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| WDR e-Brief, Vol. 2, #5 |
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| Thursday, 31 July 2003 | |
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* Q&A: Network development and R&D in Denmark * New resources page for WDR 2003 theme * WDR at Indian Telecom Reform Roundtable * Telecommunications Regulation Handbook: Multi-lingual and multimedia * Radio is “the one to watch” * Infrastructure liberalisation conference papers posted * Call for papers – Copyright and software patents: Open vs. proprietary paths * Subscribing and Unsubscribing Welcome to the fifth issue of the WDR e-Brief for 2003. WDR e-Brief is an occasional electronic bulletin from the World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies WDR). The e-Brief keeps you informed of new documents and ongoing discussions on our website and features information and comment of interest to the regulatory community. Please forward it to interested colleagues and let them know they can subscribe for free from the WDR website at http://www.regulateonline.org/. You are now 1,240 subscribers. -------------------- -------------------- Q&A: Network development and R&D in Denmark In each WDR e-Brief we feature a question or comment posted to the Online Dialogue at http://www.regulateonline.org/dialogue/ and ask our research teams to comment. The featured question in this e-Brief comes from A.K. Mahan and arises from the recently released WDR Discussion paper Telecoms in Denmark: Investment, performance and regulation. The answer comes from Anders Henten, author of the paper. Question: From your Denmark case study, it appears that no public/private coordination or cooperation exists for investment in broadband access initiatives. You note that public support for supply in the telecom area is primarily limited to educational initiatives and research cooperation, and further that R&D is performed primarily by equipment manufacturers. Given the rigorous IT policies within Denmark, are new regulatory initiatives required to further stimulate R&D activities? Or is the regulatory stance that demand is sufficient to fuel this alone - even in context of moving toward information society goals? Answer: The question correctly observes that there is no public/private cooperation in broadband investments in Denmark. The state does not want to get involved in the build-out of public telecommunications networks. The policy of the present liberal government and also of the former government dominated by the Social Democrats is that this is considered to be an area for private companies, which presumably will build out their networks in relation to market demand. Formerly, there was more state involvement in the telecom sector and in the investments in this area. However, in the context of general liberalisation of the sector, the state has withdrawn from the telecom sector and the state now only owns (accidentally, in a sense) a minority share in Orange via the public authority responsible for the rail tracks in Denmark, Banestyrelsen. There is, of course, some state ownership involvement via utilities, mainly the electricity providers. Some of these are partly owned by municipalities or counties. Recently, NVE (the electricity provider of North-Western Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen is situated) has become active in the telecom area. NVE is providing broadband access and have started to offer packages including cable-TV, Internet access and telephony to customers throughout Denmark. The state is also involved in the build-out of the research and education network. However, this is not an open (public) network, and is only accessible from public research and education institutions. Lastly, one might mention than the state also supports the supply side of telecom networks via education and research. But this is an indirect type of support and traditionally is not considered as supply side support. Thus, the Danish state does not want to get involved in the building out of networks but focuses on content and service development. The information society policies of the Danish government give high priority to participating in public/private cooperation with respect to service and content development. There are numerous initiatives in these fields. The rationale underlying this policy is not that ‘something is missing’ on the network side of things – rather it focuses on the content side. What is it that people should and would like to use increasing network capacities for? This, however, is not a point-of-view supported by all observers and analysts in the field. Finn Helmer, for instance, a well-known figure in the Danish ICT community and the former managing director of Giga (a small chip firm sold to Intel for an astonishing sum of money a few years ago) at the large EU IST conference in Copenhagen last November (2002) strongly advocated that the state should get its act together and support a general build-up of a fibre-based broadband access network in order to kick-start information society development in Denmark. Additionally, there have been many, especially competitors to the incumbent TDC, who have supported the establishment of a common high-speed infrastructure over which service providers could compete. However, this point of view has continuously come into conflict with the general policy of the state’s retreat from the telecom area. Conversely, the Swedish state has played a more active role in the build-out of broadband network facilities. In the Danish discussions this role sometimes takes on gigantic proportions of a state initiative to promote broadband in Sweden. However, Swedish state involvement is mainly in terms of support for initiatives in local areas that may, for different reasons, be under-supplied. It is important to differentiate between a strategies for the full-blown establishing of national access broadband and a those directed toward filling out the gaps unserviced by the market. In Denmark, however, none of these policies have a substantial following among political decision-makers. And still, Denmark has one of Europe’s highest penetration rates for broadband access (mainly based on a high penetration of ADSL and, to some extent, cable modems). Danish policy provides for demand-side led growth in broadband access, gives priority to the usage of known technologies, and has incurred incremental rather than radical developments. This may have advantages in terms of limiting investments in technologies that fail to be taken-up or otherwise result in dead-end developments. It may, however, also preclude possibilities for a head-start on new information society developments. It is, indeed, a difficult choice. The other part of the question relates to the fact that R&D in the telecom sector, to a growing extent, takes place mainly among the telecom manufacturing companies and less and less among the operators. This is a distinct development in the last decade, in which telecom operators have down-scaled their basic research activities and have concentrated on service side innovation activities. This may seem to be a natural development of division of labour between manufacturers and operators. However, an undesirable result may be that the development dynamics of the cooperative relationship between manufacturers and operators becomes weakened. National systems of innovation may become undermined, and there is absolutely here an important role for the state to play in terms of strengthening the R&D resources at the national level. A strengthening of communications research resources at universities has been evident during the past ten years. This is very important if national dynamics of R&D in the telecom area are to be developed. Anders Henten July 2003 Download Telecoms in Denmark: Investment, performance and regulation from http://www.regulateonline.org/2003/dp/dp0302.htm. Post your comments on the paper to the WDR Dialogue under the theme Discussion Paper WDR 0302 at http://regulateonline.org/dialogue/ or email them to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it -------------------- -------------------- Online resources page for WDR 2003 theme “Stimulating Investment in Network Development: Roles for Telecom Regulation” A resources page has been added to the WDR website with links to online resources relevant to this year’s theme. A number of key articles and sites have been posted along with abstracts and short descriptions. Of particular interest is the 2002 Debevoise & Plimpton report to the ITU titled, Feedback to Regulators from Investors. Both the full report and an ITU summary are available online. The page is at http://www.regulateonline.org/resources/ If you have other resources to suggest or work of your own you would like us to link to or publish on WDR, please send them to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it The resource pages for last year’s theme, ICT Convergence or Multisector Utility Regulation, have been archived at: http://www.regulateonline.org/resources/2002/ -------------------- -------------------- WDR at Indian Telecom reform roundtable On 29 August 2003, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) of India will organize an international roundtable to discuss and evaluate the reform of India’s telecommunication sector. The title of the event is “Challenges to Competition in the Telecom Sector and the Impact on Industry Structure”. Two WDR researchers have been invited to speak at the event. Anders Henten will discuss Convergence: Technology and market developments, policy and regulatory issues, developing themes covered in the WDR 2002 dialogue on ICT convergence and multi-sector utility regulation. Rohan Samarajiva’s presentation is titled presentation is titled Telecom policy and regulation in South Asian context: Complementarity or conflict? The National Council of Applied Economic Research is India’s premier economic research institution, specialising in policy research, surveys, forecasting and tracking the economy. -------------------- -------------------- Telecommunications Regulation Handbook goes multi-lingual and multimedia First published in 2000 and previously available in English and Spanish, the Telecommunications Regulation Handbook edited by Hank Intven, has recently been translated into Arabic. Published by infoDev and the World Bank, the handbook provides an extremely useful overview of major regulatory issues with descriptions and analyses of regulatory practices and approaches in different countries, economically developed and developing. The book is available in print, as a series of PDF files on the infoDev website, and on a new CD ROM. The CD Rom and the website also contain three reviews of the Handbook, by David Townsend, Anders Henten and John Ure. Download the book at http://www.infodev.org/projects/314regulationhandbook/ For more information, write This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it -------------------- -------------------- New book: Radio, Internet and development Mention radio and the Internet at the same time and people will assume you are talking about streaming audio. ‘The One to Watch: Radio, New ICTs and Interactivity’ is a new book that takes a different approach; examining how broadcast radio and the Internet can be used together to network stations and to make knowledge available to poor and rural communities in developing countries. The book was edited by Bruce Girard, director of WDR’s Internet strategy and published by FAO. An electronic version can be downloaded from http://comunica.org/1-2-watch/. For information on the print version write This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it -------------------- -------------------- Call for papers – Copyright and software patents: Open vs. proprietary paths On 4-5 December 2003, the 8th annual international conference of Denmark’s Center for Tele-Information, a WDR research partner, will focus on copyright and software patents. The overall topic of the conference concerns open vs. proprietary development paths with respect to content and software production. In spite of the various specificities of the two fields, there is a common ground, and the conference seeks to explore both this common ground and the special features of the two areas. A selection of the best papers for the conference will be published in the international journal Telematics and Informatics in spring 2004. For more information, read the full call for papers notice at http://regulateonline/news/cti2003.htm -------------------- -------------------- Infrastructure liberalisation conference papers posted Infrastructure Liberalisation - Speed up or step back?: Preparing for the next phase of telecom and energy reform was the theme of the 6th international conference of Delft University of Technology's Economics of Infrastructures group. The papers from the conference have been posted on the Delft University website at http://www.ei.tbm.tudelft.nl/ei6conference/complete_ei6conference.htm A short report from the conference can be read at http://regulateonline.org/news/ei6.htm -------------------- -------------------- Questions and support If you have questions about WDR, send them to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it For technical matters, contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or see the Frequently Asked Questions section in the Online Dialogue. http://www.regulateonline.org/dialogue/ -------------------- -------------------- Subscribing and Unsubscribing The WDR e-Brief is a monthly bulletin from the World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies - http://www.regulateonline.org. Subscribe from the site or by sending a message to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text98038 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //-->\n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject wdr e-brief list. To unsubscribe, send a message to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it -------------------- -------------------- Bruce Girard This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it edits the e-Brief with assistance from Divakar Goswami. Archives: http://www.comunica.org/w-agora/index.php?bn=wdr_ebrief -------------------- -------------------- The purpose of the World Dialogue on Regulation is to critically examine ideas and evidence. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in content appearing on the WDR website, the Online Dialogue and the WDR e-Brief are the personal views of the individuals submitting them. Content does not necessarily reflect the views of LIRNE.NET, infoDev, the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, the International Development Research Centre or any other organisation associated with the World Dialogue on Regulation. -------------------- -------------------- World Dialogue on Regulation c/o LIRNE.NET Technical University of Denmark Center for Tele-Information, Building 371 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, DENMARK Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Phone: +45 4587 1577 - Fax: +45 4596 3171 http://www.regulateonline.org -------------------- |
