Public Policy Blog

As you all know, the review of the ITRs is a key issue in the ICT policy agenda for 2012 and highly debated in the international arena. Therefore, the association of the European Telecommunication Network Operators (ETNO), in co-operation with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), have announced a workshop entitled ‘Revising the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) – Preparations for WCIT 2012’ that will gather a range of high level speakers from across the globe, including speakers from the ITU, ISOC, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, USA and Telefónica, between others.

As indicated in a previous post, we were attending this meeting so here is a brief overview of the main discussions there. This meeting, opened by President Chinchilla of Costa Rica, attracted almost 1400 delegates from all parts of the world, being one of the most attended ever. The main topics discussed in Costa Rica [...]

At the Cable Congress Policy Session on 7 March, Georg Serentschy made some interesting remarks on the incentives for high speed broadband roll, which hopefully announce an era of a more investment friendly regulatory climate in Europe. Mr. Serentschy is the head of the Austrian Regulator RTR and he is BEREC chair for 2012. He [...]

This week, on Wednesday 25th, the Fundación Telefónica will host the presentation of the yearly report untitled “Information Society in Spain 2011″, its 12th edition.

Last week, the Danish government presented the programme of the Danish EU Presidency ‘Europe at work’ for the next six months. The programme includes the four fundamental priorities for the Danish Presidency – a responsible Europe, a dynamic Europe, a green Europe and a safe Europe – and the Council configurations.  The Transport, Telecommunications and [...]

We have identified three priority areas that regulators and policymakers will need to pay particular attention to during these months ahead. To be effective, any policy must allow sufficient flexibility at a national level, as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will be unlikely to succeed.

Many are the predictions those days in the Net concerning our sector and its perspectives for 2012, from how the telecom sector will evolve, to which services and technological trends will be the winners for next year, or how social networks will be positioned, what will be the IT “super themes” for 2012, etc…
This is a difficult and somersault exercise in a very dynamic and evolving sector such as the ICT & Telecom one. However, it is sure that some trends could be already detected.

Concerning the ICT public policy area, we could see the following issues as relevant as they are present in several international and public institutions agendas for 2012. Here are some of them:

On december 12th the new issue of “Regulatory and Economic Policy in Telecommunications”, the Regulatory Journal of Telefónica, was presented in District Telefónica, and as usual a workshop was held where contributors had a chance to present their articles and debate, this time around the theme “Reviewing the Economic Foundations of Regulation in ICT markets”.

Throughout the debate it became clear that Regulators, confronted with a growing concern that the current European regulatory model might be hindering private investment and innovation in broadband coverage and applications, must adapt their strategy to a new environment, and device incentive schemes that are not easily compatible with their overarching goal, which arguably remains preserving a very large number of alternatives for end users.

4G (or LTE – Long Term Evolution) is the fourth generation of cellular wireless technology. Some operators have already initiated their way to 4G worldwide. Telefónica O2 in UK is one of them and now provides the fastest possible wireless connections in parts of London as a trial.

Last November 16th, GSMA announced that 45 world leading mobile operators have committed to support and implement SIM based NFC solutions and services, including the most relevant worldwide operators such as China Mobile, China Unicom,  Telefónica and other leading European Operators, but also the three largest U.S wireless service providers, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon, under [...]