This week’s APECTel meeting in Chile has included a timely half day workshop on Universal Service Strategies. New Zealand’s universal service strategy, originally known as the Kiwi Share and now as the Telecommunications Service Obligation, is under review, as is Australia’s. Even though submissions closed a few days ago it was useful to get an understanding of modern practice in universal service regulation around the Asia-Pacific region. 

New Zealand is, I strongly suspect, the only country in the region to have let our universal service policy remain essentially unchanged over the 17 years since privatisation. Dumb! Most seem to have had at least two or three reviews over that time. It explains why our USO is creaking at the seams and producing stupid-as consequences. It was the risk of these that I focused on in a short introductory presentation I gave to the APECTel Workshop, speaking on behalf of INTUG. 

The concept of universal service still exists in nearly all jurisdictions, although as several speakers including Regulatel pointed out in many places cell phone penetration is now far higher than fixed and this fact may quickly make the fixed line obsolete from a universal service perspective.  

The delivery mechanism for such service however, varies widely. In some cases it is residential voice lines; in others voice telecentres, cyber cafes, or IP-based services over an NGN. 

Several Asia-Pacific countries are regarded as world leaders in developing new generation universal service policies - Peru, Chile and Malaysia are examples. Regulatel, the association of Latin American telecommunications regulators, has published a leading edge study “New Models for Universal Access to Telecommunications Services in Latin America.” Twenty Latin American countries have universal service; twelve of these are funded through an industry contribution, while the other eight draw on government money. 

Latin countries are innovating in other ways too. Local community-based projects to provide universal service, where the risk is being carried by entrepreneurs rather than bureaucracies, are becoming common. And in several of these countries there is huge potential seen for large-scale investment in public cyber cafes as a means to reduce the digital divide. 

I came away happy that TUANZ has got our submission right and frustrated that New Zealand has left the review of our USO far too late. And I certainly hope the government doesn’t entertain a “broadband USO” with industry funding – there seems to be no precedent for that and any government contribution to rural broadband should come from taxation rather than telecommunications users. 

Any policy junkies who’ve read this far can find the presentations here. The best three in my opinion were from Regulatel, possibly Peru, and Australia though it hasn’t made it to the Web site yet.