1.5 How Did We Get Here?

The ICT past was populated by Ministries of Post, Telegraph and Telecommunications (MPTTs), which set the policies; determined the technical standards; designed and certified equipment; controlled the radio spectrum; allocated numbers; managed assets; made investment decisions; set prices; operated businesses; granted privileges; and regulated these largely state-owned communications administrations.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the communications landscape in some countries started to change in large part due to changing technological development and business opportunities interacting with each other. In this period, there were also institutional developments. Telegraph lost its importance, while post and telecommunications generally became structurally separated regulators.  As of the end of 2009, 153 countries and administrative regions had created a national regulatory authority for their ICT and telecommunication sectors.  Ninety-three percent of African countries have a separate sector regulator, which is the highest percentage in the world.[1]  Of the countries in the Americas, 89 percent have a separate sector regulator, followed by 80 percent in Europe, 66 percent in the Arab States and 62 percent in Asia-Pacific countries.  Figure 1 below shows the growth in the number of ICT and telecommunications sector regulators since 1990.

Figure 1. Growth in the number of regulators worldwide 

 

 

Source: ITU

In addition to changes to the regulators’ functions and jurisdictions, there has been a substantial trend towards liberalization in which state-owned operators were partially or wholly transferred to the private sector. Most significantly, the telecommunications sectors were liberalized as new entrants were licensed in mobile, fixed and Internet markets. Postal services have also been liberalized, but this has usually been after telecommunications. By opening markets, the burden of investment was shared among multiple operators, which mitigated the potentially dangerous risks of misguided decisions by a single operator. For example, as noted in Module 2, the 2009 ITU World Telecommunication Regulatory Database lists that 171 countries around the world have opened their mobile cellular markets to competition by 2009.

Series of clusters of innovation were stimulated by liberalization. The Internet and other platforms have dramatically expanded the global market for electronic communications and applications so that the prefix “e” for “electronic” is now extremely commonplace in all jurisdictions. During this process the traditional telecommunications sector has been transformed in a radical manner to ICTs, which has become both more significant as an economic sector, as well as a major contributor to the competitiveness of firms, cities, regions and countries. Major institutional developments accompanied this transformation. Sector-specific, independent institutions were established to perform regulatory functions in the context of new ICT policy frameworks. Regulations continue to be amended and updated in response to market and technological changes.  Some countries have moved from sector-specific ex ante regulation in certain markets to ex post regulation. Increasing numbers of countries have followed this path of change so that now the old MPTT model is a rarity.

endnotes

[1] ITU-D, Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2008: Six Degrees of Sharing at http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/publications/trends08.html#1.

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