Little evidence that converged legislation more effective, Australian regulator says

As countries around the world look to merge their telecom and media legislation, there remains little information evaluating how effective converged statutes are in an ever-changing online environment, a new report by Australia’s regulator says. Packet prioritisation, online data protection, and privacy and copyright concerns are some of the issues that have kept converged regulatory agencies on their toes over the past few years, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) says in a new report, titled “Converged legislative frameworks—International approaches,” released Aug. 29. “While the introduction of converged legislation involved significant change, change is ongoing,” the report says. “The emergence of issues to do with the internet and the online environment is necessitating further change ... suggests that legislation will continually need to evolve to keep apace with technological change.” Prepared as a reference document for Australian regulators and legislators for the country’s discussions about its future regulatory model, the report chronicles the experiences of other jurisdictions that have moved towards converged regulations for telecommunications, media and the Internet. Drawing primarily from journals and other publicly available documents, it outlines similarities and differences in the way regulations are administered in converged jurisdictions such as Malaysia, the European Union, the United Kingdom and South Africa. The report says jurisdictions that have moved to converged legislative frameworks have also transformed “the institutional structures for media and communications regulation—namely the creation of a converged regulator." Other commonly shared characteristics of converged jurisdictions include a tiered approach to content regulation, a separation between converged regulators and content regulators, and the use of layered regulatory models based on network layers of IP-based technologies. “he rationale behind the network layers regulatory model is the notion that regulation should follow the architecture of the internet,” the report says. A technology-neutral approach allows regulators to accommodate Internet and IP-enabled services by grouping them into different regulatory groups and applying rules and regulations accordingly. Designed in 1999, the world’s first converged regulatory model in Malaysia uses a model based on four distinct regulatory layers: network facility providers, network service providers, application service providers, and content application service providers (which includes broadcasting but also new media services like online publishing). “These categories are based on functions instead of the traditional industry divisions of broadcasting and telecommunications,” the report says. The report says flexibility and adaptability are key as online services continue raise new regulatory needs. “Some changes to converged frameworks have occurred or are proposed in response to such emerging issues, many of which were not envisaged at the time these frameworks were enacted,” the report notes. In the EU, for example, a series of 2009 reforms to the Electronic Communications Regulatory Framework (ECRF) established a new Internet freedom provision requiring EU member states to treat any restrictions on citizens’ Internet access under the “rules to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens in relation to fair procedure.” One commonality between the EU's and U.K.'s regulatory frameworks is their shared consistency towards general competition laws, the report notes. In the EU, a view to preventing “highly telecommunications-specific regulations” from inflicting unintentional consequences on the economy and businesses led to the alignment of sector-specific telecom regulations. In the U.K., this approach was also extended to broadcasting regulation, and general competition law is used to provide a basis for regulation while industry-specific rules are retained on a case-by-case basis by the government. The report notes that Canada is among a handful of countries looking to advance a converged regulatory framework. CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein’s has repeatedly called for converged telecom and broadcast legislation. But the report notes a shortage of literature on the effectiveness of converged frameworks. “udgments of success are difficult,” the report says. “t may be too soon, and it is impossible to compare what had transpired, with what would have happened if the previous regulatory structure had been retained.” news@thewirereport.ca

Little evidence that converged legislation more effective, Australian regulator says

News | 09/09/2011 7:28 pm EDT

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