The impact of Institutional structure of the regulatory authorities on regulatory choices: A cross-national analysis of the regulatory governance and its impact on VoIP regulation

摘要

The telecommunications regulatory authorities around the world take various decisions that shape the course of the market place for good. Among many decisions related to legalization of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has been one of the most challenging decisions for many regulators. VoIP as a technology brought technical, economic and regulatory challenges. Regulators are in constant pressure to choose between the legacy telecommunications mechanisms and VoIP. Theories argue that regulatory decisions can be affected by the institutional endowment of the governing authorities. In this paper we endeavor to empirically ascertain the impact of the institutional structure on regulatory decisions related to VoIP. Our estimations over cross national time series database prove the existence of the influence of the institutional organization on the regulatory decisions related to introduction of VoIP.