WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS - 22 november 2005

Technological Convergence and Regulation

The seminar is organized on the initiative and with the financial support of InfoDev, which is keen to share its views and understanding of WISIS outputs with the sector’s leading players. The target public includes telecommunications manufacturers, national regulators and international organizations.

The dramatic technological progress made over recent decades has coincided with a first wave of reforms, which has had positive impact in developing countries. For the most part however, this positive impact has been accidental, resulting from a combination of internal and external pressures to open telecom markets up to competition,  and to ensure the evolution to GSM technology – generator of economies of scale when deployed in more mature markets. Regulators, policy-makers and the private sector are now confronted with sizeable challenges as they gear up for the next stage of reform, being called upon to devise and implement a new set of relevant and effective models and mechanisms.

In developing economies, major regulatory changes and transformations born of convergence are likely to have a dramatic effect on “plain old telecommunication regulatory models.” One of the central challenges for regulators, policy makers, experts and development agencies will be to anticipate the regulatory and policy models that need to be devised to meet the challenges and opportunities surrounding new technologies, and particularly the migration to digital networks.

One focal issue is the need to understand how, in a fast-moving technological environment, effective systems and regulatory policies can be developed to fully leverage the opportunities created by rapid technological changes.

The chief objective of this seminar is to help key private sector players, development agencies and NRAs in keeping track of new technologies and optimising their reactivity, by adjusting regulatory frameworks and legislation to innovations. The seminar will provide an opportunity to review and debate the relevance and impact of earlier policies, and to examine emerging trends in new technologies, new business models’ potential to leverage these technologies and policy-makers’ capacity to design and implement a new legislative framework.

The aim of the seminar will be to:

Look at prevailing technological trends, and examine their repercussion on central regulatory issues;

Highlight the various options and controversies surrounding these issues;

Provide a global overview of new telecommunications regulation best practices, drawing on case studies from developing and developed countries.

infoDev, a multi-donor program supported by bilateral and multilateral development agencies, helps the international development community to "makesense" of ICT as tools of development and poverty reduction through its research, knowledge products and services, pilots and “on-the-ground” projects. infoDev designs and commissions a rich mix of research, pilot projects, capacity building activities, scalability experiments, project services for donors and communities of practice around key theme in ICT for development.
» www.infodev.org

Scientific coordinator:
Bernard Sanchez - b.sanchez@idate.org
tel: +33 (0)467 144 420

For information:
Amna Mezni - a.mezni@idate.org
tel: + 33 (0)467 144 437

Download seminar program