In my recent visit to Colombia to assess the ICT sector for the OECD, I found that the Office of the Controlaria (Auditor General) was playing an increasingly central role in telecom policy, second-guessing decisions by policy makers and regulators years after the fact, for example requiring a Mayor responsible for the decision by a municipally owned telco to introduce ISDN many years back to compensate the municipality out of his personal funds for the resulting losses. The broader issues of government ownership raised by this story are discussed in detail in my LBO.LK Choices column. The Indian Comptroller and Auditor General was involved in telecom regulation from the 1990s, for example claiming that TRAI under the leadership of Justice Sodhi was negligent in not optimizing government revenues through BSNL. It played a decisive role in the 2G scandal that has been dragging down the Indian telecom industry for the past 2-3 years by making an inflated assessment of the losses caused.
As predicted, the Budget Telecom Network model is reaching Africa. Predictably, management of the operators who were living the quiet life, are running to regulators to be rescued from horrors, actual price competition: ARPU meanwhile declined at a similar rate across both regions – down 3% in Western Europe and down 3.29% in Africa. The African slide was triggered in part by price wars in a number of markets, particularly in Kenya, Tanzania and Egypt. Monthly mobile ARPU in Africa stood at $10 in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to $10.