The Softwarization of Regulated Network Industries and Its Consequences for Costs and Competition

Advances in data and digitalisation create substantial opportunities for cost savings and enhanced competition in many network industries subject to regulation. By softwarization to mean innovations which reduce the need for hardware assets; these can be not only code, but the use of any smart asset, algorithm or economic tool across the whole value chain. The scale of the potential effect on costs of softwarization is linked to the weight of digitizable activities in the typically ‘fused’ d