Environmental sustainability regulatory and policy practices and actions of telecoms regulatory authorities

Abstract

Creating climate-neutral electronic communications is a sharedresponsibility for the industry and urgent action is needed in the face ofwarming trends due to global climate change. Despite this, environmentalsustainability has just started to receive attention in the regulation of theelectronic communications sector. The national telecoms regulatory authoritiesoverseeing the sector in the different countries are key in driving related policyand regulation. However, as to date, hardly any paper has dealt with theirrespective practices in a comparative manner. Therefore, the aim of this paperis to fill this gap, to review the relevant environmental sustainability regulatoryand policy practices and actions of telecoms regulatory authorities, in order toprovide a comprehensive and high-level comparison of sustainability initiativesin the electronic communications sector. It is hoped that this will serve as astarting point for launching a discourse in the industry and for properlypositioning the green transition in electronic communications regulation.