Telecommunications Regulation in Comparative Perspective

Over ten years after the World Trade Organization established a framework for the liberalization of telecommunications regulation, the debate has moved from the basic question of whether governments should own telecommunications infrastructure to how government policy should encourage the development of advanced infrastructure. This debate involves a high stakes bet on what strategies–government funding for broadband deployment; government-mandated unbundling of legacy or advanced infrastructure; or marketplace competition between rival networks–can best serve countries seeking to spur the deployment and adoption of advanced communications infrastructure. This debate is one that has garnered even more attention in the wake of different portraits of whether the United States has fallen well behind other countries in terms of broadband adoption. It also focuses attention on the questions addressed in the U.S. and U.K. vis a vis providing regulatory flexibility on the building out of next generation fiber infrastructure. A second line of debate involves the role of spectrum regulation insofar as countries have differed on the extent of specifying the nature of private property rights in spectrum, spurring the use of unlicensed spectrum, and specifying the nature of technology standards used by wireless providers. Finally, as to developing nations, economists have recognized the fundamental challenges around developing transparent, predictable, and rule-of-law-based frameworks to encourage entry and investment in telecommunications infrastructure as well as strategies for using information and communications technology policies to spur economic and social development.

At this conference, we will bring together a leading group of governmental officials, academics, and practitioners to address and examine the set of questions outlined above.