| The idea that all citizens should have access to the means of communication is known in the telecommunication policy discourse as ‘universal service.’ Universal service policies have aimed to expand the size of the telecommunication network and make its resources as widely available as possible. To achieve these and other goals, scholars have advanced theoretical and ideological arguments in favor of systems ranging from state ownership to regulated monopoly to fully competitive systems. The professed benefits to universal service are mainly supported by a comparison of penetration growth rates under different regulatory regimes. But penetration rates may also increase as a result of economic development or diffusion effects. in this dissertation, an econometric model is employed that accounts for these alternative explanations, and isolates the effect of industry structure and other regulatory choices on two measures of universal service: teledensity and residential teledensity share. Two decades of telephone subscription data from 30 countries is used to estimate the model. The findings indicate that the effect on universal service is dependent both on the type of reform process implemented (such as privatization, incorporation, and demonopolization), as well as the combination of such processes implemented. It was also found that less developed countries, contrary to apprehensions among policy-makers, may benefit more from telecommunications reform than their richer counterparts. |
