| Telecommunication regulation, which derived from the developed countries, is an anti-monopoly instrument. It consists of telecommunication legislation and related autonomous administration agencies. In China, it is an exotic concept that deserves pondering, research and exploration.The Chinese telecommunication industry has undertaken major reforms aimed to break up monopoly, separate the administration function from the state-owned enterprise, and restructure the industries, etc. However, all these measures lack a consistent and rational methodology of telecom regulation. The techniques and working knowledge of foreign countries also need to be analyzed and examined. Furthermore, facing the WTO obligation, we need the right telecommunication regulation methodology and tools ,which accommodate the international practice and meet our own needs. It is for above reasons, I have selected this topic for my graduate thesis.This article begins with an introduction to the history, present state and environment of Chinese telecom industry after the open-door policy, with an emphasis on competition analysis. From this analysis, it can be shown that competition in the telecom market is far from sufficient, the basic telecommunication service is highly monopolized, the market lacks competition rules, and the regulation policies and legislation system need to be more systematic, transparent and consistent. Governmental polices are needed to safeguard competition and a fair market order, and bring the benefit of reform to consumers: higher quality, lower cost service and more alternatives.On the other hand, the market mechanism may not function in some sectors, like the universal service of telecommunication. So, in this regard, the value of government regulation is a remedy of market malfunction and the promotion of social fairness.The biggest challenge of China's entry into the World Trade Organization is the national regulation of the economy, which needs a set of rules, methodologies and tools consistent with international practice. Although the state has set up the related organizations to perform the telecom regulation, the regulation system is still in the start-up process and is quite primitive. In addition, the rules relating to telecom regulation need to be redrawn to conform to the WTO regulatory principles.The developed countries have learned a lot of knowledge in the liberalization of telecom market, like telecom legislation, the setup of related administration agencies, the establishment and application of regulation methodologies and tools, etc. Many of the knowledge can be helpful in our reform of telecom regulation. This paper will introduce the United States' FCC regulation model and the asymmetric regulation model of the British and other countries.The author, considering the environments in China, suggests that in formulating the telecom regulatory principles of China, we should first establish the objective of total liberalization of the telecom market and boost the development of telecom industry with introduction of more market forces. It follows that the regulatory infrastructure and methodologies should be based on this objective and observes the principle of competition safeguard, the principle of customer protection, the principle of transparency, and ensure the compliance with the international practice.On regulatory methodologies, this paper starts with an analysis of issues relating to telecom market access, price regulation, universal service, resource allocation management, interconnection and quality of service supervision. Based on the analysis, the author raises some originative viewpoints and suggests some operational measures.Furthermore, the paper also reviews some in-depth problems of the telecom industry, for example, the pluralism of the state owned telecom enterprise's ownership, the externality of the Telecommunication Act, the establishment of independent regulator, telecom resources and license auction system, asymmetric regulation, etc. These analysi... |
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