The United Kingdom Telecommunications Academy (UKTA) and The African Advanced Level Telecommunications Institute (AFRALTI) will be conducting a two day seminar with details as shown below:

Title:     Digital Era Competition Policy And What To Expect From 5G
Date:    19th – 20th January 2017        
Duration: 2 Days
Venue:    AFRALTI, Nairobi, Kenya
Registration Fee:    USD250

Course Overview:

The Internet continues to drive fundamental change across the ICT ecosystem. It has enabled a wave of permission-less innovation that naturally “disrupts” static industries where firms must embrace creative destruction by learning new ways of behaving and unlearning the old ways. For telecoms markets, the first challenge has been the decoupling of services from networks and this may soon be followed by a second challenge driven by a decoupling of network software from network hardware. The former implies a need for rapid business model adaption and greater regulatory flexibility; the latter implies a fundamental firm level shift from being network engineering centric to software driven.

The digital era and the move to 5G where software defined networks (SDN) and network virtualisation (NFV) will be the norm poses a fresh challenge for competition policy and its current regulatory tool kit. This course will review how competition policy works today, contrast the approaches of Europe and the United States, before deep diving into the key areas and pressure points that characterise the dynamics of the digital era.

 Target Audience: Masters level students and senior executives across the ICT profession (operators, internet services providers, regulators, government officials).

 Pre-requisite/s:

Participants should have good knowledge of telecoms and Internet markets, an understanding of competition policy and regulation, and an ability to consider the challenges the digital era poses for both policy makers and industry players

 Pain Points:

Relationship between competition policy and economic regulation; how markets are defined and assessed and the challenge of the digital era to conventional approaches; how policy makers account for efficiencies In market assessments; new competition and regulatory issues of SDN, NFV and 5G; alternative approaches to digital era competition policy

 Value Proposition:

The digital era brings substantial opportunities and risks for policy makers and industry participants worldwide. Drawing on the major trends and reviewing the current leading edge themes, this course assimilates knowledge from around the globe and summarizes it succinctly within an African context.

 Methodology:

We will use classroom power point presentations to define the key concepts and issues. Learning will be facilitated by group discussion. Pre-read materials will be circulated.

Workshop Objectives:

After the course participants should understand:

• How competition policy and economic regulation interact
• The characteristics of the digital era and what this means for policy makers
• How to think about the next wave of networks and services and the opportunities and threats this brings policy makers and industry players
• What alternatives are there to legacy policy approaches

Course Outline

Registration Form