This paper reviews the nature and economic significance of the activities carried on by standards development organizations (SDOs), focusing in particular upon the telecommunications and information technology standards-setting work of the government-created public and quasi-public institutions,...

This article focuses on the prospects for pay-TV in the UK over the next 10 years. The major development on the horizon is the advent of digital television the introduction of which has the potential to significantly increase the demand for pay-TV services. This article examines some of the key...

The authors review recent scholarly and policy initiatives in respect of media pluralism and argue that contradictions between policy objectives, in analytical approaches and deficiencies in some established methodologies mean that robust conclusions have been hard to secure. They argue that...

The key task in the next stage of spectrum management is to adapt regulation to the prospect of widespread sharing, on a much more sophisticated basis than sharing is used today. There is a role for the regulator to take steps to expand the area of choice within which public and private sector...

Next generation access (NGA) networks are an opportunity and a challenge for regulators. Unlike the costs of a copper access networks, those of an NGA are not yet sunk; hence fixed monopoly suppliers need an incentive to invest. This need is likely to influence the regulator's unbundling and...

The attention of the EU is currently focused on which aspects of telecommunications should be regulated at a national and which at a European level. The paper argues that in practice this is not an 'either/or' question, but a question of the degree of regulatory detail at the European level. The...

The paper discusses the dilemmas facing European regulators (the European Commission and the national regulatory authorities) over the promotion of investment in Next Generation Access Networks (NGANs). Whereas the US has adopted a deregulatory approach and parts of Asia takes an approach linked...

The BBC is active in an increasing number of markets. In some cases the BBC enters the market using licence fee income; in others its commercial operations have linkages with licence-fee activities--for example, by provision of resources for programme making, joint funding of programmes, trailing...

In the course of encouraging competition in telecommunications markets, regulators in both Australia and the UK are developing proposals to impose accounting separation upon dominant incumbents. This paper examines the logic behind accounting separation as an alternative to structural...

This paper introduces a symposium on the economics and regulation of pay broadcasting. First it reviews the costs of providing combinations of analogue and digital television programming and telecommunication services using a variety of possible combinations of technologies and discusses demand...