Competition policy is an active area of work under ITU-T Study Group 3’s Question 10/3 on the subject. It was already in the 1990s that the ITU membership recognized “the need for competitive safeguards to ensure the global maintenance and development of public and universal services”, and that ITU-T Study Group 3 was seen as “the appropriate forum where experts from regulators and operators representing developed and developing countries participate to discuss these issues” (see the 1997-2000 text of Q1/3).
The creation of an enabling environment for efficient market competition is particularly important in protecting consumers, expanding the set of products and services available, and encouraging innovation.
This has been a key aim for a majority of regulatory authorities and governments around the world. As reported in the ITU Telecommunication/ICT Regulatory Survey, most ITU Member States have legal definitions of the concept of dominance or significant market power (SMP). Consequently, they have adopted some form of ex-ante regulation. The identification of SMP issues often follows the European Union’s 2002 Common Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications Services. However, each country has its own interpretation and implementation of SMP measures.
The telecommunications sector is experiencing major upheaval as a result of various forms of convergence, such as the convergence of commercial mobile data with OTT (over-the-top) services using Web access. While fixed-line services are being challenged by mobile, fixed-mobile convergence led by powerful incumbent operators is also becoming a competition issue. The ICT sector’s boundaries are evolving as ICT-enabled services become more important to other industry sectors. Broadcast media services for entertainment are converging with video streaming and news-gathering. Commercial mobile infrastructure is essential to emergency services (Public Protection and Disaster Relief). ICT networks will underpin emerging intelligent transport systems; IoT/M2M services, including energy distribution with smart grids; mobile financial services (MFS); and, in some countries, education via distance-learning. These are all sectors of great economic consequence.
In view of the rapid and significant transformation of market definitions and the balance of market power in the ICT sector, there have been calls from members to re-evaluate the relevance of the concepts and measures associated with competition policy.
WTSA-16 approved a new international standard – Recommendation ITU-T D.261 “Principles for market definition and identification of operators with significant market power” – proposing principles and guidelines to assist countries in defining and identifying significant market power and assess whether or not, and the degree to which, this power has been abused by international telecommunications companies.
ITU-T Study Group 3 has also launched new work related to SMP, on topics including:
- Quantifying cross-border market power in telecommunications
- Impact of dynamic tariffing on market competitiveness
