Towards cross-industry information infrastructure provisioning: A resource-based perspective

Abstract

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.