Response to reviewersDear editor, dear reviewer, Thank you to take the interest in reviewing this paper for the second time. Again, we appreciate the comments and suggestions, and adjusted the paper accordingly, so that it becomes more clear and better underpinned. Our response to the comments and the changes in the paper are indicated below. We focused in our responses first on the general comments. A short reaction to the more detailed comments follows afterwards.The authors made great strides in revising the manuscript. There are three primary concerns and several specific questions that need to be addressed before this piece could be considered publication worthy. First comment:The first concern is the need for specific citations to back up the assertions made by the authors. Citations should be added to Table 3 or noted that this is the authors' creation if this is the case. Several blanket statements are also made throughout the piece without referencing the relevant literature. For example, on pg. 10 the authors state: "They however did not assign the right benefits to the right actors, but only calculated an overall economic benefit." What are the right benefits? Who are the right actors? How is this grounded in the literature? Some instances where clarification is needed are listed in the specific comments below, but it is recommended the authors go through the text and add citations to the piece where necessary, above and beyond those instances mentioned below. Ghent and Eindhoven (FOD Financiën, 2013;Belastingsdienst, 2013) Second comment (a):A second area of concern is the discussion and conclusion. The authors present case study evidence about the value of their bottom-up approach for computing indirect benefits. Are these indirect benefits likely to be the same in other places? Ghent and Eindhoven are relatively small cities with a specific economic and cultural context. Isn't it likely that the magnitude of indirect benefits will vary by region, as demonstrated in recent broadband work by Mack et al., 2011 andMack and Rey, 2013, as well as classics such as Forman et al., 2005a? Another item that merits more thorough treatment is the industry specific nature of this impact. Looking at e-business across all companies does not deal explicitly with the potential for industry specific variation in indirect benefits related to the importance of agglomerative forces and industry specific business processes. Prior work by Forman et al. (2003Forman et al. ( , 2005b finds industry specific variation in dial-up adoption by firms, and this is likely the case for broadband and the indirect impacts associated with e-business. The authors mentioned this in the introduction of the original manuscript and should include it in a more thorough discussion of future work. Second comment (b):Finally, what is the impact of the assumptions of the values chosen for the innovation and imitation coefficients of the Bass Curve? Does increasing or decreasing these values change the results or are they relatively robust? A...

With the penetration of smart grid into factories, energyefficient production scheduling has been emerged. It shifts flexible production loads to lower-priced periods to reduce energy cost for the same production task. However, the existing methods only focus on integrating energy awareness to conventional production scheduling models. They ignore the labor cost which is shift-based and follows an opposite trend of energy cost. For instance, the energy cost is lower during nights while the labor cost is higher. Therefore, this paper proposes a method for energy-efficient and labor-aware production scheduling at the unit process level. This integrated scheduling model is mathematically formulated. Besides the state-based energy model and genetic algorithm-based optimization, a continuous-time shift accumulation heuristic is proposed to synchronize power states and labor shifts. In a case study of a Belgian plastic bottle manufacturer, a set of empirical sensitivity analyses were performed to investigate the impact of energy and labor awareness, as well as the production-related factors that influence the economic performance of a schedule. Furthermore, the demonstration was performed in 9 large-scale test instances, which encompass the cases where energy cost is minor, medium, and major compared to the joint energy and labor cost. The results have proven that the ignorance of labor in existing energy-efficient production scheduling studies increases the joint energy and labor cost, although the energy cost can be minimized. To achieve effective production cost reduction, energy and labor awareness are recommended to be jointly considered in production scheduling. 1Integrating labor awareness to energy-efficient production scheduling under real-time electricity pricing: an empirical study AbstractWith the penetration of smart grid into factories, energy-efficient production scheduling has been emerged. It shifts flexible production loads to lower-priced periods to reduce energy cost for the same production task. However, the existing methods only focus on integrating energy awareness to conventional production scheduling models. They ignore the labor cost which is shift-based and follows an opposite trend of energy cost. For instance, the energy cost is lower during nights while the labor cost is higher. Therefore, this paper proposes a method for energy-efficient and laboraware production scheduling at the unit process level. This integrated scheduling model is mathematically formulated. Besides the state-based energy model and genetic algorithm-based optimization, a continuous-time shift accumulation heuristic is proposed to synchronize power states and labor shifts. In a case study of a Belgian plastic bottle manufacturer, a set of empirical sensitivity analyses were performed to investigate the impact of energy and labor awareness, as well as the production-related factors that influence the economic performance of a schedule. Furthermore, the demonstration was performed in 9 large-scale test instan...

Abstract-Upgrading telecommunications access networks requires large investments in deploying new optical infrastructure, especially in terms of construction works and costs to reach the end-user, which seem only affordable in densely populated areas. By evaluating a cost-benefit analysis for the deployment of a Point-to-Point dark fiber infrastructure, this paper investigates how the economic risk of dark fiber deployment can be estimated and/or reduced in different settings. By applying the model on specific scenarios, which differ in area type, demand uptake and revenue scheme, it is concluded that the business case is only viable in a dense urban area with an aggressive takeup. In the other scenarios, the paper investigates possibilities and opportunities to improve the business case and hence decrease the investment risk. Examples of this improvement include prolonging the planning horizon, ensuring revenue from the start of the project by performing demand aggregation or examining where public funds might help.

Bridging the broadband digital divide between urban and rural areas in Europe is one of the main targets stated in the Digital Agenda for Europe. Though many solutions are proposed in literature, satellite communication has been identified as the only possible solution for remote rural areas, due to its global coverage. However, deploying an end-to-end satellite solution might be in some cases not cost-effective. In this paper, we propose a converged solution that combines satellite communication as a backhaul network with 4G as a fronthaul network to bring enhanced broadband connectivity to European rural areas. Therefore, a techno-economic model is proposed to analyze the viability of this integration. The model is based on a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model for 5 years, taking into account both the capital and the operational expenditures, designed for converged networks. This model aims to calculate the TCO as well as the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for the studied scenarios. We evaluate the suggested model by simulating a hypothetical use case for two scenarios. The first scenario is based on a radio access network connecting to the 4G core network via a satellite link. Results for this scenario show high operational costs. In order to reduce these costs, we propose a second scenario, consisting of caching the popular content on the edge to reduce the traffic carried over the satellite link. This scenario demonstrates a significant operational cost decrease (more than 57%), which also means a significant ARPU decrease.

As technology evolves and globalization continues, the need for reasonably priced roaming services has never been higher. In 2007, the European Commission (EC) introduced a first set of regulatory decisions to cap the maximal roaming fee end users have to pay for voice services. In the years after, additional price caps have been introduced for SMS and data, initially only for end users, in a later stage also for the wholesale tariff. The final step, Roaming Like at Home (RLAH), will start to take effect in June 2017; from then on end users will pay the same price (for voice, SMS and data) when roaming like in their domestic country. The effect of RLAH on the business case of each mobile operator is hard to predict, as the different national markets are extremely heterogeneous and operators face large discrepancies in terms of roaming usage and network costs due to different traveling patterns and various other reasons that cannot be harmonized (geography, economics, working force, usage history, etc.). Furthermore, competition in the telecom market will no longer be a purely national matter, as the decision to abolish roaming tariffs will fully open up cross-border competition. This paper aims at providing insights in the effect of RLAH for both the end user as well as the mobile operators. Following a literature survey approach, including an overview of the roaming regulation process from 2007 up to now, the paper discusses possible effects the RLAH initiative might trigger, going from lower wholesale prices for mobile operators to higher retail prices for end users. Additionally, as the European Commission strives for a digital single market, this paper presents a number of technical solutions (carrier portability, software-based SIMs, cross-border IMSI, Roaming like a Local, Wi-Fi offloading) that may pose a -partial or full -alternative for roaming and explains how these may impact cross-border competition both positively and negatively. The solutions are assessed against two axes: (1) generating the best possible outcome for the end customers (in all countries) and (2) ensuring the best level playing field for (virtual) mobile operators in Europe, which will of course involve trade-offs on different levels.

Energy companies and other utility providers have been often involved in the provision of telecommunications services. Nevertheless, their contribution to broadband development has varied significantly over time. In the late 1990s, both local and national utilities in the European Union (EU) engaged in the provision of broadband networks, but only few of them managed to establish themselves as major broadband providers. More recently, new projects involving national utilities have been announced in several EU countries, opening new scenarios for utilities' contribution to Next Generation Access (NGA) development. This paper identifies and explores the factors affecting the entry and the success of utilities in the EU broadband market, through the comparison of four case studies from four EU countries (Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK). The evolution of utility involvement in the EU broadband markets is assessed against the interaction of market, technology and policy factors, focusing on the impact of policy and regulatory measures. As a result, this paper provides fruitful insights into the relevance and effectiveness of public interventions in broadband markets. Across the four case studies, public support and public ownership emerged as the main drivers for the involvement of utilities in EU broadband markets, with regulatory measures and economies of scope exerting a limited and decreasing influence. However, the contribution of utilities has varied significantly across the cases studied, reflecting the different approaches taken at national and local level to support broadband development, in spite of the common regulatory framework.

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