World Dialogue on Regulation

Prepared by: Committee on Broadband Last Mile Technology Computer Science and Telecommunications Board Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences 
National Research Council, 2002.

Article: Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits

Chapter 4 – Technology Options and Economic Factors – provides an overview of investment issues for broadband.

Links sorted by topic:

• Regulation Policy
• Competition Policy 

And by Sector 

• Energy 
• Telecommunications 
• Transport 
• Water

Article: World Bank – Infrastructure Regulation Links

Journal: Social Science Research 31 (2002) 334-363
Authors: Kristopher Kyle Robison and Edward M. Crenshew

Abstract:
At century’s end, a combination of telecommunications and computer technologies has resulted in the creation of the Internet, a global network of computers that has been growing at an exponential rate. Although the Internet/World Wide Web combination is widely hailed as a new, powerful engine of global social and economic change, there has been very little sociological theorizing and even less sociological research on the globalization of the Internet. Using classical macrosocial theories of development as a springboard, we hypothesize that the level of development, political openness/democracy, mass education, the presence of a sizable tertiary/services sector, and interactions between some of these variables will drive the Internet’s growth and spread around the globe. In our cross-national analysis of approximately 74 developed and developing countries, we find that Internet capacity is not in fact a simple linear function of economic and political development, but rather has been driven by complex interactions that could aptly be termed “post-industrialism”. Uncovering some of these structural preconditions and determinants of Internet diffusion provides a first step toward providing a theoretical and empirical sociology of this “third technological revolution.”

Article: Post-industrial transformations and cyber-space: a cross national analysis of Internet development

Author: Oluyele Akinkugbe
United Nations University, Discussion Paper 2003/02

Abstract:
The last decade or so has witnessed rather dramatic increases in the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the developing countries of the world. However, the balance of evidence seems to point in one direction, the inflow has been uneven. Middle-income developing countries have benefited from this upsurge at the expense of the lower-income countries. In an attempt to explore the two complimentary issues involved in FDI flows, we adopted the two-part econometric approach in which a Probit model was first estimated in order to examine the binary issue of whether or not to locate FKI in hitherto neglected developing countries. In the second step, a panel regression model was employed to examine the factors that may explain the volume of FKI to further allocate to existing FDI-receiving countries. Our findings reveal that a combination of high per capita income, outward-orientation to international trade, a high level of infrastructure development and a high rate of return on investment are the significant decision parameters in the two-part aggregate investors’ behaviour analyses.

Article: Flow of Foreign Direct Investment to Hitherto Neglected Developing Countries

IEEE Communications Magazine. July 1998, pp.87-92. 
Authors: Farrell, J. and Katz, M.L.

Abstract: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to usher in a new era of competition in US telecommunications markets in which advanced services were made available to all consumers. In this article, we discuss how policies designed to promote competition, investment, and universal deployment may conflict with each other. We do not believe that these conflicts are the inevitable consequences of conflicts between the objectives; we do, however, believe that there are inescapable conflicts between the specific policies being implemented in pursuit of these objectives.

Article: Public Policy and Private Investment in Advanced Telecommunications Infrastructure

Authors: Harinder Singh & Kwang W. Jun
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 1531 (1995)

Article: Some New Evidence on Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment

ITU News Magazine article is compiled from extracts from a recent report entitled Feedback to regulators from investors — Telecommunications in crisis: Perspectives of the Financial sector on regulatory Impediments to Sustainable Investment. The report is intended to provide some insights from the standpoint of the financial community about how regulation in general, and specific regulatory policies, in particular, may affect the flow of investment into the telecommunication sector and the overall dynamics of growth and competition. The report is the result of a case study commissioned by the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) at the request of the Global Symposium of Regulators at its annual meeting in December 2001, and was written by Robert Bruce, Partner and Head of International Telecommunications Practice Group Debevoise & Plimpton and Rory Macmillan. It was released in December 2002 on the occasion of the third annual Global Symposium for Regulators in Hong Kong, China.

Article: Feedback to regulators from investors.

Report: Feedback to regulators from investors — Telecommunications in crisis: Perspectives of the Financial sector on regulatory Impediments to Sustainable Investment, Geneva: ITU (2002).

Author: Scott Wallsten
World Bank

Abstract: This paper — a product of Investment Climate, Development Research Group — is part of a larger effort in the group to understand regulatory and infrastructure sector reforms. The author, Wallsten, uses data from a unique new survey of telecommunications regulators and other sources to measure the effects of regulation in Internet development. He finds regulation strongly correlated with lower Internet penetration and higher Internet access charges. More specifically, controlling for factors such as income, development of the telecommunications infrastructure, ubiquity of personal computers, and time trends, countries that require formal regulatory approval for Internet service providers (ISPs) to begin operations have fewer Internet users and Internet hosts than countries that do not require such approval. Moreover, countries that regulate ISP final-user prices have higher Internet access prices than countries that do not have such regulations. These results suggest that developing countries’ own regulatory policies can have large impacts on the digital divide.

Article: Regulation and Internet Use in Developing Countries

Author: Frank Sader 

Foreign Investment Advisory Service , World Bank – FIAS Occasional Papers no. 12.

Abstract: During the early 1990s, the Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS), a joint facility of the World 
Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), found that governments and foreign investors alike were concerned and frustrated about difficulties in successfully implementing private infrastructure projects. Governments were trying to attract these new types of investment without having established an appropriate policy framework. Therefore, there were no institutional structures to resolve impediments effectively and provide clear guidelines for the award of such large-scale projects. Legal frameworks tended to address traditional public-sector responsibilities and not investor concerns. Regulatory environments either did not exist or did not provide investors enough guarantees that their future operating environment would be sufficiently reliable. Consequently, FIAS has been advising many governments in the developing world on the best way to establish a policy framework attractive to foreign investors. FIAS typically combines its review of the institutional, legal and regulatory environment with investor roundtables and workshops for senior government officials to ensure that all the major concerns of both the government and the private sector are taken into account. Although each country has unique policy problems, FIAS has encountered common features in key areas that pose stumbling blocks for private infrastructure investments. This study synthesizes this experience and derives lessons for facilitating and encouraging foreign direct nvestment in infrastructure.

Article:  Regulation and Internet Use in Developing Countries

Center for International Development at Harvard University

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