitive dynamics of the next-generation information & communications technology (ICT) market will be inevitably changed from boundary competition in segmented markets to borderless competition in a converged market. This paradigm shift is already pervasive in global ICT and traditional markets, expanding into areas of the broadcasting and healthcare industry sectors. The telecommunication industry is also now facing the trend of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), which is effectively blurring the boundaries between the fixed-line and mobile industries. telecom-broadcasting convergence (TBC) blurs the boundaries between the telecom (fixed and mobile) and broadcasting industry. Most recently, the hitherto separated telecommunication and conventional industries, such as healthcare and finance/bank, are converging and creating new business domains; this emerging phenomenon is defined as heterogeneous inter-industry convergence (HIC). Although these convergence phenomenon originates from various factors such as technological development, deregulation, competition and customer demand, this dissertation investigate this issue from the perspective of end user and stock market participants. The first essay develops the online elderly user``s adoption model of video UCC that are one of the representative emerging services in ICT sector. Video user-created-content (video UCC) is being spotlighted by business practitioners and researchers. However, relatively little consideration is being made on elderly people``s adoption of this innovative service, although they have been using the basic Internet services. This paper highlights this issue of elderly people who has used Internet services and discovers the factors affecting their participation decisions in video UCC services. To do this, this paper introduces elderly-specific constructs such as perceived physical condition (physical age), life course events (psycho-social age), perceived user resources, prior...