The emerging consensus on the broad steps that need to be taken to maximise the positive impact of ICTs include:

• market restructuring through the introduction or extension of competition to speed up the roll out of networks and services, increase bandwidth and reduce costs;
• the shift of investment risk from public to private capital through privatisation with the associated technology and management gains;
• demand driven aggregation to stimulate provision of ICT services in low-income areas; and 
• the development of diverse skills and capacity to drive the reform process, development of ICT skills to drive the economy, support for development applications and incentives  for research and development and innovation.

Universal service levies and funds to support services to under-serviced areas have by and large proved unsuccessful. Though levies if reasonable can be tolerated they reduce investor sentiment and require competencies to ensure they are successfully deployed. Large untapped universal services funds exist across the continent in countries where teledensities remain low. Likewise the roll out of telecentres in many countries has not been demand driven or entrepreneurially managed. As a result the skeleton of well-intention telecentres that were not sustainable litter the continent.

Sequencing of the reform process is critical. Research indicates that countries that privatise prior to opening up their markets to competition tend to see the continuation of monopoly prices and constrained roll out. Countries that privatise their incumbent alongside the opening up of the market or afterwards tend to receive a lower price for the state asset but see far better performance under competitive conditions. So the longer-term gains of competition may be greater than the short-term gains of a high price.

Another prerequisite to successful privatisation and liberalisation is the establishment of an autonomous regulator to ensure fair competition and regulate against market failure. Prior to the operation of competitive markets, regulators need to act as proxies for competition. Primary amongst these will be price regulation and ensuring interconnection between networks. Telecommunications as an infrastructure industry requires a level of co-operation between competitors often referred to as co-opetition. Competing networks need to interconnect to each other to provide seamless communication to consumers and users. Checking the dominance of market players becomes one of the major challenges for regulators as new operators and service providers enter the market.

The imperfect nature of developing country markets and inequities that exist require strategic regulation to enable innovative service provision, especially to under-serviced areas and fair competitive markets to promote the viability of new entrants needed to build the information infrastructure necessary for participation in the network economy. Simply removing all market entry restrictions, however, is likely to place an even more onerous burden on already struggling regulators for greater access regulation and is unlikely to contribute universal access and other developmental goals. A fundamental restructuring of the market is needed to remove the anti-competitive incentives that exist in the vertically integrated market structures that have generally accompanied privatisation in developing countries. This is likely to reduce the need for negative anti-competitive regulation, freeing up regulatory resources for more strategic regulation towards achieving national developmental objectives.