PSB Prominence in a Converged Media World

This report by Robin Foster and Tom Broughton and commissioned by the BBC, examines whether the UK’s media prominence rules need updating to continue to support universal access to public service broadcasting content in a converged world and, if so, what regulatory approach policy makers should consider.

Reconciling private market governance and law: A policy primer for digital platforms

This paper, launched at a Lisbon Council event in Brussels, considers the opportunities and anxieties in relation to digital platforms, and develops a policy appraisal framework in relation to digital platforms. Digital platforms compete to serve the interests of participants in the market, including crafting rules - embodied in codes of conduct and software code - that grow the market and help address market imperfections. Further, digital platforms are heterogeneous and no flavour of ‘platform regulation’ is likely to be appropriate across the entire economy. A common theme is that digital platform market governance (‘code’) needs to be reconciled with law and regulation; rather than thinking of law as something that should be imposed on a market which might otherwise be considered 'lawless’. This perspective requires a different approach to thinking about regulation, and may require new institutional approaches.

Recurring spectrum fees

This paper considers the impact of recurring spectrum fees. It concludes that fees in relation to mobile use do not promote the optimal use of spectrum since operators face their own use opportunity cost, irrespective of fees, in terms of the trade-off between meeting data demand growth through more intensive use of existing spectrum (including investing in mobile sites) and the purchase of additional spectrum in future. Further, given the ongoing reallocation of spectrum for mobile use, mobile use has higher value than alternative use at the margin. Mobile operators therefore face the opportunity cost of spectrum absent fees, whilst fees may harm investment. 

Regulatory Independence - Revisited

In this note, Brian Williamson revists the rationale for regulatory independence, and how it fits with increasing government ambitions for network infrastructure

Regulatory Trade-offs

Communications policy and regulatory objectives are wide ranging and complex. Countries seek affordable, diverse, widely available and used services of a high quality, but virtually all regulatory decisions involve trade-offs between these objectives. A given decision may support one policy objective, but perhaps impede another, or come at a cash cost to be borne by the treasury.

Communications Chambers worked with the WEF and Vodafone to understand such trade-offs, and to develop an online 'spirit level' tool to map of how countries around the world are striking different balances between telecoms objectives.

The tool and the associated paper are available here