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Management of common resources effectively.
Stimulation of investments in the public network.
Network interconnection. Open entry requires interconnection. It is important to create favourable environment for interconnection of new network operators and other providers of telecom services. However, the more innovative the services of the new entrant, the tougher the problem may become for the dominant carrier. This subject requires considerable study and analysis, since it lies at the heart of the challenge of finding economically efficient means of facilitating entry and promoting competition.
In practice, the regulator’s mandate represents a mixture of these different concepts. Not only does the "mix" vary from country to country, it also evolves over time. For example, in Canada, telecom regulation has traditionally followed the mission of supervising the dominant PTO. More recently, the mission of changing the industry structure has emerged as a major thrust of Canadian telecom regulation policies. A cellular duopoly was established and a second long-distance carrier, now known as Unitel, was granted operating and interconnection rights to the local telephone companies' networks. This consent was initially given only for leased-line and packet-switched service, and not for switched telephony, but Unitel is now licensed to provide a full range of long-distance services, including voice services.
What to regulate?
The provision and use of telecommunications services may be regulated in the following ways:
licensing carriers;
establishing and supervising technical and operational standards and practices for network operations by carriers;
overseeing the quality of service provided by carriers;
regulating the pricing of telecom services, either by controlling telecom operators' rates (tariffs) in detail or by applying some more general form of control such as a price-cap;
setting the terms (administrative, financial and technical) for the interconnection of different carriers' networks, including the "access" pricing charged by one carrier to another, where there are multiple carriers and one carrier needs to interconnect with another's network;
controlling type approval of customer premises equipment (CPE) and its attachment to the public network;
controlling the numbering plan and related matters.
The decision on "what to regulate" has substantially varied in various countries since it depends on what outcomes are to be achieved. For example, in “full monopoly group” countries (e.g. Spain, Italy and the majority of developing countries), the regulator's goals will imply that:
supervision of the monopoly PTO's technical standards and practices may be unnecessary;
price regulation will be necessary and important;
licensing new carriers and regulation of network interconnection is not relevant.
At the other extreme, in a highly competitive group countries (e.g. U.S. long-distance telephone service), the regulator’s goals will imply:
regulatory control of some technical and operational matters is essential since effective competition requires extensive interconnection of different carriers' networks;
price regulation may become unnecessary, at least in some segments of the industry;
licensing function may be unnecessary or minimal;
rules concerning the interconnection of different carriers' networks are of critical importance.
But what if a government chooses not to regulate at all? Experience suggests that this decision is too illusory: in the unregulated or self-regulated monopoly, someone must determine whether or not the monopoly is acting in the public interest, and intervene if it is not.
These considerations, among others, have led the countries of the European Community to collectively enact EC legislation requiring the establishment in each country of an explicit regulatory process for telecommunications and a regulatory body to implement that process which is separate from operational PTO organisations, even in those countries where national legislators have chosen to maintain a monopoly of basic fixed voice services.
How to regulate?
Regulator with a defined mission can fulfil it using widely differing regulatory approaches. Actually, there are basically two kinds of choices that must be made to define regulatory approaches:
How far the regulator will exercise control, and how far the regulator will act "by exception." To what extent will certain matters (e.g. "access charges" for interconnecting) be controlled by the regulator, or will the regulator only intervene "by exception" when a particular regulatory case requires this? In the case of access charges, for example, U.S. practice involves continuous and mandatory control of access charges for fixed-service carriers. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the regulator does not automatically exercise control over these charges, but may exercise the power to determine the charges if the various carriers fail to reach agreement.
Реферат опубликован: 26/01/2007