In January 2012 the Westminster government offered to devolve to the Scottish Parliament the powers necessary to conduct a referendum on the independence of Scotland, with the possibility of repealing the Act of Union of 1707. This could return Great Britain to a Union of the Crowns, with...

In the autumn of 2014 the residents of Scotland, but not other parts of the UK, will vote on whether to leave the UK to become a separate state, with a positive vote leading to an independent parliament being elected in 2016. It would remain within the EU and in compliance with its acquis...

In December 2011, prosecutors in the United States of America announced the settlement of cases against Magyar Telekom and Deutsche Telekom in respect of bribery of officials in two countries in the Balkans. In the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) they had obtained a delay in a...

National roaming is a measure that can be agreed commercially between operators to extend coverage or can be imposed or facilitated by governments as a means to increase competition amongst networks. It has been used with varying degrees of success in a range of countries, notably in the...

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is used in an expressly extra-territorial manner to address weaknesses in anti-corruption legislation and practices, principally in developing and least developed countries. A range of policies were advocated by international financial institutions and by...

Authorities in the USA have been increasingly active in enforcing the provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) on firms engaged in paying bribes in cash or in kind. This paper reviews a series of investigations and settlements of cases in the telecommunications sector, which...

The third EU Roaming Regulation (531/2012) took effect on July 1, 2012, replacing Regulation 544/2009. Wholesale and retail price caps for voice, SMS and data have been extended and reduced, with new retail caps for data usage. Anti-bill shock remedies now apply outside the EU. Measures to...

Swaziland is the last remaining absolute monarchy in Africa, though with parallels to Morocco. It faces immense challenges, with a weak economy, a fiscal crisis created by the King and his cronies, plus the highest level of HIV/AIDS infections in Africa. The arrangements for the...

This paper reviews the application of national antitrust law and the implementation of the European Union’s telecommunications directives to the markets in the United Kingdom, against the declared policy objective of raising national competitiveness. It illustrates the complexity of the...

In 1996 Indian police raided the homes of Sukh Ram, the former minister of telecommunications, finding INR 36 million in cash. He was convicted in 2009 for having “disproportionate assets” under the Prevention of Corruption Act, fined and sentenced to 3 years hard labour. He was separately...