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Chapter

Mapping the Telecom services Industry and Defining the Major Attributes for the Successful Diffusion of Telecom Services

(Please do not quote or refer to any part of this reference document since it is under publication process and a prior permission from the author* is required)

* Abdullah Ismail (Project No. UK 10 – 15538)

PhD candidate Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark (DTU) Mobile: (+45)60644975, Email: [email protected], Date: September 11, 2009

1 A Foundational Actor-Network Map of Telecom Services Industry

The telecom services’ market or industry is fundamentally composed of following actors within three major domains whose continuous mutual interaction within and across these domains actually shape the whole industry. In the following drawn map, the directions of the arrows show how the transactions and communications take place between the various actors.

CC aims to make the market fully competitive & to stop monopoly abuses PU sets the social, political and Policy Unit (PU) economic agendas and delivers it (Government / Ministry) to NRA for enactment Competition Commission (CC)

The telecom ministry/PU, NRA makes rules, procedures NRA and CC together Regulatory body and regulations for an efficient form the ‘policy & enforcement and regulatory domain’ National Regulatory Authority (NRA) implementation of policies/agendas set by the policy institutions – NRA plays Policy & Regulatory Domain a buffer role between industry players and government

Own the infrastructure and network facilities for the All players in the ‘technology provision of telecom services Telecom domain’ actively interact with each and can resell/lease/share the other in order to make sure an network with service providers Network Operators efficient and cost-effective provision and other network operators of telecom services to the user domain’ Telecom Vendors Content Providers/Aggregators Equip. Manufacturers/suppliers Sol. Providers/Sys. Integrators

Network operators, vendors Service providers or resellers do not (manufacturers & suppliers), own their own spectrum or network service providers, content Service Providers / Reseller facility but instead lease it from providers/aggregators and Virtual Network Operator spectrum licensees and network solution providers/system operators to deliver their services. integrators together form Network operators can bypass them but ‘technology domain’ they cannot bypass network operators Technology Domain

Business Customers Government Institutions (Private Sector) (Public Sector)

The business customers, The term ‘end-user’ generally refers public sector and end-user to household consumers but may also together form the ‘user End-Users include individuals who interact and domain’ experience various telecom services (Household Consumers) at different work sites within private User Domain and public sectors

Figure 1: An Actor-network map of telecom services industry

2 The above presented map is by no means a complete survey of all the actors and their associated competing networks covering whole range of stakeholders involved in the process of diffusion of telecom services. However, the map has a universal validity and could be applied to any geographical context. The map highlights three major ‘focal actors’ (named with bold letters), one in each domain. 'Focal actor' is a term coined by the Actor-network (ANT) theorists. In the simplest sense, a focal actor is a central element controlling predominantly the 'translation' and 'interest alignment' process during an innovation development, its deployment and diffusion process. The focal actor controls some very significant and strategic position in a bargaining and political dialogue process which enables and authorizes it to potentially influence and control its surrounded setup whether it is a political, social or a technical one. To elaborate it further, ANT uses the phrase of ‘Obligatory passage point’ (OPP) which denotes the control of a significant passing point or ‘gate’ through which everyone else has to go through in order to achieve their own respective goals and objectives to fulfill their particular interests associated with any specific innovation. For example, in the focused case of Pakistan, the diffusion of telecom services cannot be made possible until the three key ‘focal actors’ play their vital roles with mutual consensus. These three key focal actors are: the national regulatory body called Pakistan Telecommunications Authority - PTA (which defines the rules of the game for the smooth implementation and enforcement of policies and agendas set by the policy unit through playing a complex set of various roles sequentially or simultaneously depending on the state of the competitive market and regulatory regime i.e. regulating through observing, controlling or mediating/facilitating); the telecom network operators which are currently composing of five operators in the competitive cellular mobile services market and two operators in comparatively less competitive landline services market (who own and control the essential telecom network facilities and infrastructure without which the telecom services cannot be simply accessed or delivered to the end-users, hence the operators physically control the most important network assets in a ‘supply-driven’ diffusion model with ‘supply-side economies of scale); and finally the end-user itself whose eventual acceptance and approval is the must requirement without which all the debates and initiatives are meaningless, hence here it is the user who controls the most significant position in a ‘user-driven’ diffusion model with ‘demand-side economies of scale’. On the other hand, by the term ‘Mediators’, ANT denotes a range of all other complementary and supplementary actors (individuals, systems and institutions) who can either facilitate (accelerate) or may also cause to retard (slow down) the diffusion process. Some of those mediating actors have been drawn in the map while many more are not mentioned in the map but are listed in the forthcoming sections. For a successful diffusion of an innovation, the clear understanding of all these focal actors and mediators is helpful (and often deem to be compulsory) in order to understand their particular interests and the associated ‘translation processes’. In the following pages, the three major domains namely the user domain, technology domain, and policy and regulatory domain would be further explained with reference to debates related to the different key attributes required to be understood for the successful diffusion of telecom services. These following outlined 40 major attributes are deemed to be helpful in effectively highlighting the complex nature of the diffusion of telecom services.

3 User Domain

1. Network effect – Telecom industry is known for the presence of high ‘Network effect’ and it plays a significant role in the rapid diffusion of any telecom service. Network effect is considered to be high whenever the value of being connected to a specific network increases as the network grows in number of users subscribed to that particular network for accessing telecom services (in our case). The operator firms have to fully understand and explore the critical features of this important attribute. This attribute has many dimensions and perspectives but here only three of these different dimensions are highlighted which particularly lead to this phenomenon. Those products and networks (the network doesn’t has to be necessarily a physical network) which would provide better incentive for end-users in fulfilling their following three requirements would likely to grow faster and have larger ‘network effect’ through connecting the needs of different users.  Social requirement – The strength of social bonding in our social relationship defines our level of dependence to communicate with our circle of friends and relatives. It also defines how much we are eager to pay in order to be the part of their communication network to sustain our level of attachment and interaction with them.  Professional requirement – Many customers use the communication devices and services in order to be professionally efficient and responsive. The success in our professional career within the communication-driven global village demands for an increasing and efficient use of these communication devices and services.  Recognition requirement – The increased usage of communication devices in our society has created yet another kind of social dilemma where a sort of feeling of pride with certain brands of products has been observed. Many customers either feel proud or safer while using a certain product. Gradually these products become part of their personality and start reflecting as their ‘status symbols’. The element of fashion-led marketing is part of this segment of debate.

2. Social lock-in – This is a sort of habitual, unintentional or emotional attachment, and a feeling of comfort with an already in-use or a familiar product which leads to further continuity in user-product relationship. The new innovative products often face a stiff resistance from such kind of lock-in effect which is particularly observed in the case of elderly people who are overwhelmingly fascinated and in love with their old-fashioned products. Such users often need a very sound and compelling reason (with an un- proportionally large incentive) to switch to a new product if he/she is currently satisfied (or even reasonably satisfied) with an existing (in-use or a familiar) product. In this context, the ‘network effect’ (as discussed above) further reinforces the effect of ‘social lock-in’. To overcome this friction and rigidity, the operators need to offer an attractive package after making a deeper comparative analysis with the competing products to be able to cut all the sources of friction and old attachments of the potential customer (in order to free him/her from the social lock-in related to the old product).

4 3. Path Dependency – Path dependency is a consequence of information asymmetry, uncertainty and ‘bounded rationality’. There are three different degrees of path-dependency as being documented in the literature. The customer is often not provided with complete information about the range of existing and forthcoming products, and the most likely trends of the future shaping markets. In the presence of limited information (information asymmetry), restricted capability of making right decisions (bounded rationality) and high uncertainty, the customer is likely to make an inefficient and wrong decision in the future context (i.e. proved to be wrong or less efficient comparing to other possible paths which could be chosen). However, the customer’s decision in the current context may not be considered as inefficient or irrational keeping in mind the available incomplete information and limited number of choices (first degree of path dependency). But in the future context, if the past taken decision is turned out to be an inefficient decision with a regrettable outcome, the decision still possibly may not be reverted and abandoned due to the cost (sometimes it’s formidable amount of sunk cost) associated with the reversal of wrong decision in future. Hence, despite the strong wish to turn around the wrong decisions taken in past, the remedial measures required for compensation may not allow to revert the past decision as an optimal choice due to the ‘burden of legacy’ to be carried along (e.g. an incompatible and obsolete telecom network or product not easily be replaced or to be upgraded with the new one). That ‘compulsion’ to keep going on a wrong or an inefficient track due to any sort of social, economic or political reason related to the ‘high switching cost’ is termed as ‘second degree of path dependency’. The worst case (third degree of path dependency) occurs where the possible regrettable outcomes were already known or predictable before the decision was being taken (in light of presently available information) but still an economically inefficient and irrational decision was taken due to other reasons (like social bonding, cultural or emotional attachment, recognition requirement, social/habitual lock-in etc.). In this context, the operators and media play a key role to reduce the information asymmetry gap and provide the user with all the necessary guideline to help him make the right decision whose outcome would less likely turn to be regrettable. This will boost the consumer’s confidence on the system and encourage him/her to go for early adoption of telecom products and services.

4. Gradual Adoption (Selection and Retention) – The economic interpretation of ‘Darwinian’ approach and ‘Evolutionary/Schumpeterian economics’ also have implications for understanding the diffusion process. The three steps (variety creation, selection and retention) sequentially follow each other in the diffusion process. A technology or service has been found best penetrated in the market when there is great variety of relevant products available in market for the consumers in order to deliver that particular technology or service. It encourages customer to make his careful selection (efficient decision) out of the available range of choices. Only after interacting and experiencing with the selected product, the consumer sets his/her mind whether to retain the adopted product for future use or not (depending on the customer’s satisfaction level and on the user’s comparative ‘perceived value’ of the used product). The user adoption pattern should be considered as more gradual (resembling to a

5 sinusoidal wave) rather than being considered as having a discrete pattern (like a digital signal or an on-off switch) as often wrongly assumed. In the adoption process, the most critical factors are communication (with producer/service provider and other users) and the duration of experience/interaction during which the user gradually sets its mind whether to accept (continue) or reject (stop using) the product.

5. Impact Analysis – The user should be assigned periodically a task to self evaluate itself with respect to the impacts of using telecom services on its social interaction, economic uplift and political awareness. These evaluation schemes would help to judge the impact of using telecom services on the users’ economic and political empowerment, and in result their contribution and participation to society in form of different social, political and economic activities. The impact analysis should cover both the positive (e.g. relevant to economic efficiency, information access etc.) and negative impacts (e.g. relevant to social, moral or health effects) of these devices and services on their life. The more the user would participate in such participatory design processes by taking part in these evaluation schemes; the better the operators and service provider can develop tailored services; and the more effective and efficient policies and regulatory mechanism can be developed accordingly.

6. User Communities - The end-users (consumers) are increasingly participating and actively contributing in different types of ‘user communities’ (or discussion forums/user clubs) particularly on web/internet, where they share their experiences, perceptions and knowledge about different used products and services. The significance of these user communities are increasingly being noticed and acknowledged by different research circles. There is a consensus about the power of these gossips and ‘word of mouth’ in the propagation of impressions and emotions. Particularly in today’s world of e- commerce, almost every potential customer searches through internet using these communities to get an initial idea and build a preset impression about a product to be purchased. Realizing the importance of these communities, many companies target these user communities for their marketing campaigns and building their image and brand names within these communities.

6 Technology Domain

1. Competitive prices – Prices should be comparable to the ‘perceived value’ (as perceived by the users) and not by the ‘delivered value’ (as assessed by the producer or service provider) of the offered services and should be within the economic reach of the targeted customers (e.g. the average consumption of telecom services could be estimated as within 3% of GDP/capita or net earnings). No mater how worth the service is, it is meaningless from the user’s perspective if it is out of user’s purchasing capacity. In this regard, the role of financial institutions (e.g. banks, credit financers etc.) could be significant in issuing easily payable loans and credits to increase the affordability of low- income people and small social entrepreneurs. In this context, the Bangladeshi bank named ‘Grameen bank’ sets an exemplary and legendary role for other financial institutions by micro-financing small and rural-based entrepreneurs to help them establish their independent businesses and also increasing the diffusion of telecom services in the rural communities. Another issue here is to understand the effectiveness of different price-setting approaches e.g. the debate whether the prices should be set through cost-based or value-based mechanism.

2. Quality of service (QoS) – It requires to maintain at least a threshold level QoS (which could be defined and approved by the industry association and regulator respectively) where the bit error rate (BER) and transmission/reception delays of the signal/data should go unnoticed (or at least bearable to the end-user with the provision of basic level of QoS) comparing to the required/optimal level of quality for any specific telecom application. The QoS should also be judged based on the ‘perceived quality’ (as perceived by the end-user) and not just based on ‘delivered value’ (with ‘technology push’ approach).

3. Aesthetics & Ergonomics – The physical manifestation of a communication device (e.g. a mobile) or a service (e.g. a webpage) should have been designed in such to suffice the level of aesthetics of a first glance viewer in order to grab customer’s attention immediately. Secondly, a device is also judged based on its relative ease and physical comfort it offers (i.e. ergonomics) while using and interacting with that product. It is very user-specific feature and needs to be developed in close collaboration with the user.

4. Interactivity – A useful and effective product should be fully interactive (i.e. real time responsiveness with two way communications). The device should be designed simple to make it easy to be interacted with. The end-user has been allocated here a more active and participatory role instead of just being a passive receptor.

7 5. Functionality – The functionalities of a communication device and the accompanied characteristics of an offered service play a key role in convincing and enticing a potential customer to become a user. In the presence of today’s era of ‘digital convergence’ between different, previously separated technologies and devices such as computing/information, telecommunication, media/broadcasting and other digital gadgets are opening a new front of competition between different products which are judged by the number of increasing functionalities based on those converging technologies. The different functionalities should be made easy to understand and use.

6. Simplicity and User-friendliness – The product itself should be very user- friendly in the sense of understanding and using its different features, functionalities and applications. It should be very simple, easy to follow (the instructions) and easy to be used. This attribute makes the product more interesting and exciting for the user and encourages him/her to frequently make use of it. With regard to accessing an application (e.g. on the menu), a yard stick could be defined as ‘three- touch’ access which means making sure that no application should take more than three clicks (touches) to arrive at a ‘ready for use’ required application.

7. Relevance (Context Specificity) – The offered services should be relevant and useful within the context of targeted customer’s ‘content’ and ‘communication’ requirements. The delivered content (e.g. data, voice and video) and surrounded context has to be tailored according to the need and demand of the targeted user community (e.g. an ultra-modern fashion promoting showbiz website or TV program with content in English will probably be not a good match to be effectively diffused in a far flung conservative and uneducated Pakistani rural community). Such a ‘out of tune’ and culturally mismatched broadcasting is an important hurdle faced by many service providers who try to induce an irrelevant service and content in a user- community; in result, creating instead a negative image and a feeling of hatred towards a particular service. Consequently, the targeted user community then starts hesitating to adopt the new product in an attempt to protect its conservative values and mismatched cultural traits. The second important aspect of ‘relevance’ issue is to understand the context of ‘communication’ requirements of the targeted user group. For example, think about the possibility for the successful diffusion and frequent usage of ‘stationary’ computers (desktops with all time power-connected requirement which are comparatively much affordable than buying laptops) in those rural communities where the duration of power breakdown (load-shedding) is in average 12-18 hours a day (as we observe in case of Pakistan). How come a user would feel comfortable working with such a device and the accompanied services (such as internet) which would likely to be turned off and disconnected at any moment due to such frequent power breakdowns? In this context, the common sense demands for an extra or alternative energy source (e.g. solar panels) and rechargeable power backup systems (e.g. additional battery with highly power effective/durable performance) to be already embedded in these devices, which should be a viable alternative solution in case of emergency or acute usage for relatively short durations.

8 8. Usability and Awareness – A targeted customer segment needs to be educated, trained and made aware of the usage techniques and the inherent potential benefits of the proper usage of a marketed product or a newly launched service. The services should be fully embedded in the daily life activities of the focused user-community so that they don’t feel uncomfortable, hesitant and afraid of using or interacting with a communication device (e.g. computer), a service (e.g. internet) or its any application (e.g. email, video conferencing etc.). The goal should be to increase the user’s repeated interactions and usage frequency for the long-run benefits (comparatively incremental and lower increase in payback but collectively achieving more sustainable and larger incentive) instead of eagerly reaping short-term (one-shot) benefits and loosing market trust and confidence (image and reputation).

9. Responsiveness –The telecom operators and service providers should provide a customer service with high degree of responsiveness regarding both the technical problems and administrative issues. These ‘after sales’ services largely create either a positive or negative impression (image) of service provider. This feature should be aimed at not only to satisfy but to delight the user with appropriate customer service within quick response time. One major issue in this regard is the administrative inefficiency due to following unnecessarily cumbersome bureaucratic procedures that cause major delays in responding to applicant’s simple request for service provision or connection (e.g. the application processing time in case of landline connection in Pakistan). The telecom operators and particularly the regulator should also effectively handle the users’ other general concerns regarding the use and different applications of these services and their potential impacts e.g. the social or moral concerns and the issue of presumed health hazards related to the use of different telecom services such as internet, mobile and other wireless technologies.

10. Personalization & Scalability – The user should be placed in the driving seat to help him self-design the different attributes and functionalities of the purchasing communication devices and services according to the customer’s own customized requirements and personal preferences. User should be in control of what services and QoS it receives in response to a customized and scalable request made by the customer itself through its personal user domain/profile on the service providing company’s webpage. Here, the user should be able to define further specification for the required services e.g. the data throughput/capacity (bandwidth and data rate), down link/uplink speed etc. These user-controlled specifications should subject to be changed at any time by the user and the user should be precisely billed accordingly. This is a costly proposition but a highly promising feature, which will also help in increasing the customer’s loyalty and decreasing the disturbing high level of ‘churn rate’.

9 11. Unbundling of services – In this scenario, the user would decide what services it wants to be included in the ‘bundled services package’ instead of receiving a pre-designed package of already ‘bundled services’. The existing operators and service providers are used to using this ‘bundling of services’ model in order to sell their less attractive services and products along with other hot-selling services and products in one bundled package; which in a sense forces the customers to also pay for actually unwanted and undesired products and services. The competitive operator’s business model has to be re- adjusted with the proposed unbundling approach in order to empower the end- user with an increased mandate for its active and leading participation in the design and decision making process. Doing so will also set a competitive ground for the service providers to benchmark their range of offered products and services against each other according to their level of attractiveness and innovativeness. Ultimately this would help in creating a telecom market with the availability of highly competitive and innovative services, where only those services which pass the ‘market test’ would be able to survive and stay in market; hence leading towards ‘survival of the fittest’.

12. Robustness and security – The telecom services and their related devices should be robust and secure enough to sustain their normal performances in any unpredictable situations; both from software perspective (ability to sustain any virus attack or operating system breakdown with backup support system) and hardware point of view (durability to undergo a manageable scale of physical knock or damage). It is necessary to assure the end-users that the telecom services they subscribe for, are fully secured and protected with backup support system without causing any perceived level of interruption e.g. in the case of e-transactions, video conferencing, distant/online learning, sharing online important documents etc. It is operator’s and service provider’s duty to gain the customers’ trust and confidence particularly about the security issues relevant to the use of telecom services in order to encourage the users to frequently use the services like e-transactions with e-commerce and e-banking applications, and mobile transactions with applications like mobile commerce (m-commerce) and mobile banking (m-banking).

13. Adaptability – The future services are supposed to have high scale of adaptability and sensitivity to different context of usage and changing environmental conditions/requirements with a programmable artificial intelligence (instead of controlling through manual instructions). Such computing and wireless devices will bring a new era to the modern application of communication services (e.g. SDR cognitive radios, WSN - wireless sensor networks/ad hoc networks etc.). For example, the applications of such an inbuilt attribute in a communication device would make it capable of smartly sensing the light, noise, temperature, radio wave isolation (strength of radio waves) and different other already programmed features of surrounding communication environment in order to smartly adjust and adapt to the new communication requirements accordingly. As an example, such a built-in attribute would make a communication device capable of automatically increasing or decreasing the display light and adjusting sound level; and connecting to relatively stronger or more economical communication link among the range of different available choices of communication networks to

10 best meet the needs and requirements of the user within the context of that particular time and space of usage.

14. Mobility – This critical attribute has three different facets.  Number portability – This is now a general feature provided by most of fixed and mobile operators which includes the possibility of geographic number portability, inter-service number portability or inter-operator number portability. In case of internet, it includes the possibility to keep the user account and credit (deposit) while relocating to any other geographic location whether within the operating range of existing service provider or not (in that case the provision of possibility to automatically transfer the user’s account to the new service provider’s database, ideally chosen by the user itself).  Roaming – This special feature is a major concern of mobile services, where a handset (mobile station) is supposed to be connected to the network with the availability of all subscribed services any where across the world. The newly reduced tariff for roaming across Europe has encouraged the travelers and business people to keep using their mobile services while traveling across Europe. That should be an exemplary model for rest of the world to take quick regulatory initiative in this direction. In case of fixed telephony, it would be relevant to discuss the communication range of cordless phones attached to fixed phone connection. Whereas in case of internet, it involves the discussion about the possibility of being connected online at anytime and anywhere, as it is also part of the discussion of the third feature of ‘Omnipresence or Ubiquitous access’.  Omnipresence (Ubiquitous access) – This feature provides the possibility of carrying a personal communication identity (user account) and accessing the subscribed services using any communication port or device any where across the world (e.g. VoIP based Soft-phone etc.). It also includes the future possibility where a range of heterogeneous devices, services and networks (both fixed and wireless) would be seamlessly interconnected to each other (like webs of ad hoc networks) in order to fulfill the user’s communication requirements in different contexts of usage with the surety of an unbroken communication link.

15. Compatibility and interoperability – These two features are compulsory to be provided in order to keep it simple the simultaneous usage of different heterogeneous devices, services and systems in an interactive mode of operation. This characteristic is further briefly explained here.  Inter-functional or inter-generation compatibility discusses the smooth interworking possibility of different functions within a single product or in between a list of services and offered range of products (e.g. different versions or releases of a product) respectively; offered by a single vendor/operator as they often operate on same standards. This comes with two further possibilities; i.e. forward compatibility and backward compatibility.  Inter-devices/systems or inter-services interoperability is an issue when these devices/systems and services are offered by different vendors or

11 operators, as in many cases they are also operating on different standards.

16. Technological Lock-in – A customer is supposed to be technologically locked-in when there is a ‘high switching cost’ to adopt a new device/system or to subscribe for a new service. This is due to the existence of incompatible products and standards that do not support and operate properly with each other and in result compels the user to keep buying the products offered by the same vendor or operator. In that case, the switching cost may become formidable due to the requirement of replacing the obsolete system (old system) altogether with the new incompatible system. The fear of that high switching cost refrain the user to switch to new system/service and provides a good reason for the dominant (monopolist) operator or vendor to use this incompatibility of its products with the competing products in its advantage.

17. Standardization & the dominant design – To deal with the issue of incompatibility, there is a consistent move towards standardization. Previously in the pre-competitive (monopoly) markets, the dominant design promoted by the dominant industrial player itself used to become a ‘by default’ (or ‘taken- for- granted’) standard. Relatively, in today’s more competitive markets, it has become a general practice to jointly design and agree upon a common standard in a large consortium or in collaboration with industrial associations. Standardization also leads to ‘network effect’ where the users generally prefer to join the larger network than the smaller one, which eventually leads towards the ultimate dominance of either one or another standard. Here the ‘image’ creation and management of user’s impression and perception about a product plays a key role in its successful diffusion – leading consequently towards a ‘spiral phenomenon’ resulting to an extreme outcome; where a growing network grow even faster and oppositely a shrinking network get shrink even faster.

18. Learning & Innovation through Internationalization & Collaboration – The operators and service providers need to establish their connections with other domestic and international players to complement their knowledge and expertise, share and acquire resources, get informed with new technological and market trends, and to collaborate on different innovative projects where they alone cannot create the value within their restricted competencies and resources, and also within the limited time frame available in today’s increasingly competitive markets (with a very short ‘product life cycle’). These cross-border interactions also provide an opportunity to learn from others’ experiences (e.g. the cases of successful and failed diffusion of different services in their own contexts) and to conduct a comparative analysis between the different approaches adopted to deal with these situations. Learning through the analysis of these internationally recognized so called ‘best practices’ within the ‘local context’ should be the objective of these learning-based domestic and global interactions.

12 Policy & Regulatory Domain

1. Monopoly control & lowering entry barriers – Monopoly is referred to a market situation where one dominant market player leads and controls the market decisions including setting the prices, standards, and defining the competition level and entry barrier e.g. through setting the terms and conditions for access interconnection arrangements in case of telecom operators. Generally, the national incumbent PTOs were blamed for practicing these anti-competitive monopolistic abuses, but even in today’s relatively liberal and competitive markets, there are many cases where the dominant players misuse their dominant positions through keeping their control over market decisions to tilt them in their favor, and creating entry barriers for new entrants. If a single dominant player could do all that on its own, then this form of market dominance is known as ‘Monopoly’. If there are two such dominant players who could control the market decisions together then such a situation is known as ‘duopoly’. Finally if there are more than two (e.g. three to five) dominant players who use their ‘Significant Market Power’ (SMP) to jointly control the market through some sort of secret mutual understanding or ‘collusion’, then such a situation is known as ‘oligopoly’. All such dominant market situations often lead to ‘market failures’, where the regulatory intervention becomes necessary in order to control the anti-competitive practices and monopoly (or duopoly/oligopoly) abuses. In many cases, a tight oligopolistic situation has been proved to be able to create a highly competitive and stable market, such as in case of Pakistan, where all of the five competing mobile operators are having the SMP’s status which has made the cellular mobile market a highly competitive, stable and well-functioning market. It is primarily the regulator’s role to help establishing such a competitive market and to enforce the policy directions (such as liberalization and deregulation policies) given by the ‘policy unit’. In many countries, this role has been split in two parts; one is sector-specific and the other prevails all across the different economic sectors. Such a cross-sectoral institution is often named as ‘competition commission’ or ‘monopoly control authority’, which is responsible for defining and enacting ‘general competition clauses’ effective across all the economic sectors including telecommunications sector. On the other hand, the telecom regulators perform this role in more detailed way just within the telecom sector through their ‘sector-specific regulations’. Sometimes it has been found that the two parallel authorities may get engage into ‘conflicting roles’ while trying to establish competition and controlling market failures using their own regulatory ‘instruments’. Such a conflicting situation would pose another challenge for ‘policy and regulatory’ domain, i.e. bringing a balance between these two parallel authorities operating with their own controlling mechanisms and administrative procedures.

2. Management of Scarce Resources & Licensing – The management of scarce resources refers to the proper and efficient utilization of telecom scarce resources like numbering, rights of way and frequency spectrum. These are called ‘scarce resources’ because utilizable quantity of these resources are not unlimited even though apparently they seem to be abundant. For example, the

13 numbers cannot be allocated just randomly to different operators for being further assigned to end-users/consumers since if once a block of numbers were allocated to an operator within a regional or country code area (depending if that country adopts ‘open’ or ‘closed’ numbering plan), those allocated numbers cannot be then reallocated to another operator (to be reused by another group of users) within that particular access code area. Also, the blocks of already allocated numbers cannot be abruptly switched among operators, or cannot be reassigned to different specific application/services without giving proper notice well on-time. Frequent changes in number allocation plan is not considered as good practice since many operators use their specific numbers for their marketing campaigns by associating those numbers with their different brands to create a number specific image among the public. Hence, it demands the regulator to efficiently handle the numbering plan with a long-term prospect. The same is true in case of other scarce resources such as ‘rights of way’ and ‘frequency spectrum’. Rights of way are defined as the rights required by any operator who needs physical places to be allocated or permitted in order to install or lay down their infrastructure and network facilities e.g. underground copper or fiber cabling, electrical poles and over-head wirings, transmission antennas and towers etc. These rights are often administered by the local municipalities, and are properly managed to avoid cross cabling, and to minimize the disturbance and damage to the public or private life and property. That requires careful planning in collaboration with different operators and other public authorities e.g. road administration, water and sewerage authorities, and power/energy companies. Finally, the ‘frequency spectrum’ has proved to be so far the most challenging and controversial telecom asset to be efficiently managed by a national regulator. Even though the total theoretical range of frequencies can be assumed as unlimited but in practical terms, not all the naturally available band of frequencies are utilizable because of technical limitations. The different range of frequencies (e.g. VLF, LF, MF, HF, VHF, UHF, SHF, EHF, Infrared and Ultraviolet etc.) have different propagation characteristics and natural limitations which make them suitable to be used only within certain time and space restriction and for specific sort of applications and communication purposes. Understanding all these technical details to avoid any interference between the assigned frequencies and making sure the efficient utilization of different frequency blocks are the critical challenges faced by the regulators. It requires not only an efficient frequency administration within country but also fulfilling an obligation towards international spectrum ‘harmonization’ with other countries particularly the neighboring ones, who may likely be using same frequencies for similar applications. In the above presented scenario, an efficient and effective (both de jure and de facto) licensing regime is necessary to coordinate these issues with best professional expertise. In this regard, the selection of an optimal mechanism for issuing licenses to different operators (e.g. comparing ‘auctioning’ vs. ‘beauty contest’), or devising a sort of ‘blend’ of different applicable approaches to make it most suitable within the local context, is another critical challenge for a telecom regulator.

14 3. Price Regulation – The regulator has an important role in regulating the prices in favor of general consumer in order to protect the end-users from paying unjustifiably higher prices and extra bills for the used services. In a fully competitive market, regulator doesn’t need to intrude in this matter to regulate the prices since the market competition itself sets the best ground for the end-users to decide which service provider is offering most competitive prices compared to the attributes and quality of offered services. In the presence of imperfect markets and the consequent market failures, the regulators have to enforce some price regulation in order to refrain the dominant network operators and service providers from abusing their market position to extract unjustifiably high profits, either through using their monopoly power or by making collusions (in between dominant players) to independently control the market prices by themselves.

4. Checking Quality of Service – Similar to the above presented scenario, quality of service (QoS) is an attribute whose parameters and boundaries should be set and judged jointly by the user and technology domains during the transparent transactions taking place between the user and service provider in the presence of a fully functional and competitive market. In such a market, the regulator should be confined to the role of an external observer without interfering on day-to-day operational issues, to let the market forces decide and settle all these issues by themselves. But when the market is not fully functional and transparent, then the regulator has to play its role with a larger mandate in order to ensure the availability of an average/threshold level of ‘service quality’ for the minimum prices being charged for different telecom services.

5. Transparency – Customers should be able to fully justify its made payments against the used services. The transparency of billing has to be made in order to boost customer’s confidence on the correct relationship between the relevant service’s consumption and its billing system. The details of the bill (invoice) should be ideally accessible any time on the internet at user’s personal service account. The user should be able to question about any doubt, and in response should receive a detailed and satisfactory answer within a quick (predetermined) response time. The second dimension of transparency is to actively check and investigate the complaint cases about the misuse of power and authority, administrative mismanagement and corruption charges filed against the operators, service providers and other public institutions.

6. Flexibility – The users should have the possibility of both opt-in (option to get into a service) and opt-out (option to get out) of a service or contract any time without any legal bindings to the initially signed terms and conditions. The long-term contract based subscription scheme should be considered as an anti- competitive and an unhealthy practice in an innovative service’s landscape. It should be the charisma of a service and the user’s satisfaction with a subscribed service which keeps him loyal for future continual usage of that particular service; instead of such cases of contract-based legal bindings where the future experience with using a service after signing a contract may eventually turn into a regrettable outcome, but the user is bound and forced to retain that service (and the service provider) because of these legal constraints.

15 7. Privacy & Morality – The usage of telecom services should not violate the user’s privacy. It should also respect and give provision to protect user’s moral values and ethical boundaries. It requires minimizing the bad practices and experiences often encountered when using telecom services e.g. spam emails & text messages, malwares (such as ad-wares and spywares), misuse of customers’ profiling for advertisement purposes, sites promoting nudity and racial hatred, wrong and malicious voice calls, eavesdropping, and for example intercepting, recording and monitoring emails, text messages or voice calls in the name of transparency (fighting corruption cases) and national security.

8. Access/Interconnection Agreements & Unbundling of Local Loop – This issue happens to be a major bone of contention between different operators and service providers. Traditional national incumbent network operators (so called PTOs) used to be utilizing their networks as their (anti) competitive weapon in order to discourage the potential entry of new competitive players into their monopolized markets. These incumbents were also trying to resist the existing small network operators and service providers in accessing the end-users through creating unnecessarily tougher terms and conditions for their access and interconnection with the incumbent’s network facilities. The landline network used for the provision of fixed telephony and internet connection has three hierarchies or layers. Layer 1 is known as ‘local loop’ or the ‘last mile’ connection that uses the copper wire (which is already widely deployed) or optical fiber (quite expensive proposition) to connect the end-user/subscriber (which is the voice call or data origination/termination point) with the local office (central office). This layer is the most crucial and costly asset in the provision of wired telecom services, hence the most contentious part as well. That is particularly where the old incumbent national operators have greatest advantage over service providers since the ‘network duplication’ proposition for the last mile access networks is very costly solution and that involves many regulatory issues as well such as ‘Rights of Way’. On the contrary, in case of cellular mobile networks, the last mile access network is not an issue at all since all the operators are free to install their own BTS/RBS antennas (without depending on any major network operator as in case of fixed telephony) to get connected through radio waves (using the allocated frequencies) with all the subscribed mobile stations (handsets) located within the designated cell or anywhere else as they are being traced through roaming facility. The only regulatory issue which may arise in this context would be to bind the large mobile network operator (MNO) to not charge an unnecessarily excessive amount from other relatively smaller network operator or service providers for its subscribers being connected with the calls originated from the telecom subscribers of other competing networks/service providers, in order to use this ‘access barrier’ in its favor. Hence there exists both the facility-based and services- based competition at each layer in cellular mobile network. On the other hand, the ‘unbundling of local loop’ and the interconnection at technically feasible points (points of interconnection) on fair terms and conditions is a major issue to establish competition at the layer 1 (access network) in case of fixed telephony/landline network. To deal with these technical and administrative

16 challenges, many propositions are under research or already implemented in different parts of the world. One such highly valuable service is ‘Fixed Wireless Access’ (FWA) or ‘Wireless Local Loop’ (WLL) which provides a competitive wireless based last mile access alternative to the costly wire based access solutions. Such wireless based alternative solutions are increasingly getting popular and their number of subscribers would likely soon cross the number of subscribers using traditional copper wire based access for fixed telephony and internet services in Pakistan. The layer 2 is composed of long-haul communication links (‘Tandem switches’) between local/central offices across the country. The transmission of signal or data through these links generally uses microwave or backbone dark fiber for larger data throughput (capacity). Generally at this layer there are competing networks and solutions available which makes this part of the market more competitive. But the call prices for long distance (national and international) calls largely depends on the call origination/termination prices at layer 1 access network (which composes the larger part of the total price), and which is eventually defined by the national incumbent operator (who owns the local loop access network). It renders the competition at the higher layers (national and international calls) meaningless until unless the layer 1 is being separated (administratively and financially) from the competitive higher layer markets. This could be done through ‘unbundling of local loop’ to make it possible for all competing networks and service providers to get access to the layer 1 last mile network facilities on fair and equal terms and conditions. To achieve that goal, it is necessary to nullify the anti-competitive practice of inter-services cross-subsidy as most of the PTOs found guilty for. The current movement towards ‘market liberalization’, as it took effect after the divestiture of telephone giant AT&T in USA, is now building pressure on the policy and regulatory regimes all across the world to take quick and solid initiatives in this regard. This would help opening the market for the new entrants and facilitating the ‘services based competition’ in layer 1 access networks. On the other hand, the layer 2 demonstrates the scope and potential for both ‘services- and facility-based competition’ since there are less financial, technical and regulatory barriers as compared to layer 1. For example, in case of Pakistan, a new market entrant ‘Wateen’ had deployed more than 5000 km dark fiber as backbone network for long-haul transmission which is also available to be leased by other operators relatively at quite competitive prices comparing to the previous PTO’s prices, and offered terms and conditions. With the support of this nationwide fiber network, ‘Wateen’ has now empowered itself to offer the world’s first nationwide WiMAX network based services. The final layer is the layer 3 which is used for routing the cross border calls via international ‘gateways’ connected with each other mostly through grounded and submarine fiber cables. In Pakistan, the competition at this part of the communication network is still unclear and seemingly it appears to be controlled by the PTO but the further investigation is required in this context.

9. Policy Development and Enforcement – This key attribute or function provides the point of interface between the two key players of policy and regulatory domain: namely the policy unit (or the relevant ministry) e.g. in case of Pakistan, the Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT - Telecom division) which is responsible for policy development; and the National

17 Regulatory Authority (NRA) which in case of Pakistan is known as ‘Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’ (PTA). The policy unit is responsible for developing such policies which are deemed to be supportive for the development and growth of industry (e.g. Privatization, Deregulation & Liberalization Policies) where as the regulatory authority functions as an instrument to effectively implement and efficiently enforce the set policies and delivered agendas in their real spirit to achieve the targeted goals and objectives. Hence, to achieve the aimed objectives, it is necessary that the two (policy and regulatory) bodies work together in close collaboration and with frequent interactions.

10. Dispute Settlement – The enforcement and implementation of telecom policies and regulations has never been a straightforward task which often involves many complications particularly relevant to gaining power or struggle for dominance, and various sorts of translation issues like misinterpretations and misunderstandings (about the references, context/ relevance, exact meanings and the real spirit of the text etc.), which frequently end-up on different scales of conflicts. Depending on the level/scale of conflict, the range of remedial initiatives then include conducting an administrative inquiry for straightaway compensation, initiating a formal bureaucratic procedures, resolving it through a political process, referring for a judicial inquiry for legal actions, or engaging the disputed/conflicting parties into a dialogue process for out of court settlements. In settling down all these conflicting issues, the role of regulator is often found to be critical in order to boost the confidence of different stakeholders (particularly the comparatively small and weak market players) on the provision of justice and transparency by the existing market mechanisms and regulatory regime.

11. Cross subsidy (inter-services, inter-subscribers, inter-sectoral) – The term ‘cross-subsidy’ is used and understood in three different ways. First is the inter-services cross subsidy which is the most common one, refers to the operators’ or service providers’ general practice to transfer their revenues from a relatively more profitable service to a less profitable service within their offered bundle of services. Apparently it seems to be a fair practice but it has been often used anti-competitively by the dominant network operators. For example, an incumbent network operator who owns the ‘hard to replicate last mile’ local loop network which is proved to be relatively much less competitive market, may charge extra price for call origination and termination either directly from the consumers (if the service was provided by the network operator itself) or by the service providers (by providing the local access interconnection to service providers at higher charges). The network operator may use then the extra profit earned from this relatively less competitive local call market to support its business in more competitive markets such as e.g. long-distance national and International calling services, through temporarily reducing the call tariffs over there to an extent which results in ousting its competitors out of the market competition. This anti- competitive practice of ‘tariff rebalancing’ is generally known as ‘predatory pricing’ or ‘price squeezing’. This is why the regulator is always anxious to prevent such anti-competitive abuses, and sometimes force the large operators to implement accounting (financial) and administrative (operational)

18 separation between its local and international call business units. This accounting and administrative separation between two business segments is termed as ‘divestiture’ (e.g. the divestiture of the largest US operator AT&T in 1984). The second possible cross-subsidy case could be found where an operator or service provider heavily subsidizes its relatively low-income subscribers (or potential customers) in order to provide affordable low priced services to these economically disadvantaged segments of society or high-cost service zones (e.g. rural communities with dispersed population or hard to reach terrains). This is done through reallocating the additional profits earned from economically more sound urban customers and financial districts due to their relative ability to pay higher prices for similar services. Such tariff rebalancing is generally known as ‘price discrimination’ which is quite debatable with respect to its legitimacy and effectiveness; and the scale of its controversy varies with respect to the social and economic context of different countries. The final facet of cross-subsidy is of inter-sectoral characteristic where the government (ministry of industry or finance) decides to reallocate the additional financial revenues earned by high-profit showing sectors to support the sectors in loss or relatively low-profit making. This averaging or balancing of financial revenues across the sector is sometimes necessary and beneficial, but should only be considered as part of an emergency relief and recovery plan. As part of general financial strategy or budgetary scheme, cross-sectoral subsidy is not considered to be a good practice in the long run to be used as a regular fiscal policy since it increases the dependence of one sector’s economic survival on other sectors’ extra profits which makes the depended sector more vulnerable to economic jolts and crisis, and less self-sustainable.

12. Variety Creation through healthy Competition and Innovation - The injection of ‘variety’ in the market can only be assured through the presence of an innovative and fully competitive market. Eventually it brings the regulator and competition commission into forefront to lead the process of variety creation (an outcome) through establishing and sustaining competition within a targeted market. Competition, Innovation and variety creation are all dependent and relevant to each other, and together they provide the circulating blood for the survival and growth of an effective and fully functional market. ‘Variety creation’ is followed by the process of user’s ‘selection’ and ‘retention’ of a particular product or service. The presence of these three parallel processes is the essence of a thriving market and growing industry.

13. Universal Service Obligation (USO) and bridging the ‘Digital Divide’ – The provision of universal service or access to telecom services is one of the main goals set by the policy institutions for regulators to achieve. The issue of ‘bridging the widening digital divide’ between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ (of access to ICT/telecom services) is particularly highlighted and pursued by the user domain and policy/regulatory domain in many debates, and is part of many policy programs and initiatives. One of such initiative is the enforcement of ‘Universal Service Obligation’ (USO) upon the network operators (technology domain); and the establishment and enactment of an effective ‘Universal Service Fund’ (USF) to support and compensate the operators for their deployment of networks and provision of access (to telecom

19 services) to the economically disadvantaged segments of the society (less profitable economic zones) and to the far-flung areas with dispersed population or rural communities (high cost zones). It aims at making sure the provision of access/availability of the basic telecom services with averaged/ threshold level quality of service (QoS) to every citizen at economically reasonable terms and conditions.

14. Stimulating Investment for Network Development – The fast network development across the country is not always within the financial capacity of network operators due to economic unfeasibility or an unsound business case, especially when there is a vastly dispersed population scattered around geographically hard to reach terrains. For example, in case of Pakistan, compare the population density of many dispersed locations with even less than 1 person/sq km especially in the largest province of Balochistan which consists of 42% of Pakistan’s total land (with an average population density of only 24 persons/sq km), with the case of abundantly populated cities like Karachi with a population density more than 5000 persons/sq km), where as the average population density for the whole country stays at 225 persons/sq km (est. 2009)1. The case gets even worse when these rural communities make the larger part of the whole population (e.g. in case of Pakistan where urbanization ratio is currently 34% which means that two third of population still consists of rural communities despite fast growing ‘urbanization’). The rural communities are often assessed (in average) as economically much weaker than the concentrated urban population based on their annual GDP contribution to the national economy due to the concentration of most economic activities in urban areas apart from the agriculture and dairy farms (as we observe in case of Pakistan). In the above presented scenario, all the investors and telecom operators get naturally interested in rapidly developing their networks in these economically strong and concentrated financial districts and urban population to have better return on their investment on the telecom network development and service provision. In such a bleak situation, even the government’s financial support in form of ‘subsidies’ and ‘Universal Service Fund’ (USF) alone do not prove to be an optimal solution for making possible the countrywide rapid development and diffusion of telecom networks and services respectively within the targeted time frame. This situation then demands for an increased and enlarged scale effort to stimulate both the foreign direct investment (FDI) and local investment for network development. Keeping the proper proportional balance between the FDI and local investment is another important issue since it involves the recently hot and sensitive debate about the protection of national interests (e.g. consider the accusation from some circles about the careless and extensive privatization of valuable national assets and institutions in Pakistan in the name of making them productive and efficient). The government and its administrative public bodies have to make sure the provision of all basic infrastructure, public utilities and institutional support to the local and foreign investors in order to gain their trust and confidence about the productivity and safety of their investment, and the government’s commitment to the development of telecom sector. This active facilitation on

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan & https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

20 government’s behalf would help in prolonging the investors’ commitment in the long-run and in result would lead towards a long-term and sustainable growth in network development. One final remark in this context would be to argue that the desire for ‘stimulating investment’ naturally follows the outcome of serious committed efforts of ‘stimulating demand’. If the private and public sector work together with a common agenda to stimulate the demand for new innovative services while taking the support of all the relevant actors, and aligning their conflicting interests and competing networks around this common vision then the investors would themselves be dragged to such demand growing market without any need for extra campaigning and giving too much incentives.

15. Diversifying Participation for Synergy Development – It is required to engage and empower all the relevant actors and stakeholders (with some decision making mandate) in the communication (policy and regulatory consultation) and implementation (diffusion) process. The regulatory body should encourage and facilitate such participation from all corners of the society especially those whose interests are at stake with the development and diffusion process of telecom services. An initial initiative could be the formation of a ‘discussion forum’ where frequent interactions and continuous consultations among all the relevant actors could facilitate the understanding of varying perspectives and agendas promoted by these different stakeholders (interest groups) on all major issues. The spirit of a successful innovation (and its diffusion) lies in the large scale engagement of all the potential stakeholders into the design and development, and the corresponding dialogue (not a ‘monologue’) based consultation process. The fundamental skill of an innovator is to not ignore or escape from the conflicts by suppressing the disagreements and differences, but instead to use these differences of opinion in its advantage by creating synergy through including all these variations (different versions) of perspectives into the debate. This practice also helps to increase the absorptive and learning capacity of an innovator (a person or an institution) by tracing the meaningful links or associations in between different ongoing translations led by different actors and competing networks. Bringing this ‘democracy’ into innovation discipline mainly demands for openness towards consultation with all the diverse range of interested actors and their interlinked networks on different issues associated to them in any capacity. Accommodating this democracy into innovation processes would ‘not’ mean to give (or treat) all these actors and their conflicting opinions with equal weight (i.e. with averaged political mandate) since all of these actors obviously vary in their significance, relevance and corresponding level of knowledge and expertise to take part on any particular issue in hand. Also as a matter of fact, the different actors would be associated and relevant differentially at different stages or phases of innovation process; in result some of them would be more concerned about the outcome and impact of an innovation than understanding the process itself which actually generates those results and outcomes. Without this conscious attempt towards establishing a continuous dialogue and consultation process (with an unbiased, open-minded and positive approach), the successful diffusion of innovations and the corresponding industrial growth cannot be guaranteed.

21 16. Balancing between social & economic agendas – The different telecom actors come to play their role to promote their own political agendas in order to achieve their vested interests associated to a particular program or specific pattern of an innovation development and its diffusion. Mostly the political agendas of these interested actors are motivated by their social and economic objectives. It is possible that an actor commits itself to serve both social and economic objectives but often the actors are concerned with one objective more than the others. For example, the telecom operators and service providers (technology domain) are predominantly concerned with maximizing the return on their investment (even if they could do so by apparently serving some social cause or objective, hence it could be said that they are mainly driven by their economic objectives/motivation. On the other hand, the consumer groups and pressure groups like NGOs (user domain) play the role of spokesperson on behalf of the end-users (by defending the consumer and social rights) and they represent the society in general (through promoting issues concerning social welfare). Hence, the political agenda of these actors from the user domain are mainly driven by their social objectives even though they might run some monetary programs in parallel (which eventually aims at making some social contribution). In the above context, the most difficult task is faced by the actors from the policy and regulatory domain, who are (ideally) in fact equally concerned both with the social welfare issues (including the consumer rights) on the one hand, and the industrial growth (economic revenues in form of governmental taxes and generation of employment) on the other hand. To elaborate it further, at one side, these policy and regulatory actors are determined to protect the consumer rights, and to speak and stand on behalf of society for their welfare as their basic legal and moral responsibility. On the other side, they are equally interested to look for industrial growth (in terms of increased industrial revenues and return on investment) which ultimately helps government to achieve its economic objectives like increased tax collection (as in case of Pakistan, the tax rates on telecom services are among the highest in the region). Hence it is sometimes a real dilemma for policy and regulatory domain to decide which side of the scale they should put their weight on, particularly whenever the two objectives conflict with each other (e.g. the operators’ desire for increased prices particularly in less competitive market vis-à-vis the consumer desire for reduced prices and increased quality). Often it has been found a promising practice to let the competitive market forces decide the equilibrium and find the balance between the two extremes of pendulum instead of making frequent intrusions on day to day operational issues. Hence, the regulators should only focus on delivering and implementing the policy directions in its right spirit, and should supervise effective and efficient implementation of those set policy vision through actively engaging and facilitating the different actors and stakeholders within the telecom services market.

Focal Actors and Mediators Interacting within Different Domains

22 The character of ‘focal actor’ and ‘mediator’ has been explained earlier. The purpose of following section is to identify those key focal actors and mediators who play significant role and put their influence on the diffusion of telecom services through their on-going translation processes and formation of competing networks. The list might get prolonged if the whole range of those actors and mediators would be taken into account but for the simplification purpose and practical reasons, the list can be shortened to comparatively more important and obvious 20 focal actors and mediators in order to bring their differing opinions and perspectives into the debate – focused on the above explained 40 critical attributes of the diffusion of telecom services. The above presented ‘actor network map’ of telecom services market does not include all the following charted 20 actors and mediators, again for the simplification reason. The major diffusion attributes of telecom services have been pointed out as being located in three different domains of translations, namely the user domain, technology domain, and policy & regulatory domain respectively. The debate has been deliberately started with the user domain to acknowledge the central role of end-user in this proposed user-driven diffusion model where the success stems with the deeper understanding of the end-users’ perceptions and requirements. Apart from the end- user itself, there are two other groups of representatives speaking on behalf of consumers in this domain known as consumer groups (e.g. complaint cells/user groups to protect consumer rights) and pressure groups (e.g. NGOs). The technology domain includes the actors and mediators like network operators, service providers, equipment manufacturers/vendors, content providers (aggregators), solution providers (system integrators), and industrial associations (like technological consortiums, standardization organizations etc.). The policy & regulatory domain consists of the actors and mediators like the national regulatory authority (NRA), policy unit (government ministry), competition commission, political pressure groups and different International organizations or external factors which may influence on the development and implementation of relevant policies. Finally there are many important actors and mediators who play significant role in the diffusion process but are not institutionally part of any of the above three domains, so these relatively independent influential actors are assumed to be making a fourth ‘supporting domain’ which is composed of financial institutions (banks, venture capital firms etc.), legal institutions (courts), labor unions, academic (universities, research centers, consultancies etc.), media (electronic and print media) and military institutions. The fourth domain of these supporting actors should be imagined as placed in parallel to other three domains in the above drawn actor-network map, where actors and mediators of this fourth domain frequently interact with the entities of all of three other domains. Without their active participation and supportive role, the successful diffusion of telecom services would not be possible. The above mentioned actors and mediators are here classified into four domains respectively with their suggested abbreviations for simplicity in the following text.

User Domain U = end-Users, CG = Consumer Groups, PG = Pressure Groups (NGOs)

23 Technology Domain O = Network operators, S = Service Providers, EM = Equipment Manufacturers/vendors, CP = Content Providers (aggregators), SP = Solution Providers (system integrators), I = Industrial Associations (consortiums, standardization organizations) Policy & Regulatory Domain R = Regulators, PU = Policy Units, CC = Competition Commission, PP = Political Pressure groups, IO = International Organizations/external factors Supporting Domain F = financial institutions (e.g. banks, venture capital firms etc.), LI = legal institutions (courts), LU = labor unions, A = academics universities, research centers, consultancies etc.) , M = media (electronic and print media), MI = military institutions Figure 2: The classification of focal actors (with bold characters) and mediators of telecom services market into four domains

In the following chart, a ‘Dialogue map’ has been designed assuming the involvement of these 20 focal actors and mediators participating from four different domains into this debate about the 40 attributes of the diffusion of telecom services as defined earlier. This framework would serve as an initial road map or guideline for the forthcoming discussions where all those relevant entities would be engaged into the dialogue process to acknowledge and understand their differing opinions and perspectives on different issues. Following the spirit of ANT analysis, the researcher would be open and flexible to amend the list of participants of so called ‘dialogue map’ and ‘discussion topics’ (i.e. the essential diffusion attributes) through keep following the actors as they would guide and lead us into this discussion e.g. through the question ‘who else would you recommend to be contacted and talked further on these issues; and whether would you recommend a new relevant topic of discussion to be included into this debate?’. In the following dialogue map, the relevant ‘discussants’ (with their proposed abbreviation for this text) are charted against each category of discussion with respect to their relevance, knowledge and expertise to become the part of discussion in each selected category. In the following discussions, the end-users’ opinion will be mainly collected from a carefully designed flexible and semi-structured questionnaire (to let the end-users include their own perspectives into the debate); and through the dialogue sessions within different carefully sampled ‘workshops’ in various academic institutions across the country (as planned to conduct an equal amount of workshops in both relatively advanced and backward parts of the country). The responses and feedbacks from other discussants would come mainly through interviews (face to face or telephonic conversations) or through email correspondence. The information from secondary data sources (such as annual/quarterly reports, internal documents, press releases and media news etc.) would also be entertained into the relevant discussions. It would be tried to run iterative cycles of correspondence with the correspondents, if required, through follow up phone calls and emails.

24 User Domain Network Effect U, O, S, EM, CP, M, A Social Lock-in U, O, S, EM, CP, M, A Path Dependency U, O, S, EM, CG, M, A Gradual Adoption (Selection and Retention) U, O, S, EM, CG, M, A, CP Impact analysis U, O, S, EM, CP, CG, PP, PG, PU, R, LU, LI, M, A User Communities U, O, S, EM, CP, CG, M, A Technology Domain Competitive Prices U, O, S, EM, CP, CG, R, LI, M, F, PG Quality of Services (QoS) U, O, S, R, CG, M Aesthetics & Ergonomics U, O, S, EM, CP, M Interactivity U, O, S, EM, CP, SP Functionality U, O, S, EM, CP, SP, M, I, IO, Mil Simplicity and User-friendliness U, O, S, EM, CP, SP, M Relevance (Context Specificity) U, O, S, EM, CP, M, A, CG, PG, PP, PU, R Usability and Awareness U, O, S, M, A, CG Responsiveness U, O, S, M, R, CG, LU Personalization and Scalability U, O, S, CP, EM Unbundling of services U, O, S, M, CG, R Robustness and Security U, O, S, M, R, A, I, CG Adaptability U, O, EM, SP, I Mobility U, O, S, EM, SP, R, CG, M, I, IO Compatibility and Interoperability U, O, S, EM, CP, SP, M, R, Mil, M, A Technological Lock-in U, O, S, EM, R, CC, F, I, IO Standardization & the Dominant Design U, O, S, EM, R, A, CC, I, IO, Mil, Learning & Innovation through internationalization & O, S, EM, CP, SP, M, A, I, IO, Mil, F, PU collaboration Policy & Regulatory Domain Monopoly control & lowering entry barriers U, O, S, R, PU, PP, CG, CC, M, A, LI Management of Scarce Resources & Licensing O, S, R, PU, IO, I, PG, PP, F, CC, LI, Mil, M, A Price regulation U, O, S, EM, CG, PP, PU, R, LI, M, PG, CC Checking Quality of Service (QoS) U, O, S, PP, CG, R, M Transparency U, O, S, M, R, CG, CC Flexibility U, O, S, M, R, CG, CC Privacy & Morality U, O, S, M, R, PU, CG, PP, PG, LI, A, Mil Access/Interconnection arrangements & Unbundling of O, S, R, PU, CC, LI, A, I, IO Local Loop Policy Development and Enforcement U, O, S, CP, EM, PU, R, IO, CG, PG, PP, LI, LU, F, M, A Dispute Settlement U, O, S, M, R, PU, CG, PP, LI, CC, LU Cross subsidy (inter-services, inter-subscribers, inter- U, O, S, CG, PG, PP, F, R, PU, CC, M, A, LU, LI, I sectoral) Variety Creation through healthy Competition and U, O, S, M, R, CC, PU, CP, SP, A, F, I, IO, Mil Innovation Universal Service Obligation (USO) and bridging the U, O, S, PG, PP, F, R, PU, CG, EM, M, A, IO ‘Digital Divide’ LI Stimulating Investment for Network Development U, O, S, PG, PP, F, R, PU, CG, EM, M, A, IO, LU, LI Diversifying Participation for Synergy Development U, O, S, CG, PG, PP, F, R, PU, CC, EM, M, A, IO, LU, LI, SP, CP, I, Mil Balancing between Social & Economic agendas U, O, S, CG, PG, R, PU, PP, F, M, A, LU, LI, IO, I, Mil Figure 3: The ‘Dialogue Map’ designed for the discussants of ‘diffusion of telecom services’

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