Our vocabulary is evolving as existing words assume new meanings – app, burn, rip, text, game, cookie – or appear in new combinations, such as smart phone, cyber crime, file sharing, instant message, search engine and navigation bar. Some vocabulary is entirely new, including blog, podcast, googling, Web 2.0 and Wikipedia. The range of acronyms continues to expand – MP3, P2P, SMS, BPO, DRM, NGN, VoIP, VoBB, WiMAX, NGA, IP and LTE. This evolving vocabulary can even evoke the experience of an era, such as the “dotcom bubble.” The field of ICTs reflects the growing and highly significant contribution of the Internet and other burgeoning technologies to a new landscape of economic and social activities and relations. The landscape is populated by innovative ways of performing existing and new activities. In terms of the evolving vocabulary, we have entered the “Information Society” and the “New Economy.”
The infrastructure and services of electronic communications (previously known as telecommunications) are central components of ICTs and the associated networked landscape. The key characteristic of these components is that they are regulated by government administrative agencies. Consequently, there is a direct link between the performance and development of the New Economy/Information Society and the regulation of ICTs. Furthermore, government regulation of ICTs extends into many adjacent areas, such as content, copyright, privacy, culture, mergers, and market entry and exit, which extends the impact of regulation in the New Economy/Information Society.
Importantly, as the Toolkit demonstrates, the substance of ICT regulation has continued to evolve with the emerging technologies. The liberalization of ICT markets has stimulated cumulative interacting innovations in products, services and technologies with a general convergence or blurring of distinctions between platforms, products and services in an IP or Net-centric world. These developments necessitate some form of regulatory response either to support or impede them. The evolutionary nature of regulation is evident in the moving target of European Union (EU) regulation. There have been successive “packages” updating the framework from 1987 to 1998 and, most recently, to 2002. Increasing numbers of countries are adopting this framework as they accede to the European Union or become candidate members. The EU regulatory approach is also reaching outside of Europe and influencing the frameworks that other countries are adopting. Consultations and recommendations on a new framework with new subjects took place in 2006 with a continued shift to less sector-specific and more ex post regulation in the European Union. Significantly, these EU regulatory packages have been forcefully linked to broader policy objectives concerning inclusiveness, innovation, job creation, growth, energy and environmental issues in the New Economy or Information Society. The EU is not alone in this process; most ITU members have also implemented ICT strategies.[1]
endnotes
[1] For example, Rwanda Information Technology Authority, National Information and Communications Infrastructure Plans, see http://www.rita.gov.rw/laws/nici_plans.html. Also see Info-communications Development Authority of Singapore, Infrastructure Programs at http://www.ida.gov.sg/Infrastructure/20060919171104.aspx.
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Module 7, New Technologies and Impacts on Regulation