Regulations

Next gen telecom policy and regulation – Workshop for leaders in the telecommunications industry

In the telecom industry, regulation is not driven by market failure, but market success. In less than a generation, the telecom industry succeeded to connect nearly every person to a mobile phone and almost half of the world to the Internet. During this period, prices have fallen more than 90 percent while data volumes has increased thousands of times.

The telecom industry should be celebrated for its achievements which were largely achieved without government subsidies, but instead it is vilified as a bottleneck to the very services it delivers. Moreover, Google and Facebook get the credit for building infrastructure; they launch a few drones and balloons, but the telecom industry has invested trillions of dollars in advanced networks. Regulations such as net neutrality, roaming, municipal broadband, free Wi-Fi, online privacy, speed requirements, open access, set-top box requirements and so on are designed to divert value away from operators’ shareholders to their competitors in other industries while strengthening the authority of government.

For more than 20 years, Strand Consult has held strategic workshops for boards of directors and other leaders in the telecom industry. With this workshop concept, we have consolidated our knowledge on global regulatory trends and the experience of operators worldwide and packaged it into a workshop for professionals with responsibility for policy, public affairs, regulation, communications, strategy and related roles.

The telecom world is heavily regulated and closely monitored by politicians and governments. Strand Consult observes that companies can improve their business case with better management of the policy process as well as help and inspiration to coordinate stakeholders inside the enterprise. In addition policy leaders can also benefit by learning the state of the art academic research as well as the experience of operators in other countries. In practice the composition of a board of directors will often mirror the owners of the company and which people they believe best represent the interests of the company’s shareholders within a number of areas.

Knowledge transfer on regulatory trends: In the past, it may have been sufficient to manage regulation from the legal or public affairs department, but today’s reality requires the cooperation of staff across the globally distributed enterprise. Staff can get on the same page with a weekly call and an intranet, but building and executing a valueenhancing strategy requires the buy-in of team members, lifting their knowledge and sophistication, and creating a frame of reference for future discussions. This workshop provides the group a review of the global regulatory trends and the interconnected political and economic actors driving them as well as the myths and hype animating them. It also provides case studies of organizations which have mastered the policy process to their shareholders’ benefit.

Evidence-based policy: Too often regulation is justified on feelings, not facts. Net neutrality is a great example. Evidence-based policy is rational, linear process to make pol-icy based upon an evaluation of problems and challenges and associated solutions, the collection of information about the solutions, and the measurement of outcomes expected with possible solutions. Strand Consult offers a 7-step checklist for good regulation and a regulatory scorecard methodology to evaluate how well a given country, regulatory agency, or policy compares to global standards. The workshop describes these tools and how to use them to educate policy makers toward the preferred policy.

Rightsizing Regulation: Strand Consult has played a crucial role to educate regulators about the regulatory burden in many regions including Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In this session we review the various plans and strategies of success for optimizing regulation. We provide cases related to net neutrality, zero rating, mobile coverage, privacy, smartphone disclosures, set-top boxes, privatization, regulatory reform and reorganization.

Reframing Regulatory Issues: In regulatory discussion, operators are frequently portrayed as the bad guy. The debate requires an honest discussion which looks at the many relevant actors in the marketplace. Strand Consult demonstrates how operators can reframe the debate. Among the many case studies on reframing include mobile coverage, the role of the smartphone in the quality of experience, and the role of local actors in the process to deploy networks.

How to use Extreme Transparency in Regulatory Process: Bringing transparency and openness to regulatory discussion relies both on formal and informal methods. Operators and their affiliates should take ad-vantage to the full extent of the laws for freedom of information in their respective countries, in addition to exploring how to use informal methods to reveal what goes on beyond the scenes, highlighting regulatory bias, and expose corrupt actors. Strand Consult provides a showcase of examples from many countries and situations at local and national level.

Stakeholder Communication: Organizations are at different stages of maturity in communication and dialog strategies. Some have sophisticated messaging coordination across a range of actors while others have yet to map their stakeholders. This session is helpful for an organization at any stage for conducting a dialogue with different stakeholders, how to build argumentation, and how to address negative comments in least 7 different ways. This session also presents a discussion on possible industrial partners, stakeholders from various industries including IT, healthcare, energy, automotive, retail, banking and so on. These groups expect their products and services to include connectivity going forward and can become valuable allies and communicators. Similarly, there are a range of other actors in academia, the non-profit sector, and community organizations who can also join your company in the policy process.

Merger challenges: When it comes to mergers, too often decisions are based on political whims and perceptions, not facts. Even though convergence is a trend that has been underway for more than half a century, operators face a difficult time to get mergers approved. This session offers a post-mortem on failed mergers and how operators missed the chance to leverage next gen communication to im-prove their chances of merger approval.

Strand Consult’s Next gen telecom policy and regulation: Workshop for leaders in public affairs, regulation, communications, law, and strategy examines your company versus its set of regulatory challenges and opportunities. It delivers a com-bination of knowledge, inspiration, and a strategy that you can implement immediately.

Strand Consult workshops are highly customized to ensure that customers receive the maximum benefit. We work together with our customers to tailor each workshop so that it delivers the de-sired business goals. Here are some of the ways we define the framework for the engagement.

If you would like to learn more about our Next gen telecom policy and regulation: Workshop for leaders in the telecommunications industry concept, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Contact us to get a copy of the report

Request the report

Share