As has already been noted previously in this Section, regulators and policy makers may have to grapple with the issue of which regulatory agency should administer the new forms of authorization. This issue is most common if the new unified or multi-service authorizations consolidate authorizations that had previously been administered by more than one regulatory agency. It is not uncommon, for example, for different regulatory agencies to be responsible for telecommunications (i.e., transmission services), content-based services (e.g., broadcasting), and wireless services. When consolidating such authorizations, a decision must be made about which regulatory authority will administer the authorizations.
As a general rule, countries must either assign the responsibility to one of the regulatory agencies or create a new “converged” regulator to administer the unified or multi-service authorization framework, as well as other aspects of the ICT sector. In order to promote clarity and regulatory certainty, it is best to avoid creating an authorization framework where different regulatory agencies share concurrent jurisdiction. Moreover, having more than one regulator with authority over various aspects of the ICT authorization framework increases the costs of regulation and adds to the administrative burden of service providers.