Digital platforms are re-shaping organizations and markets. In particular, telecommunication companies are challenged to control digital platforms and to engage generative ecosystems. In order to provide a point of departure for future research, we conduct an explorative case study analysis to determine the state of the art of business models of telecommunication operators' developer platforms. The contribution of our study is three-fold, providing insights on business model design, platform control and competitive strategy. Specifically, we find that the business models provide the prerequisites for effective and efficient new product development and tend to leave the customer relationship to complementors. Further, we identify differentiating design decisions and demarcate capabilities that remain in control of operators. Finally, we highlight cooperation, particularly with aggregators, as a means to tackle the challenges of platform fragmentation and increase the platform's functional range. Based our findings we indicate promising aspects for future research in these fields.

The availabilty of future-prove information infrastructure is widely associated with economic growth and social prosperity. However, migrating legacy information infrastructures to the future is said to come along with high investment costs. In this paper we assess how cross-industry cooperation between utility and telecommunication companies can contribute to the utilization of synergies in information infrastructure provisioning. For this purpose we employ a joint case study and grounded theory approach that is based on expert interviews with managing experts from telecommunication companies accounting for more than 75 percent of today's German broadband market. Based on coding techniques we identify and value central concepts that contribute to cross-industry infrastructure provisioning. Our results indicate that utility companies can foster cooperation by focusing on resources related to the deployment and maintenance of physical infrastructure. In contrast activities and assets related to network or service operation can be a cooperation inhibitors.

The utilization of deployment synergies across infrastructure networks of different industries has been identified as a key to improve the broadband business case. Thus, an increasing number of broadband plans require owners of physical infrastructures such as the electricity, pipeline, highway and railroad networks to host broadband infrastructure. However, crossindustry cooperation brings about new complexity to optimal utilization of deployment synergies.This paper explores cost savings that can be achieved if national non-telecommunication infrastructures are considered as source for broadband networks in rural areas. Moreover, it assesses economic, political and regulatory measures required for improving synergy utilization. The presented approach is based on a techno-economic broadband deployment model, which is applied to all rural communities in Germany. Results indicate that synergy optimized network topologies can generally decrease rural broadband deployment cost. However, it is required that local authorities recognize the definition of broadband tender areas as a chance for the aggregation of demand. Moreover, national regulators need to ensure that metro-aggregation, backbone and co-location costs, which are associated with nontelecommunication infrastructures, do not exceed the costs of the incumbent by more than 50%.