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Telecommunications as a Network Industry
Broadcasting and telecommunication technologies, standards and infrastructure remained quite static for the first 100 years of their existence. However, in the last few decades infrastructure has required constant reinvestment in network upgrades in response to the constant waves of new generation technologies and associated services.
Infostructure
Infostructure
The potential to enhance service delivery, spur economic development and alleviate poverty is all dependent on the creation of a cost effective and efficient information infrastructure – ‘infostructure’ - with the national capabilities and capacity on which to run these enhanced services. As a result, historically, the developmental focus in the ICT sector has been on access, and therefore on the provision of infrastructure. Access to infrastructure is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sustainable development however. ICTs provide a means rather than an end in itself. The contextual relevance of the information provided and the particular technological tools affect the sustainability of ICT and development initiatives.
As long as Africa has amongst the highest communications costs and most curtailed range of communications services in the world, the potential of ICTs to drive development will not be realised. Affordable access is the key not only to consumer welfare but also to reducing the input costs to business and the underlying costs to any network economy. Special exemption rates for call centre, e-rates for schools and other strategies to overcome the barriers to deploying ICTs in Africa will remain piecemeal solutions that will not contribute to the wider adoption of ICTs as long as the fundamental causes of the high communications charges and limited range of services is not addressed. It is important that those that approve policies or laws understand the limitations of such well-intentioned interventions and are able to push for more sustainable solutions.
Convergence
Convergence
Historically, telecommunications and broadcasting have been operated on distinct platforms, with IT operating as a quite separate unregulated sector, but with digitization and the reduction of all communication information into bits, telecommunication services such as voice services and data services such as the Internet can be offered on cable and satellite infrastructure proportioned for television. Television can be offered on new broadband networks of fibre, upgraded cable and wireless infrastructure originally used for telecommunications. This has allowed not only for the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications but for convergence within telecommunications, for example, between fixed and mobile voice services that previously were operated on separate networks.
This has compelled policy makers to create a regulatory framework and licensing regime better suited to the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunication infrastructures. Primarily this entails shifting the licensing of the silo-like vertically integrated operators that have characterized the market structure in the industrial era to horizontal service layers – infrastructure, services and content. (ITU, 2005) Increasingly, it is only the ‘infrastructure’ or ‘network’ layer that requires a licence, with the other service layers automatically receiving class licenses on compliance with basic threshold requirements, which might be only registration. This framework is more suited to the IP-based networks that are likely to dominate communication rollout in future and the seamlessly integrated information infrastructure necessary for a modern economy .
Next Generation Networks
Next Generation Networks
Whilst digitisation allowed for the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications services through reduction of all services into bits that could be carried across any platform, it is through new IP-based networks that seamless communication across integrated networks can be realized. Such networks are generally referred to as Next Generation Networks (NGN) and are evidenced in the increasing number of lower cost, IP-based services such as Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Television (IPTV).
The shift from circuit-switched to packet-switched protocols allows traditionally distinct PSTN, wireless, DSL, 3G, CATV and potentially new Power Line Communication networks to be integrated through common standards. The layered nature of these NGNs’ architecture allows for the separation of the service from the transmission layers and permits new services to be offered independently of the underlying infrastructure on which they run. A significant characteristic of IP based networks is the ability to distribute intelligence across the networks from the core to the periphery, unlike traditional Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN), enabling the connection of different types of access networks at their intelligent edge . This is critical for the growth of potentially cheaper, decentralized services and the seamless connection of networks that enhances the network effects or positive multipliers.
Combining IP-based services with lower cost rapidly deployable wireless technologies, has enabled rapid and easy entry into the market by new service providers, some of which have been able to circumvent technical and regulatory restrictions, often undermining the rationale for regulation and potentially the revenues of traditional PSTN.
Despite prohibitions on many of these IP-based services in many developing countries, the significance of this type of network for countries with limited infrastructure is that considerably more efficient IP-based networks could be rapidly and flexibly deployed. Unencumbered by the financial and technical concerns of those countries with extensive legacy networks, such countries would be able to benefit from open standards and global economies of scale and scope. Countries without these obstacles or those that rapidly reach a decision on how to enable IP-based networks will have quicker times to market and are more likely to achieve more widespread ICT diffusion .
With the rise of rapidly deployable wireless networks and open access approaches to network development becomes a feasible way of deploying next-generation broadband networks in areas which have historically been regarded as uneconomic by large operators or which fixed lines services have simply not yet reached. An open access approach to networks allows multiple service providers to compete over the same network at wholesale prices or allows a municipality or community to erect a network for local usage.
