Regulatory Trends: New Enabling Environment

REGULATORY TRENDS: NEW ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
[SOURCE: International Telecommunication Union, AUTHOR: Andy Banerjee, Analysis Group; Gary Madden and Joachim Tan, Curtin University of Technology]
The future of voice communication will be the future of all forms of electronic communication; and the market will most likely be served by a combination of broadband technologies, prominent among them end-to-end fibre (wireline) and 3G (wireless) technologies (and their successors). In this context, the central question is: how must regulatory policy change to facilitate such a future? Specific regulatory or policy reforms in future communications markets marked by convergence and intermodal competition must be guided by the dynamic efficiency principle.

* First, when the last mile access bottleneck disappears, regulatory focus should shift from the terms on which service and content providers can gain access to end users towards ensuring interconnection among IP networks, and between IP networks and access networks.

* Second, any blanket network neutrality rule should be resisted. While undue discrimination may still need to be monitored and rooted out, traditional common carrier regulations accompanied by a blanket network neutrality rule can actually prove to be counter-productive. Third, regulatory authorities must redesign licensing regimes to adapt to new market realities created by convergence and intermodal competition. Such licensing regimes should not favour the emergence of a particular technology or service but rather allow the market to make those decisions.

* Finally, regulation for the future voice environment must mean prudent applications of discretionary policies. Those policies may include: providing incentives to develop and deploy small-scale, modular, and scalable broadband technologies; providing opportunities and systems for aggregating demand for broadband services; constraining international mobile roaming charges to encourage roaming and international voice communication demand; rejecting mandatory MVNO access to the networks of incumbent mobile operators unless specific market failure warrants such access; encouraging pricing models that recognize the multi-sided nature of emerging broadband markets; and renewing global efforts to control spam.
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