World Dialogue on Regulation

This is an extensive report that examines the context and execution of universal access plans from different conceptual perspectives. The download page offers two summaries of the report: an Executive Summary (18 pp); and a longer Summary of Main Report (64 pp). Additionally, Annex I is a Summary of Recommendations (14 pp). As WDR will do a thorough review of the final version of the report when it is released, this brief note will only highlight two key points.

The authors observe that universal access and universal service fund programs and their financing mechanisms are at a point in which they will soon need to be reconceptualised for future effectiveness in evolving markets. This will engender a need to revisit regulation for next generation networks. Even more fundamental, is the authors’ proposal of a next generation Universal Communication Fund (UCF). The recommended or ideal dimensions of the UCF are complex: technologically neutral, ubiquitous, with a market orientation – although inclusive in its design and with adequate support for capacity building, etc., and so forth. In a way, the criteria for the fund almost reads like an Information Society vision statement – illustrating the evolving ICT terrain in contrast to more traditional universal service targets that simply mandated that everyone should get a phone.

The report’s analysis is supported by the research project’s information and data collection and modelling exercise across the 19 Regulatel member countries around universal access issues – and is entitled the Regulatel Gaps Model. 

"The distinction between the 'access gap' and the 'market gap' is critical to policy development and market analysis, as it separates the areas where the main focus of concern should be elimination of barriers, versus those where direct financial intervention is justified. Given the fact that the market efficiency frontiers themselves tend to be moving outward, with the decreasing costs and increasing benefits of telecommunications technologies and services, the size of the access gaps should generally be diminishing in most countries." 

The report's modelling primarily focuses on supply side conditions, and correspondingly is concerned with demonstrating geographic coverage of networks. From this vantage point, there are surprising results – such as demonstration of almost ubiquitous coverage in some countries (such as Uruguay). This is because geographic coverage refers to availability of signal in population centres of a certain size, not there being an available signal across the entire geographical terrain of the country.

While serving as a landmark repository of universal access information, the report is also likely to generate discussion on the issues raised and how they are conceptualised and discussed.

The final event for this Project on Universal Access for Telecommunications in Latin America  is the international conference: Connecting the Future: Strategies  to Reduce Telecommunications Access Gaps to be held November  27th – 28th 2006, in Lima.

To consult the draft report:

New Models for Universal Access in Latin America
Nuevos Modelos para el Acceso Universal en América Latina

Written and coordinated by Peter A. Stern
with the assistance of David Townsend and José Monedero

Conference website:

Connecting the Future: Strategies  to Reduce Telecommunications Access Gaps 
November  27th – 28th 2006
Lima, Peru.

Conectando el futuro, estrategias para acortar las brechas de acceso a las telecomunicaciones
27 y 28 de Noviembre de 2006
Lima, Perú

For more information:

Regulatel 

World Bank

Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA)

Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF)

United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC / CEPAL)