Regulation Policies

Kalba International has assisted a wide range of government, corporate and multilateral clients with respect to regulatory issues and studies, including BT, Centertel (Poland), FCC, European Commission, IDB, Industry Canada, ITU, NCTA, Office of the Governor (Puerto Rico), Telestyrelsen (Sweden), and the World Bank.

We have co-developed a regulatory toolkit with infoDev (World Bank) on Competition, Interconnection and Pricing Regulation, in association with NERA and Castalia Strategic Advisors. In the process we assessed the regulatory issues and implications raised worldwide by VoIP, including the preparation of case studies on VoIP regulation in developed and developing countries.

We have served as Economic Advisors to the CRTC (Canada) during a key proceeding on regulatory forbearance in local telephone services. The proceeding examined a wide range of issues related to the conditions calling for forbearance (e.g. definition of adequate competition, applicable service regions, etc.) as well as the regulations which should be suspended, such as tariff controls, marketing restrictions, and QoS standards as forbearance is implemented. We provided independent reviews of the economic submissions of stakeholders in the proceedings, including incumbent carriers, CLECs, cable TV operators, VoIP providers and consumer groups.

Currently we are advising a developing country government on a wide range of policy matters, including broadband and universal service policy development, review of telecommunications legislation, design of international service gateways to foster wholesale competition, and proposed tax and other incentives for domestic ICT development. We have also helped regulators structure and issue international and mobile service licenses, including detailed evaluations of the application bids.

Our private sector regulatory work has focused on license bid preparation (including for auctions), support in preparing regulatory and judicial filings, securing landing agreements, and assessment of proposed ownership consolidations. In conjunction with Harvard UniversityÕs Program on Information Resources Policy we have also prepared a multi-volume study of the economic, political, regulatory and legislative aspects of state regulation of cable television.