This paper presents an econometric study of information and communication technology (ICT) in all 70,000 rural villages in Thailand, where the ICT considered consists of fixed-line telephone service, mobile telephone service, public telephones, computers, and Internet service. The results may...

Thailand is now engaged in the important process of reforming the countrys telecommunications structure. New telecommunications acts have been passed and regulators have been designated to regulate this telecommunications transformation. However, there are many critical details that must be...

Emergency responders such as firefighters, police, and paramedics depend on reliable and ubiquitous wireless communications. Failures in these communications systems can cost lives. Particularly since 9/11, there has been great concern in the US about the possibility of failures due to lack of...

Spectrum licensing enables quality of service guarantees, but often leads to inefficient use of spectrum. Unlicensed spectrum promotes efficiency through sharing, but quality of service cannot be guaranteed, which is a serious problem for some applications. Such applications may be better served...

This paper proposes a novel policy to motivate private-sector operators of basic infrastructure to expand infrastructure into previously unserved regions. It is particularly useful when resources are transferred to the private sector, as occurs during the privatisation of a state-owned...

Deploying a single nationwide broadband wireless network to serve all public safety users would have great advantages over the existing fragmented public safety systems. A nationwide system could be created to serve both public safety and commercial subscribers, which would allow a provider to...

Considers how changes in information technology affect tax base design (determining who, when, and where transactions are taxed); and discusses barter and tax avoidance, double taxation, and the long-term implications of electronic commerce for state and federal corporations.

Deregulation and its Discontents examines the different ways in which the issues related to deregulation and reregulation have been addressed in Asia. The role of government in business has gone through distinct, if overlapping, cycles: regulation, deregulation and reregulation. However, little...

The existing US public safety wireless infrastructure consists of thousands of disparate systems built by separate local agencies. Problems with interoperability, cost, spectral efficiency, and limited functionality plague these systems but could be significantly reduced through the deployment...