I’d like to draw your attention to some issues that are concerning
market actors and legislators within telecommunications sector. As
well as note special role, that could be played by three Baltic
states in the nearest future.
Tendencies of globalisation and convergence
Within past ten years technologies enabled and enforced
tendencies of global market. At first this became obvious with TV,
which was reaching global markets. Satellite and cable
technologies made possible broadcasts from other countries that
cannot be controlled by governmental bodies within the recipient
country.
Another obvious example is Internet, which rapidly became a form
of mass media. Issues of control of illegal content are far from
being solved.
But these technologies play great role in our lives, and soon will
play even bigger. So issues are to be solved.
Another axis is that of convergence. Technologies and services
provided were tightly integrated all the time from first telecom. But
now world seems a bit different:
- Now we have cable TV’s that provide Internet and will
provide fixed voice telephony after demonopolisation of
telecommunication sector.
- We have mobile phone operators, which provide Internet,
and through this radio broadcasts and all Internet related
services. Furthermore, they soon will be able to provide
video with G3 technology.
- We have fixed telephony provider, which provides Internet
and wants to give you cable TV options.
Thus how in this interconnected world can you regulate cable TV's,
when fixed telephony operator provides you with TV quality video
signal, and call this data transfer?
So we soon will need to abandon models of regulation of separate
sectors and come to recognize two relevant objects of regulation –
infrastructure and contents.
On infrastructure. For example in USA we had examples of cable
TV providers providing internet access to their clients, while
banning video signal transfer through their internet channels. This
is just one obvious example to mention, when providers of services
can easily come to changing liberal nature of Internet.
For that not to happen, we need to formulate principles and stick to
them. We have not to hurry, but not to be late either.
On contents. This question progressed much more, but is still far
to go. We have a workable framework “TV without borders”, we
have initiatives of EU to work on illegal contents problems, so here
is field to join and act.
Again, we need principles for them to be implemented.
So we will need frameworks for regulating these very complex
objects, which are just not available yet. If they are not available
someone needs to work on them.
As well, we will need regulatory bodies, which will be able to
implement those principles. And it is not an easy task to create
them efficient.
Resume
I don’t have ready available answers to all these questions. I hope
you don’t either .
But considering Baltic states as region of quite different but at the
same time countries much in common, I will propose Baltic
Assembly to start hearings on global IT&T market of Baltic states.
This could be as a social experiment for entering into the new age.
Baltic states provide much more homogeneous environment, than
we see in EU. So they will constitute model of what can later be
developed into broader context. Issues addressed will be smaller,
there will be only three parties to negotiate and take decisions, etc.
On the other hand, countries are different in their journey to
liberalized telecommunications market and other criteria. So they
will reflect some differences that will be encountered in broader
area. But hopefully they will be solvable for us to deal.