The availability of undersea cables around Africa has been transformed by a recent surge of investment, ending the monopoly in West Africa and an absence in East Africa. Private investors alone and with governments have funded the laying of cables. Consequently, previous calls for regulated...

The growth of Internet access enabled the creation of functions (e.g., e-commerce and search) that were initially convenient but which a small number of firms used to achieve winner-takes-all, through the application of ICTs, network externalities and two-sided markets. They turned themselves...

The banner on a quadripartite package to boost the economy of Edinburgh and adjacent parts of Scotland is that it will become the 'Data capital of Europe', through coordinated efforts by the United Kingdom government, Scottish Ministers, several local authorities, universities and colleges. The...

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...

On the margins of Europe lie a number of micro-states and micro-territories. Global best practice in telecommunications fits them poorly ‒ it does not scale down to the necessary level. The problems are aggravated by geographical remoteness and (except for Iceland) not being part of the EU’s...

The European Union adopted a Roaming Regulation (717/2007) in 2007, then extended its duration and widened its scope (544/2009) in 2009. In 2006, the European Commission held two consultations on a possible regulation. It made a formal legislative proposal in July 2006, to implement wholesale...

In a referendum on 23rd June 2016, the United Kingdom (UK) voted for ‘Brexit’, i.e., to leave the European Union (EU). After some delay the government will invoke Article 50 TEU, which would begin a two-year period of negotiation for a withdrawal agreement, after which the EU treaties would...

While attention has been given to the uses of big data by network operators and to the provision of open data by governments, there has been no systematic attempt to re-examine the regulatory systems for telecommunications. The power of public authorities to access the big data held by operators...

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...