A Cross-National Analysis of the Impact of Bureaucratic Structures of the Regulatory Authorities on the VoIP Regulation

The goal of this research is to examine the regulator's preparedness to aid the gradual diffusion of new inventions. In this paper we look at the advent of IP telephony, commonly known as Voice-over-IP, in different markets of the world. We examine the regulatory approaches to embrace and diffuse the technology in the respective markets. We have observed that although VoIP has become very popular technology since its inception, all the countries of the world did not equally embrace it. Among many reasons, we believe that regulatory intervention and in some cases regulatory capture played a vital role to cause this situation. Our hypotheses is that apart from the fact that the market has been the main catalyst, certain regulatory measures and the regulatory environment as a whole in different countries have played vital role in embracing the new technology. This gives us the opportunity to scrutinize the structure of telecommunication regulatory boards around world in light of VoIP technology and examine the impact of the regulatory environment on the diffusion of certain technology. In brief, examination of VoIP regulation would aid us to understand what are the prerequisites of a forward or backward looking national regulator