The potential role of economic cost models in the regulation of telecommunications in developing countries (original) (raw)

What is the efficient cost of providing telecommunications services to a certain area or 22 type of customer? As developing countries build up their capacity to regulate infrastructure 23 monopolies, cost models are likely to prove increasingly important in answering this 24 question, but without information no real answer can be given. In this paper, we will 25 introduce cost models and establish their applicability when different degrees of information 26 are available to the regulator. Reliable and detailed information is generally a scarce good in 27 developing countries, and we establish here the minimum information requirements that a 28 regulator needs to implement a cost proxy model approach, showing that this 'data 29 constraint' need not be that binding.