Have you ever realized that the websites and social platforms you use are full of links that lead you to contents, videos or advertisements of other content providers? And that you usually surf from one site to another without typing their URL addresses? No doubt, this is an important feature of the Internet. For instance, direct visits of The New York Times represent only 44 per cent of its total traffic, whereas the rest of traffic is originated through social platforms and search engines. Content Providers (CPs) like receiving this type of indirect visitors because they obtain additional advertisement revenues. A stimulating question is why CPs want to place links to their rivals? For instance, why do social platforms promote users' profiles on other social networks?

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This article studies the impact of regulatory uncertainty on an incumbent’s incentives to undertake the socially optimal investments in NGA networks. Thus, aregulatory non - commitment setting in which the regulator sets the access price after the deployment of the NGA network is used. In particular, it is assumed that the regulator sets the access price at the marginal cost of providing the access with some probability and gives an access markup, which equals the average cost of the investments, with the complementary probability. It is found that when the slope of the marginal investment cost function is not particularly steep in relation to the impact of investments on demand, the incumbent underinvests compared to the socially optimal investment level. On the contrary, in a more realistic case when the impact of investments on demand is low in relation to the slope of the marginal investment costfunction, the incumbent may overinvest or underinvest depending on the probability of incorporating an access markup into the access price

The deployment of next generation access networks (NGAs) is investigated from technical, regulatory and investment perspectives. A brief review of the possible network architectures and deployment scenarios of NGAs is provided. Risk calculations of these NGA scenarios are performed based on a fully detailed techno-economic model. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the European Commission's Recommendation on regulated access to NGAs, aiming to tackle the regulatory trade-off between encouraging investments and promoting competition, is discussed. Risks Associated with Next Generation Access Networks Investment ScenariosThe positions illustrated in this article do reflect the personal opinions of the authors and not the official positions of the organizations that the authors are employed to. These official positions of the organizations are presented via their public announcements and official documents such as decisions, etc.