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Universal Access and Service: The Rise of International Good Practice

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Regulating Telecommunications in South Africa

Part of the book series: Information Technology and Global Governance ((ITGG))

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Abstract

Driven by pressures affecting the ICT sector, including technological change, business imperatives and shifting market structures, a new ‘telecomms reform’ regime began to emerge through a process of epistemic contestation at the ITU and through the WTO. This change was accompanied by a hegemonic set of international good practices, including: privatisation of state-owned incumbent operators, the introduction of competition and the creation of an independent regulatory authority. Universal access and service too emerged as an issue, to protect the public service objective of telephony provision in the face of privatisation and competition. Good practice precepts for universal access and service were also developed through the ITU, the EU and the OECD, including the imposition of universal service obligations upon licensees and the establishment of a Universal Service Fund.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Further listings in 1991 and 1993 have now left BT fully in private hands.

  2. 2.

    Known as the ‘Baby Bells’. AT&T was thereby able to keep its de facto long-distance monopoly.

  3. 3.

    Butler’s key catalytic role in telecomms reform was recognised by both Andile Ngcaba (interview, 28 January 2015) and Bill Melody (personal communication, 20 April 2015).

  4. 4.

    Interestingly, the ANC’s Andile Ngcaba, who features prominently in Chapter 3, attended at least four of these colloquiums.

  5. 5.

    The six core issues covered are: competitive safeguards; interconnection; universal service; public availability of licensing criteria; independent regulators; allocation and use of scarce resources.

  6. 6.

    It has currently been acceded to by 82 of the WTO’s 157 members.

  7. 7.

    South Africa, for example, made a complex set of commitments, including, amongst others: the preservation of Telkom’s monopoly until 2003, and of the Vodacom/MTN duopoly until 1998, followed by the introduction of an additional licensee in each sub-sector; the gradual liberalisation of resale from 2000; a foreign investment cap of 30% (WTO, 2003). All of these have since fallen away.

  8. 8.

    Housed online at http://www.ictregulationtoolkit.org/en/home.

  9. 9.

    Then at the Centre for Communication and Information Studies, Polytechnic of Central London, UK.

  10. 10.

    Then at the Centre for Information and Communication Technologies, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, UK.

  11. 11.

    The report covers: Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

  12. 12.

    The EC report was authored by Prof Martin Cave (Brunel University), Claire Milne (Antelope Consulting) and Mark Scanlan (Brunel University), while the OECD report was written by Patrick Xavier (Swinburne University of Technology, with a chapter by Professor Martin Cave (Brunel University).

  13. 13.

    The European Commission report covers: Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, UK and the US (EC, 1994); while the OECD examines: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the UK and the US (OECD, 1995, p. 17).

  14. 14.

    Others included ‘Telecommunication policies for the Arab Region—The Arab Book’, and ‘Telecommunication Policies for the Americas: The Blue Book’.

  15. 15.

    Principal author of the 1995 OECD report on universal service obligations (OECD, 1995).

  16. 16.

    More commonly referred to nowadays as ‘access deficit charges’, and applied for a time in India.

  17. 17.

    Including Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Michael Minges, Susan Schorr and Nancy Sundberg.

  18. 18.

    John Alden, Andrew Dymond, Sonja Oestmann, Mandla Msimang, Edgardo Sepulveda and David Townsend, many of whom had previously done work for the ITU.

  19. 19.

    Both continue to feature as key components of international good practice today (Blackman & Srivastava, 2011b).

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    Charley Lewis

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Lewis, C. (2020). Universal Access and Service: The Rise of International Good Practice. In: Regulating Telecommunications in South Africa. Information Technology and Global Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43527-1_2

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