In many countries today, authorization of ICT services involves a unilateral grant of licence or general authorization from a regulator (or other licensing authority) to a private sector operator. The authorization authorizes the operator to provide specified ICT services, subject to certain conditions. These conditions may be set out in the authorization document itself or, as is increasingly common, in other regulations or regulatory instruments. The issuance and enforcement of an authorization is therefore generally a matter of public administrative law.
However, there have been many variations on the theme of authorizing ICT operations. In some countries, private sector investors have entered into business arrangements with governments or state-owned service providers that are more in the nature of joint ventures with government entities than simple grants of rights to operate ICT facilities or provide services. These may be referred to as concessions, franchises, Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) schemes, Build-Transfer-Operate (BTO) schemes, Build-Own-Operate (BOO) schemes, and a number of other variants, limited only by the imagination of project finance lawyers and bankers.
Collectively, many of these arrangements have been referred to as Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). PPPs are increasingly common vehicles for the financing and operations of large infrastructure projects, such as highways, airports and ports. In the past, PPP arrangements were useful in attracting private investment to markets where privatization or private-sector participation in the ICT sector was legally or constitutionally restricted. However, they have become less common in the ICT sector, as a result of a growing recognition that there is little public benefit to state ownership or operation of ICT service providers. PPP schemes are generally seen to be inconsistent with the promotion of liberalized ICT markets and competitively-neutral regulation and policies.