World Dialogue on Regulation

Four new firms have secured unified licences from the Nigerian Communications Commission, bringing to eight the number of telecommunications companies in the country granted similar licences. A unified license gives an operator the freedom to offer mobile, fixed and any other telecommunications service to its subscribers.

Pyramid Research, a USA-based consultancy firm, has released a report on Portal VoIP services and fixed telco operators, VoIPocalypse Now: How Google, Skype, and Yahoo! Will Change Fixed Telcos Models. While unable to get a copy of the full US$1,490 report, WDR correspondent Amy Mahan reviewed the recommendations for fixed telcos in the free report excerpt made available by Pyramid.

With the report 'Promoting Private Sector Investment and Innovation: To Address the Information and Communication Needs of the Poor in Sub Saharan Africa' infoDev and Alcatel dive into the private sector development of the ICT sector for rural development. InfoDev investigates the demand side of the ICT Services in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), while Alcatel focuses in the operator supply side of the need of ICT services.

In the paper “Industrial organization and competence in Latin America telecommunications: business strategies” by Judith Mariscal and Eugenio Rivera, the authors affirm that the industry of telecommunications in Latin America has suffered important transformations in the last decade. Among others, there were pro market reforms that privatised and liberalised the sector in most Latin American countries. This document aims to explain the transformations undergone by the telecom sector and to identify the trends of the IT industry for the near future. It analyzes the evolution of the sector in Latin America comparing business strategies, the performance and the structure of market in which the two large players operate; looking at the influence of regulatory frameworks and policies on the companies’ structure and business performance.

As part of PANOS’ media toolkit on ICTs, they have produced a document titled Going the last mile: what’s stopping a wireless revolution? Divakar Goswami comments on the publication.

The objective of the document is to enable journalists in the developing countries to write informatively about wireless access in their countries and what steps the government can undertake to enable its use. This objective is poorly met since this document fails to discuss explicitly the policy recommendations that governments need to carry out. 

"Wireless networks have become the technology of choice for increasing access to phone and Internet services in developing countries. They are not only cheaper, easier and faster to deploy than traditional landline alternatives, but also make possible business and service delivery models better adapted to rural, low income communities."

- from the executive summary of the paper A New Model for Rural Connectivity prepared by Al Hammond and John Paul for the World Resouces Institute.