The telecoms sector provides the key building blocks of our increasingly rich and complex information society. As private individuals, we rely on telecoms to keep in contact with our friends, our loved ones, and the world around us. In the workplace, telecoms is an increasingly important component of business competitiveness. Looking ahead, if even a tenth of the claims being made for broadband by its champions are true, it will not only transform the way that we live and work but will have profound effects on our shared culture.
Regulation has had a decisive impact on the growth and structure of telecoms markets. For this reason, Ofcom (the Office of Communications) is launching a fundamental review of the telecoms sector and how it is currently regulated. The Review will enable us to set out a strategic direction for our activities in relation to telecoms, and will create a new settlement between the regulator, the companies we regulate and the citizen-consumer. The Review seeks to answer the five fundamental questions which are set out at the start of the Executive Summary of this document. Along with the measures we are taking to liberalise radio spectrum rules, this Review will be a key building block of our future approach to economic regulation.
The Review will be rigorous and evidence-based. In this first phase, we want, with the assistance of our stakeholders, to gain as full an understanding as possible of the prospects and challenges for the sector between now and the end of the decade. In Phase 2, which will commence this summer, we will take the lessons from this first consultation and create policy recommendations on which we will then separately consult. Finally, we will issue a statement by the end of the year which sets out our future approach.