Regulatory Approaches to Next Generation Networks (NGNS) : An International Comparison

The emergence of Next Generation Networks (NGNs) raises profound challenges for regulators everywhere. Different regulatory authorities have approached these problems in strikingly different ways, depending in part on the overall regulatory milieu in which they operate, and in part on the nature of the NGN migration envisioned by major market players. Also, the NGN core network raises significantly different issues from those of the NGN access network. The migration to NGN raises many of the same issues that were already on the table as a result of the broader migration to IP-based services, notably in regard to the de-coupling of the service from the underlying network. To these concerns are added profound questions related to the nature of market power. Will NGNs enable new forms of competition? Will competitive bottlenecks remain, especially in the last mile? Will NGN enable new forms of bottlenecks to emerge, especially in the upper layers of the network, perhaps as a result of new IMS capabilities? Regulators in the UK, Netherlands, and Germany have been forced to deal with these issues due to relatively rapid migration to NGNs proposed by their respective incumbent telecoms operators. In this paper, we compare and contrast the many regulatory proceedings that have been produced by the regulatory authorities in these countries, by the European Regulators’ Group (ERG/IRG), and also those of Japan