Communication Standards Adoption in Developing Economies: Issues and Options for India

Given the importance of communications in todays world, its spread in developing economies is critical for their development. Emergence of standards reduces market and technological uncertainty and lays the foundation for market creation and enhances the diffusion of communication technologies partly through the advantages associated with network and scale economies. Standardisation has also become important with the rise in cross-fertilisation between information technology (IT) and other technologies, especially in communications. Under these circumstances, strategic implications of IT standardisation are huge because standards can determine the growth potential of individual firms, affect the competitive advantage of nations and even development of technologies and their diffusion. Policies for standards adoption have been used world-wide to facilitate the diffusion of communications technologies, acquire a larger market share of the global telecom market, build technological capabilities. The paper reviews various approaches to communications standard adoption as well as the experiences of other countries. These approaches and experiences and the associated market and regulatory failures are evaluated in the context of the current Indian situation. This evaluation suggests that a standards neutral policy is desirable for India.