One possible approach is for governments to contribute assets and infrastructure, potentially through public utilities, in co-ventures with private operators. There is also real benefit in governments’ providing a high degree of up-front certainty about regulatory treatment of sharing arrangements for new network build-outs.Introducing the Digital Ecosystem Investment and infrastructure-sharing address the basic building blocks of connectivity, but the true value of connectedness includes higher layers – beyond the network layer. True interoperability comprises everything from technological interconnection through data compatibility and even human and institutional connections and compatibility. At the technological level, the exchange is simply ones and zeros – electronic exchanges of signals. At the next level up, data must be framed, transmitted and decoded through a common intelligence – a common set of hardware and software that allows data to become information. Human minds, however, perform the critical function of converting information into knowledge within the context of inter-cultural and inter-societal interoperability. The digital ecosystem, then, assumes a holistic aspect that includes everything from basic technical interconnection up to institutional cooperation – including the work of policy-makers and regulators at local, national and even inter-governmental levels.One of the earliest manifestations of this holistic connectivity is likely to be the Internet of Things (IoT), a term coined to help us understand the complexity of literally billions of devices, appliances and systems interconnected with each other – and often with the global, universal Internet. As noted in Chapter 3, Consumers will encounter IoT in everything from parking meters, thermostats, cardiac monitors, tires, roads and car components, to supermarket shelves and many other types of physical objects and appliances. IoT-enabled objects and devices can share data directly using protocols such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, via mobile phone networks and specialized radio networks, or over the global Internet. Device manufacturers, network operators, application platform architects and software developers are forming a broad ecosystem that is even now developing IoT services. IoT devices will have the biggest societal impact where they are used together in larger, inter-connected, systems. At the macro-level, two of the areas of greatest IoT development and investment are:(1) “Smart cities” – where infrastructure and building systems will improve the efficiency and sustainability of a whole range of urban activities; and (2) Smart power and water grids – which will see improved efficiency in the transmission of power and the monitoring and maintenance of delivery systems.Apart from the kind of machine-to-machine (M2M) interoperability implied by the IoT, human knowledge is increasingly implicated in the profusion of digital wireless services and applications (“apps”) being developed and disseminated. Conventional services such as banking, access to government services, and education are now accessible in regions where these services were either unavailable or inadequate before. Governments throughout the world -- and particularly in developing countries -- are looking to mobile platforms for innovative ways to improve the delivery of public services and to foster participation in public policy-making. The potential for economic growth, improved human connections and communication and cultural exchange – just to scratch the surface – are tremendous and exciting.Of course, this is why the major software and computer companies around the world are so eager to become constructive players in the growth of infrastructure. The more infrastructure is built, the greater will be the global reach of their by-now nearly ubiquitous mobile services, operating systems and apps.Clearly, a comprehensive, digitally connected ecosystem calls for holistic approaches to policy-making and regulation. One could be forgiven for paraphrasing Samuel F.B. Morse (inventor of the telegraph) and asking, “What have we wrought?” The answer is that we are daily and monthly creating nothing less than the most interconnected system of communications and knowledge-sharing in human history (along with an entire environment of interconnected machines). And there is no end in sight.152 Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2016