Overfitting y técnicas de regularización

This research on communications policy with a focus on the aftermath of policy adoption in the Nigerian mobile market, which was opened up to competition in 2001 offers the first critical study on promotion and protection of ordinary consumer interests in the mobile market and aims to contribute to the scarcity of research literature in this area. In addition, this research aims to contribute to wider debates on policy failure in academic literature, a field that has not attracted adequate theoretical or empirical attention in telecommunications.

This study of ordinary consumer representation is timely as there is increasing recognition of the important role of the demand side of markets in the dynamic and complex regulatory process because competition alone is unable to achieve policy objectives. Thus engaging consumers appropriately as a means of achieving policy objectives in the mobile market is still evolving in many countries.

46 The literature reviewed revealed an interesting shift from the supply side (supply of service) to the demand side of the market (consumer welfare) with on-going debates, particularly in the UK and Australia, about the representation of citizens and consumers in communications policy and regulation. In this context and relevant to this study is an important paper written by Damian Tambini (2012) an ex-member of Ofcom’s Communications Panel titled: Consumer Representation in UK Communications Policy and Regulation. The aim of the paper is to examine the role of the consumer representation in policy making with focus on the communications sector in the UK. The paper argues that there is an important role for Ofcom’s Consumer Communications Panel and also that consumer advocates have an important role to play as a result of information overload, market failure and consumer behavioural biases. The paper’s finding is that an ongoing role exists in media and communications for consumer advocates who should be independent of government and the regulatory body.

The above paper examines consumer representation in the UK communications policy-making process as an on-going concern as opposed to ex post assessment of ordinary consumer representation in the Nigerian competitive mobile market, with a focus on the aftermath of policy adoption, which is the thrust of this study. As explained above, recognition of the importance of the demand side (consumer welfare) of markets, such as engaging consumers appropriately with necessary institutional structures and processes, is evolving in many countries. This perhaps explains the dearth of literature on the topic.

Academic debates with regard to the regulation of commercial communications in general seem to focus on the design of optimum regulation or rules to stimulate the liberalised market performance. For instance, Levy and Spiller (1994) carried out a research of five countries (Argentina, Chile, Jamaica, the Philippines and the United Kingdom) and highlighted the major constraints in the design of optimum regulation as institutional endowments and regulatory governance. They argued that these two factors – institutional endowments and regulatory governance – influence the regulatory incentives (i.e. regulation or rules) and consequently the sector’s performance. Their findings reveal that performance varies from one country to the other. Researchers using Levy and Spiller’s regulatory governance framework such as Increasing Regulatory Capacity have conducted many country case studies. The role of the

47 region in shaping national ICT policy in Southern Africa (Gorp, 2008). However, these country case studies did not pay any significant attention to consumer interests and protection.

Concerning the state of consumer interest and protection in Nigeria three research reports, exist.

In 2013, the Consumer International and Open Society Initiative for West Africa commissioned a Nigerian NGO - Consumer Awareness of Nigeria to undertake a study: ‘Research Report on the State of Consumer Protection in Nigeria: A review of the Consumer protection in the Telecommunications sector in Nigeria’, the result of which was published in January 2014. The project’s aim was to empower individual consumers through the realisation of their rights. The Focus Group Discussions revealed that most consumers are neither aware of the relevant laws that give them protection in their daily transactions nor aware of the channels of redress.

Consumers detest using the court for redress because of the high cost of litigation and because they lack faith in the judicial system and “for similar reasons including sentiments, complaints are not readily lodged with service providers” (CI, 2014:6).

The second research ‘Nigeria Consumer Satisfaction Survey’ was undertaken in 2012 for the Consumer Affairs Bureau in the Commission by the NCC Consumer Satisfaction Survey Team (NCC.CSS, 2012). The research team comprises the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation and three other national companies. It is the first and only nationwide consumer survey conducted by the Commission since 2001. The objectives of the project were to:

determine the quality of service provided by mobile, fixed phones, and internet service providers, and the robustness of their complaint management process; ascertain consumer complaints’ profile and frequency; determine consumer awareness of their rights, benefits and the obligations to service providers; and make recommendations for how consumer awareness of their rights could be improved. The findings of this research include that 32% of mobile phone users made a complaint in previous year; high status users and more sophisticated groups of mobile phone users were more willing to complain reflecting a stronger sense of empowerment.

The third research is an academic research conducted by Dr. Eniola Samuel in 2006 for a degree of Master of Business Administration – ‘Customer Satisfaction in the Mobile Telecommunications Industry in Nigeria.’ The aim of the research was to investigate the overall

48 customer satisfaction of the mobile telecoms industry; the relationship between satisfaction and demographics; and factors influencing satisfaction. The research findings are: 5% of respondents were highly satisfied and 57% satisfied; a mix of network quality, billing, and customer support and validity period had stronger relationship with satisfaction while age, gender, employment and location variables presented weak relationship. The author remarked that unlike the developed countries there is dearth of research despite the economic and social benefits of the mobile telecoms to the Nigerian economy and market, and confirmed that his contacts with the mobile service providers for any useful information yielded no response. He wrote that the few pieces of literature available focus on the impact and development of telecoms, communications and mobile telephony and that the limitations affected his study.

Contribution to knowledge

This study about the aftermath of policy adoption in the Nigerian telecommunications sector is novel. It offers the prime critical study on the promotion and protection of ordinary consumer interests in the liberalised competitive mobile market since 2001.

This study seeks to make four main contributions to the field of telecommunications policy research:

First, the empirical study conducted in Part II suggests this study as a good case of policy failure, a field that has not attracted adequate attention either theoretically or empirically in literature (Bovens and Hart, 2016). Hence, the study contributes to the knowledge base in academic literature on policy failures, by giving explanations to what went wrong with protection of ordinary consumers in the competitive mobile market as well as evaluating the practical issues involved. In particular, this study by using the new institution economics framework draws attention to the importance of policy legacies and broader country characteristics such as lack of independent statutory consumer bodies and well-resourced civil societies as well as the weak institutional structures and capacities, including none-responsive monitoring and enforcement mechanism, to explain policy failure.

Second, in contrast to neo - liberal thinking this study confirms the importance of regulation not only in facilitating the introduction of competition but also in delivering policy objectives

49 and the anticipated benefits to ordinary consumers. Therefore, since most debates in the literature reviewed on post-liberalisation are centred on policy and regulatory frameworks that specifically target competition, the results of this research aim to contribute to broader debates that liberalisation also requires policy and regulatory framework that specifically targets the ordinary consumers’ interests and protection.

Third, this study makes another contribution by adapting the institution decomposition analytical framework by Saleth and Dinar (1999) to provide the means of evaluating how the Nigerian mobile institution has enabled or disabled the representation of the ordinary consumer in the competitive mobile market. In addition, the study extends Saleth and Dinar (1999)’s three-components (law, policy and administration) by introducing enforcement as the fourth component of institution. In this way, this study aligns with North (1990, 2005) to emphasise that the consideration of enforcement mechanisms is important for institution decomposition analysis in telecommunications.

Fourth, this is especially the case for developing countries. The study presents detailed evidence about the issues surrounding consumer interest and influential representation in the Nigerian telecommunications sector and aims to contribute to knowledge in this area.

Finally, the study’s focus on the mobile sector is important given the global significance of this sector. To the best of my knowledge, there seem to be no empirical research or methodological approach to evaluate how ordinary consumers have been represented in digital mobile telecommunications markets, perhaps due to continued emphasis on the supply side of markets and on policy-making, which is only recently shifting to the demand side.