Regulation: a subsiding fervour?

摘要

Debates over telecomms regulation are as old as the mountains and equally set in stone. Regulators remain divided over their responsibility to consumers versus their need to foster industry growth; they are struggling in their assignation with new models of convergence between telecomms and broadcasting, and between transport and content, as well the differences between boom and bust. Recently, in a context far removed from the world of telecomms, a professor of politics was quoted describing a particularly notorious, if ageing, figure on the world stage as "very relevant, if only for the fact that the argument over whether he is relevant or not releveant is a[n]... issue." Much the same sentiment applies to the world's telecomms regulators. They may see themselves walking the mean streets of communications and information technology armed with baseball bats, but their supposed combatants tend to laugh rather than cower.