Existing telecoms network infrastructure (and associated services and business models) are now moving to next-generation architecture offering multiple converged services (such as IPTV, video, audio, voice, data and mobility) based on very-high-speed IP access supported by increasingly fibred networks. This move represents simultaneously a major investment and a major change for the telecoms industry of magnitudes unparalleled in the relatively brief history of competitive telecoms service provision.
Current telecoms regulation has been designed largely to introduce competition into an existing and relatively stable industry environment, not to oversee and encourage the construction of an entirely different network and service environment. The next five to ten years or more will present regulators and the industry with some difficult and fundamental issues, and some regulatory decisions will have a correspondingly difficult and fundamental effect on some players and their business models. Players of all types should therefore be very concerned over the increased potential of regulators to adversely affect their businesses.
Regulatory Headaches in the Transition to Next-Generation Networks identifies some of the key issues and potential regulatory developments that next-generation architecture could foster, such as:
- the three broad problem areas
- the different issues raised by next-generation networks (NGNs) and next-generation access networks (NGAs)
- the impact on legacy services and networks
- the fundamental difficulties with competition in next-generation access
- how fully converged services and networks undermine current regulatory categories
- the rising importance of socio-economic concerns
- the changing role of competition in NGNs.