Broadband is Key to the Information Society

Global Symposium for Regulators releases Best Practice Guidelines for broadband and Internet connectivity

“Broadband networks are the key to maximizing the promise of an evolving and converging information and communication technology (ICT) sector, “said Kathleen Q. Abernathy, Commissioner of the United States Federal Communications Commission and Chairman of the the 5th Annual ITU Global Symposium for Regulators, organized under the auspices of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT), held in Geneva from 8 to 10 December 2004. Ms Abernathy underlined how new wireless technologies — and others that are sure to follow — can revolutionize societies and help to close the broadband divide that exists within and among countries. She cautioned, though, that the effects of such technologies could be ”stunted or ephemeral if licensing and regulatory frameworks impose artificial barriers and disincentives to investment”. And so the onus is on regulators “to adjust, alter or reform their regulatory codes, wherever possible, to dismantle unnecessary rules that may have been appropriate in traditional markets emerging from monopoly, but which may stifle innovations and competition in a converged environment,” Ms Abernathy stressed in her closing remarks to GSR.

The consensus

The ways in which regulators can help involve all segments of their societies in supporting broadband development are spelled out in a new groundbreaking document entitled: Best Practice Guidelines for the Promotion of Low-Cost Broadband and Internet Connectivity. Consensus on these guidelines was achieved under Ms Abernathy’s leadership. In this document, 77 regulatory authorities from both developed and developing countries, with representatives from 106 countries, express a shared goal to create national regulatory frameworks that are flexible and that enable competition between multiple private sector service providers who may want to utilize a variety of technology platforms and delivery options. The event attracted 350 participants, who recognized that broadband network technologies can enable societies around the world to reach for greater connectivity and capacity to achieve the goals of the information society outlined in the Plan of Action that was endorsed by 175 countries at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in December 2003.

Wired and wireless broadband access

Broadband Internet access continues to grow worldwide, and had reached more than 102 million subscribers at the start of 2004. Today, digital subscriber lines (DSL) and cable modems are the dominant broadband access technologies. Worldwide, DSL accounts for 57 per cent of the broadband user base, followed by cable modem service with 37 per cent. Fixed-line access makes up the vast majority of broadband use today because it was initially available as a “wired” connection to the Internet. As a result, many economies with low fixed-line or cable television penetration rates have been left behind the broadband bandwagon. Even among the 6 million or so broadband users not employing DSL or cable modems, the majority use fixed-line alternatives such as metro Ethernet/apartment local area networks ( a significant share of the market in Hong Kong, China and in Sweden) or fibre-to-the-home (growing in importance in Iceland and Japan).

Existing and evolving wireless technologies and standards are expanding the places where we can have access to the Internet and other information networks. The most popular and widespread of these technologies is “wireless fidelity” (Wi-Fi), which offers connectivity at a speed of 11 Mbit/s over a range of up to 100 metres, using licence-exempt spectrum in the 2.4 GHz band. For the moment, broadband users on wireless platforms are still very much in the minority. But the status of wireless broadband as a semi-niche technology is changing. There is a growing expectation that wireless broadband technologies may be the most attractive solution in developing countries without an extensive or well-established fixed-line infrastructure.

Connectivity in action

Ms Abernathy shared her experience of a journey she made to Alaska at the beginning of 2004 to visit a village above the Arctic Circle, where the residents had incorporated DSL and wireless broadband services into efforts to improve their daily lives. “Using these broadband technologies, a consortium established links to schools, health clinics and many private homes. It was vivid proof of how broadband connections can erase distances, dissolve geographic isolation, link citizens to government services and energize local economies,” she recounted.

Similar broadband roll-outs are being pioneered all over the world, with governments spearheading public awareness campaigns to encourage greater take-up of broadband. Governments from Bhutan and India to Latin America have experimented with broadband network solutions — many of them wireless — to overcome distance and isolation by linking villages and rural areas to national networks.

Wi-Fi hotspots are providing broadband wireless Internet access, allowing individuals to send and receive e-mail or use voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, and have become very popular “as a free service”. Many university campuses, conference venues (including ITU), airports, coffee shops and hotels offer free wireless local area network (WLAN) access for users that come within range of their hotspots. A decision taken by the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference in July 2003 to release additional spectrum for WLAN use in the 5 GHz range globally may also add to the popularity of Wi-Fi.

The advent of technologies such as Wi-MAX (wireless interoperability for microwave access) has raised the issue of whether these low-cost access platforms should be licensed. Countries such as the United States have decided against licensing, but have mandated technical parameters for unlicensed use. Wi-MAX and Wi-Bro (wireless broadband) promise much wider geographical coverage capabilities than Wi-Fi, stretching up to 50 kilometres for services to fixed locations and 1 kilometre for services to mobile vehicles.

The dialogue

"Technological innovations and market developments are forcing telecommunication regulators to rethink their regulatory practices," said Hamadoun I. Touré, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. "The reality is that with a full range of ICT services and devices available on different networks – regulators must face the question of whether licences that limit operators to specific services or technologies still makes sense."

From the discussions at GSR, a number of regulators are already developing a new mix of technology and service neutral licensing practices and policies to free spectrum for use by the ever-growing numbers of wireless Internet devices and technologies. A session on “Licensing today” was moderated by Ms Abernathy. A second session entitled: “Addressing convergence licensing issues” was moderated by Ewan Sutherland, Executive Director of the International Telecommunications Users Group (INTUG). While relaxing licensing and spectrum management requirements, a number of regulators are at the same time reviewing policies that had until now left the Internet completely free from regulation.

At a third session that focused on “Licensing tomorrow”, with Muna Nijem, Chairman and CEO of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Jordan as moderator, panelists agreed that VoIP was inevitable as a future voice service medium. At present, however, the issue is generating much heat for regulators, which are facing complaints from incumbents about “by-pass” of circuit-switched services. Universal service/access support and interconnection are chief among the regulatory issues that are yet to be worked out in most jurisdictions.

A fourth session “Towards a new era in spectrum management” was moderated by Ernest Ndukwe, Chief Executive, Nigerian Communications Commission. Two break-out sessions were also held, with the first one on “Broadband”, moderated by Dato V. Danapalan, Chairman of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. The second was on “How to combat spam” and was moderated by Bob Horton, Acting Chairman, Australian Communications Authority.

Lord Currie, Chairman of the United Kingdom’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) and keynote speaker at the GSR, explained that his country had recognized the phenomenon of convergence by combining an array of agencies into a converged communications regulatory authority. He emphasized that broadband networks are at the core of British communications policies. After an initial lag in broadband network expansion, services are growing rapidly today, augmented by the availability of local loop unbundling. Work is going on to expand flexibility in service provision and to introduce spectrum trading in the United Kingdom.

GSR welcomed the release of ITU ‘s report: Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2004/2005: Licensing in an Era of Convergence. The report underlines that previously separate market segments, such as mobile and land-line telephony, are merging into consolidated markets for substitutable services. Companies from previously separate industries are literally converging, through mergers and acquisitions, to form wide-ranging media and communication market players. In the words of Ms Abernathy: “The benefit to consumers is that convergence increasingly allows greater competition among all kinds of different providers: incumbent telephone companies, Internet service providers, cable television system operators, direct-to-home satellite providers — even electric power utilities. Through digital transmission and what I call ‘EoIP’ — everything over IP — all of these types of providers can enter each others’ markets, where they will be forced to lower prices, offer innovative service packages and pioneer new products and services in order to attract greater market share. The result will benefit customers of all income scales. “

Director Hamadoun Touré, in his launch of the Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2004/2005 report, stated “that there is a direct link between the Trends report and the Best Practice Guidelines. It will take innovative regulatory practices like converged licensing to achieve low cost broadband and Internet access. And only low cost broadband and Internet access will enable the citizens of developing countries to participate in the Information Society”.

If broadband is going to be a success, it needs to be priced at a level that is affordable to all users. For example, the European Union has pointed to broadband deployment and take-up as essential for the future industrial competitiveness of its Member States. However, consumer prices in Europe remain, on average, higher than those in Asia, on a megabit-per-second basis (see Figure 1 at the end of the article), and this continues to inhibit take-up.

Some lessons could be learned from the mobile sector, which has surged ahead and now serves nearly 1.5 billion pre- and post-paid subscribers. Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2004/2005 reports that the Internet, which had around 699 million users worlwide by mid-2004, has witnessed slow growth in the first part of this decade. Perhaps the key to getting Internet growth back on track is to make high-speed Internet access available to more of those mobile users, especially the 200 million or so users who now own a mobile phone but not a fixed-line telephone. Technologies such as IMT-2000 (3G mobile) and Wi-MAX offer this possibility.

Three countries have led the mobile surge in recent times: China, India and Russia. China’s Ministry of Information Industry reported in July 2004 that the country had 310 million mobile phone users — more than the entire population of the United States. India lags behind China, in terms of total numbers, but is now starting to experience exponetial mobile service growth as well. At the end of October 2004, India had 44.51 million mobile subscribers and 43.96 million fixed-line subscribers. Russia’s mobile subscribers surged from 36.5 million in 2003 to almost 60 million by September 2004.

Equipment vendors and service providers used the GSR to showcase new, low-cost broadband and Internet telecommunication equipment. Exhibitors included Cisco Systems, Clearwire-NextNet Wireless, Ericsson, Intel Corp., Intrado, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Midas Communication Technologies Pvt, Nortel Networks Corp., Qualcomm Inc., TE Data, Texas Instruments and Vivato.

GSR: the most important global venue for regulators

The consensus reached on the guidelines confirms the reputation of GSR as the most important global venue for regulators to share views and experiences by fostering an open dialogue amongst themselves and with key stakeholders, including the private sector, investors and consumers. Ms Abernathy undelined the uniqueness of the event in these words: “There is no other event where we can engage in a dialogue with our peers — people who have to address the very same issues in their country that we do in ours. In the decisions we make, we are each driven by the same goal — to ensure that we have the best quality and most innovative telecommunication services available to our citizens at reasonable rates. We can be honest and supportive of each other, because we have faced — or will face — similar challenges as we chart our regulatory path for the future.”

Participants agreed that the views of regulators on such an important set of enabling technologies should be expressed to those seeking ways to build the information society. In this regard, they welcomed warmly the invitation from the Tunisian regulator, the Instance Nationale des Télécommunications de Tunisie, to hold the next GSR in Tunisia just before the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society that will take place in Tunis from 16 to 18 November 2005. There, GSR will have the opportunity to present formally its Broadband and Internet Connectivity Guidelines.

To the heart of the matter

The guidelines are intended to be pro-active and pro-competitive. They reflect the realities regulators face daily. “They remind us to keep in mind our national and regional policy goals; to prepare the ground for competition and capital investment; to ensure fair and reasonable access to broadband networks, including the Internet; to reassess our regulatory structures in the light of convergence; and to adopt technology-neutral policies that do not favour one technology or market segment over another,” Ms Abernathy noted.

At the end of the day, the objective of regulation — and of promoting the potential of broadband — is to improve the lives of of the citizens of every country. For that reason, Ms Abernathy underscored the need to educate and inform consumers about the new services that will be available to them through broadband networks. “As we work to close the broadband access gap, we have to ensure that our citizens are empowered with the skills they need to make full use of multimedia and computing applications that will be available to them. This will build communities of users and stimulate the kind of demand that will sustain broadband and IP-enable services in all kinds of localities, “ she concluded.

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(Copy provided by ITU-D to publish in info @ CITEL)