Charles Kenny

Toward Universal Telephone Access

Toward Universal Telephone Access Market progress and progress beyond the market was published in Telecommunications Policy vol. 31. It was written with Rym Keremane.  The last 10 years have seen an explosion in access to telephone services worldwide based on rapid technology advance in increasingly competitive markets. The mobile phone has driven expansion in subscribers and access, especially in the developing world. This paper estimates global mobile footprint coverage based on 2002 data and calculates that as much as 77 percent of the world’s population may live in an area covered by a mobile signal. Nonetheless, many people remain without access to telephony. The paper estimates the maximum likely cost in terms of cross subsidy within the industry and outside financing for achieving universal access using competitively awarded subsidies to private providers in a reformed market. This upper-end cost is estimated at $5.7 billion, with costs that could not be supplied by a reasonable tax on existing providers (and so required from outside the sector) estimated at $1.8 billion.

Is Africa a Failure?

Is Africa a Failure? is an unpublished short paper. The usual way to refer to the performance of African countries over the forty or so years since independence is as a ‘crisis,’ or even a ‘rot.’ In these versions of Africa’s recent history, there is but one thing to argue over –who is to blame. This does, however, raise the question, ‘at what has Africa failed?' The answer for parts of the continent is clear –but these cases do not make up the majority (or even a sizeable minority) of the region. In many important respects --not least health-- Africa’s post-colonial record remains one of considerable success.

Caribbean Telecommunications Reform

The OECS and Regional Telecommunications Reform, co-authered with Donnie DeFreitas and Robert Schware, was published in info, Vol. 3, No.3. The Impact of Reform on Telecommunications Prices and Services in the Countries of the OECS, co-authored with Robert Schware and Eliud Williams, is forthcoming in the Journal of Information Technology for Development. Five member countries of the Organization of East Caribbean States (OECS) — St Lucia, Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis — are undergoing a unique experiment in telecommunications liberalization. The reform has two interesting features. First, the reform effort was dramatically enhanced because of a legal ruling in one of the member countries that monopoly telecommunications provision is unconstitutional; and, second, the islands hope that a large part of the functions of a telecommunications regulator will be carried out at the regional rather than the national level. Reforms began to show results when the current monopoly service provider slashing the prices of international calls.  Prices have fallen considerably further after the introduction of a regulated price cap.