Utility Reform : Regulating Quality Standards to Improve Access for the Poor

Privatization of infrastructure services is often followed by stricter enforcement of quality standards, which raises costs, maintaining, or worsening the exclusion of the poor. The poor would get easier access to service, if the main provider was permitted to deviate from this uniform standard, offering poor consumers a service in which an acceptable relaxation in quality, led to a lower price. This note reviews the legal, and technical challenges for quality diversification by utilities, and early results from efforts by some to diversify