International, regional and national regulatory frameworks significantly influence spectrum policy formulation, harmonization and implementation.
As reviewed in more detail in Section 7 - International Affairs, the ITU harmonizes the efficient use of the spectrum resource on a global basis on behalf of governments. Ultimately, the implementation – how and when recommendations and regulations are implemented – rests with national governments. Allocations of radio spectrum are agreed upon at the ITU World Radiocommunication Conferences (WRC) for each ITU Region, and the Radio Regulations are then revised. Agreements on changes to allocations made at WRCs have treaty status, and international harmonization and coordination of spectrum allocation are essential for many public sector services, such as transport.
Practices across regions vary and decisions made about spectrum allocation vary across the three ITU regions. Region 1 has multiple sovereign markets and attempts a unified approach. Region 2 is dominated by the US and often reflects a single market approach whereas there multiple sovereign markets and no real unified approach across Region 3 encompassing Asia-Pacific and Oceania.
In Europe, common positions in relation to WRC agenda items are developed by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT); the CEPT includes 48 European member states. The European Union presents a particularly unique situation with broad policy in terms of goals, direction and timelines set on a pan-national basis, while the detailed implementation of policy is left to individual member countries. Much like North and South America, there is no formal process for setting a common agenda in Asia to coordinate and harmonize policy or spectrum use.
One of the hurdles in establishing coordinated policy at the national level is diverse regulatory framework for broadcast and telecommunications:
- in some cases, there is one regulator for both broadcast and telecommunications, and;
- in other cases, the regulation of these services is divided between separate regulators.
At the beginning of 2011, separate regulators had been established in more than 80 per cent of countries, totaling 158 regulators worldwide, up from 106 regulators a decade ago. Africa has the highest percentage of regulators (relative to the total number of countries in each region) with 93 per cent, followed by the Americas and Europe with 91 and 88 per cent, respectively. Moreover, Asia-Pacific has 73 per cent, Arab States have 71 per cent, and the CIS has the lowest with 50 per cent.
Figure 1 Countries with Separate Regulators, 2010
Photo: ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Regulatory Database
Countries with separate regulators have adopted different institutional and organizational frameworks to adapt to the fast-changing ICT environment. While the main trend in most regions has been to establish a sector-specific regulator, some countries have moved towards merging pre-existing separate regulatory authorities into a converged regulator, while others have expanded the mandate of the regulator to include posts, information technology, broadcasting content, or spectrum management. Figure 2.2 illustrates this issue by illustrating that there is no consistent pattern in regulatory mandate and function across the various regions of the globe.
Figure 2 Mandate of the Regulator 2010
Photo: ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Regulatory Database
Several countries in the Americas, Europe and Africa have established multi-sector agencies, either when sector reforms were initiated or after their markets reached a certain level of maturity. In these cases, countries have merged pre-existing separate regulators of public utilities to oversee, for example, the telecommunications, postal, electricity, gas and railway sectors.
In several jurisdictions regulators are now responsible for regulation beyond their traditional core activities. These traditional functions consist of: regulating access to telecommunication/ICT infrastructure and services through licensing; managing scarce resources such as spectrum and numbering resources; dealing with interconnection issues; setting and enforcing quality of service standards; and managing universal access support programmes.
In 2010, 16 per cent of regulators had responsibility for broadcasting content, sometimes sharing that responsibility with another ministry. While Internet content is unregulated in more than 44 per cent of countries worldwide, it is around 13 per cent of telecommunication/ICT regulators’ mandates. Information technology is included in the mandate of 30 per cent of regulators, a responsibility that is shared in 12 per cent of cases.
At the policy and standards level, the same diversity is evident. For example, for television systems different standards apply to various regions around the world where there are three dominant analogue television standards: NTSC, PAL and SECAM. There have been some intensive efforts made to achieve cooperation at the regional and trans-regional level to smooth out the process and simplify the inherent diversity. The Geneva Frequency Plan referred to as GE06 is a prime example of such an inititative.