7 Meeting Technical Goals

Fostering innovation

Although telecommunications services and equipment are changing rapidly, established operators who have made extensive investments in early technologies tend to cling to established services and technologies, or safe options, despite the benefits of new technologies. Regulators can correct the behaviour of operators by rewarding innovation, and thereby ensuring that consumers enjoy the right to choice and new technology solutions. This can be beneficial for the uncatered groups in developing societies, such as the disabled who require special access to telecommunications services. The rewarding of innovation can also allow for the efficient use of scarce resources, such as the frequency spectrum, and reduction of costs and the introduction of choice for consumers. 

Closely linked to the function of advancing the introduction of new technologies and services, is the setting of standards for the industry called type approval, to ensure service and network interoperability and minimal interference, as well as to protect and maintain network integrity.

Type approval

 The effective management of type approval minimizes interference and duplication of standards. To ensure credibility of the network, telecommunications equipment should comply with reasonable specifications. Regulators type approve equipment to ensure telecommunications equipment facilitates trade and investment flows, ensure compliance with national, regional and international standards and networks, prevent distortion and degradation of national network, avoid interference especially in wireless services, safeguard and preserve network integrity and eliminate dumping of inferior or sub-standard equipment in the market.  Type approval thus protects manufacturers who produce equipment, service providers who use the equipment and consumers who buy terminal equipment, such as mobile phones.  

 As with interconnection the extent of type approval is determined by national legislation, and consequently different countries have adopted different administrative procedures.  In some countries there is extensive regulation of equipment and standards.  Poland for instance insists that applications be submitted to the ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.  After examining the documents, the Minister appoints a testing laboratory which then issues a certificate of type approval for which the manufacturer pays.  In Botswana and Nigeria applications are submitted directly to the regulator, and payments for certificates issued have to be made to the regulatory authority.  All telecommunications equipment in Botswana and Kenya has to be approved by the regulatory authority (this is known as government supervised testing).  

 In some European countries light regulatory approach is applied to the approval of equipment.  Traditionally, regulation of terminal equipment was managed by the public operator, consequently equipment suppliers had minimal influence in how the regulations were formulated.  Recently, the European Union formulated new procedures for conformity assessment.  The latter adopts the Global Approach to Testing and Certification, which allows the manufacturer to produce technical documentation which demonstrates compliance of equipment with stipulated requirements, and allows the manufacturer to declare conformity based on evidence contained in a pre-approved technical file (this is known as self testing of equipment).  

Whilst the latter are examples of countries which have adopted self testing and government supervised testing, other countries (example the United States)  have adopted the mutual recognition approach, allowing for mutual recognition of equipment certifications.

Typically regulators need to consider 

• Administrative procedures governing the processing of applications for the certification of equipment
• Technical regulations relating to attachment of equipment to the public network and network performance and conformity with international standards
• Customer equipment regulations
• Establishing testing laboratories or type approval facilities and certification bodies

 Often the assessment and evaluation of equipment is undertaken by a regulator in -house or by an approved entity tasked with testing the equipment. To ensure transparency, the testing criteria have to be published and made freely available to the public and users. The criteria relate to safety, electromagnetic compatibility requirement, voltage limits, speech qualities, accessible user manual and interoperability with public network. These criteria may appear technical but are often intertwined with other political and economic factors. Political factors emerge in discussions on how much international recognition a particular product enjoys, and economic factors become visible when questions relating to efficient use of radio frequency are raised. However the focus on technical detail in regulatory processes has historically tended to obscure decision-making and limit access to technicians or engineers or users of such technologies. The life span of products is an average of 3 years and regulators are increasingly pressurised to make decisions rapidly or rely on the testimony of manufacturers. However, the latter strategy has also lead to an increase in the number of withdrawals of products as evinced in the European Union.

After discovering that type approval had become a burdensome task, a template was developed in the European Union with the following format of questions to accelerate type approval processes:

1. which requirements does a product need to meet
2. what legislation applies to a product
3. what standards are available
4. what conformity assessment should be followed
5. what are the administrative provisions one needs to comply with
   1. notifaction obligations
   2. user information
   3. certification or marking

(Source European Union Commission, 20003)

Generally both technical and economic efficiency is pursued in technical regulation.  In the sub-field of frequency spectrum, technical efficiency refers to the requirement that different users of radio frequencies should not interfere with each other.  Regulators can ensure that they minimize the accumulation of negative externalities (so that the use of one channel has no adverse impact on those that are adjacent or external to it).   Economic efficiency on the other hand, involves exercising judgement regarding the allocation of relatively scarce spectrum among alternative users.  Whilst one is an engineering issue, the other is a policy issue, they cannot be resolved without cooperation between the two.  Http://www.trp.hku.hk/e_learning/spectrum/section1h.html