Regulating Mobile Services: An Institution-Based View

While the development of mobile services is experiencing a spectacular growth in many countries worldwide, existing regulatory regimes are ill equipped for dealing with them. In this paper, the authors use qualitative evidence to investigate the manner in which institutional regulatory factors, including legal, societal, and economic factors, can impact mobile services in the Australian mobile telecommunications industry. These factors are important as they shape both the nature of emerging mobile services and their diffusion trajectory. The investigation culminates with an innovative institutional regulatory framework that includes factors such as consumer and intellectual property protection, market and resources access. The authors argue that co-regulation, a mixture of direct monitoring and intervention of regulators through legislation and complete industry self-regulation, is an effective approach for regulating the mobile telecommunications industry. Given the complex and dynamic nature of this industry, co-regulation can minimize monitoring costs and enhance compliance.