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...

Better regulation is intended to serve as a framework to increase economic competitiveness, ensuring that legislation and rules imposed by all levels of government are proportionate and will help deliver more jobs and economic growth. Legislation and regulations at all levels which might have a...

Opinion polls suggest Scotland will reject independence, opening the way to a review of economic governance in the United Kingdom, a complex quasi-federal, asymmetric system of administrations and parliaments, the result of ad hoc changes over decades. One party wants telecommunications...

The Scottish Government published proposals for the administration of an independent Scotland, its case for a vote in favour of independence in September 2014 and an outline of its manifesto in the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2016. Opinion polls continue to show that only about one...

The internal market was to have been completed in 1992, yet for telecommunications progress stalled some years ago. In 2003 a legal framework came into force that contained complex mechanisms for the harmonisation of regulatory decision making, with regulators bound to work to complete the...

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...

Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) and territories face risks of natural disasters, climate change and are economic shocks. Markets are small and monopolistic or oligopolistic, with few realistic possibilities of further entry. There is insufficient competition to drive prices down to...