Review, Network Development, Digital Inclusion, Developing Markets, Global: A new publication, Diversifying Participation in Network Development contains reports and case studies on techniques for building networks in developing and emerging markets. The publication sets out to provide policy makers, regulators, network operators and customers in emerging markets with a framework to enable them to provide sustainable, workable, long term solutions to the challenges of digital inclusion. For this reason alone it is one of the most interesting and valuable ICT publications we have seen recently at DevelopingTelecoms.

Commissioned by LIRNE.NET as part of its World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies program, the publication runs to over 230 pages. It includes analyses of current practice, business models and case studies from markets as far apart as Albania, the Caribbean, Ghana, Mexico, Nepal and South Africa. The report is in three sections.

The first deals with affordability and use issues by examining the demand for and use of communications services by poor people and how these have changed in the recent past. Up until ten years ago the key factor restricting ICT growth in developing and emerging markets was one of supply limitation, resulting from the high cost of fixed network installations and poor structural organisation, in particular monopoly suppliers.

As users of this site know and the report confirms, the switch from fixed to mobile networks, and the emergence in particular, of the pre-paid mobile business model, has had the effect of transforming the global ICT marketplace. Developing and emerging markets are now the main growth area for ICTs world-wide, not only because developed countries have or are in the process of reaching market saturation. As this publication makes clear, the transformation is taking place because a fundamentally new business model has emerged for communications in developing and emerging markets.

The detailed studies provide some very interesting and useful insights into the specifics of this transformation. Key to understanding how markets are changing, according to the report, is understanding how the higher calling costs of mobile compared to fixed networks have been offset by the greater control people in developing markets have over their usage of services. This means that ICT markets in developing countries are being driven by local service innovations demanded by new customers, rather than by the dictates of the network operators or equipment vendors.

This has resulted in remarkable growth through the emergence of a whole series of completely new business models. As the publication describes, it has even seen the emergence of markets trading in mobile phone pre-paid minutes. Other initiatives such as microfinance which helps with the purchase handsets and other technology previously not available, have been used in conjunction with the mobile revolution to provide people in developing markets with an unprecedented range of options and choices. And they are demonstrating remarkable initiative in using this to their advantage, through the market place, to direct services.

The second section of the report looks in more detail at a number of business models which can be used to extend participation in network development while the third section deals more specifically with the changes in regulation and considers how regulatory regimes need to develop if growth is not to be restricted in the future.

Overall, as the forward states, the reports demonstrate that most conventional wisdom about ICT development has been rendered obsolete in three critical areas:

• the demand for communication services by the poor
• the best way to extend telecom networks to poor regions, and
• the most appropriate policies and regulations for sector development.

It asserts that a new understanding must be developed and describes the basis for reaching this:

• research grounded heavily on case studies of new participants in network development
• innovative and experimental approaches to network development
• new models of demand, supply and markets, and
• a new proactive facilitating role for regulation.

The publication makes significant contributions to the policy and regulation issues under consideration in many developing countries, and to the development of a better understanding the new ICT sector and its development that must guide future ICT policy and regulation. The case studies offer invaluable practical insight into specific areas and mean this should be essential reading for anyone working in this area.

Diversifying Participation in Network Development, is edited by William Melody and Amy Mahan and published by the World Dialogue on Regulation (WDR). It is the third in a series of research cycles that WDR is undertaking to assess different approaches to regulation in a rapidly changing telecom environment. With the advent of privatisation, competition, and converging infrastructure sectors, the role of the regulator is in a transitional phase. The first World Dialogue on Regulation research cycle assessed two emerging regulatory trends and the report, The Next Step in Telecom Reform: ICT Convergence Regulation or Multisector Utility Regulation; and the second cycle, Stimulating Investment in Network Development: Roles for Regulators - are both available for download and hardcopies of the second can be ordered from WDR.

Diversifying Participation in Network Development is available, price US$25.00 from Comunica.

More info:

• www.regulateonline.org
• www.lirne.net

DevelopingTelecoms hopes to bring its users selected case studies from this important publication in the coming months.