4.4. Transforming telecommunications post covid 19 The world-wide spread of covid 19 and the subsequent actions taken by governments to contain it resulted in the greatest shock to global economies and societies in decades. This has had the following implications: The overall economy has substantially weakened and hence pro-growth policies are needed more than ever. Consumer spending power will decline substantially in short-term. Hence policies to boost investment will become crucial. Understanding of the opportunities brought by digital technologies and the right policy moves will be essential to trigger investments in the public sector in a way that would spread to the public sector as well. Both consumers and businesses have become more dependent on digital services including social networks, video calls and online commerce. Both voice and internet traffic has increased substantially, causing in some cases capacity constraints and in some countries even temporary network disruptions. Telecom infrastructure has become more strategic for the nations due to the lockdowns, which have severely curtailed opportunities for people to communicate in other ways. Regulation and re-distribution in the economies has risen, which makes investors in any new businesses naturally careful. Policymakers’ attention has been diverted towards dealing with the covid 19 crisis, which is often delaying decisions in other areas, for example about spectrum licensing or competitive issues. Sometimes less rigorous fast solutions are being adopted as a response. So far we could observe a range of distinct responses by the telecoms industry to the situations around covid 19. They include: Offering consumers extra free services within their price plans to ease the pressure of the covid 19 lockdowns and to boost their safety. This has sometimes involved extra data allowances or even unlimited data use. Zero rated content offers, for example for health, safety and education, have been particularly popular in emerging markets. Traffic management. The lockdown-induced spike in consumer internet traffic, especially video, at some stages resulted in network disruptions in a number of countries including Switzerland and the UK. Hence some operators not only issued pleas and guidance towards the consumers how to use the internet ‘responsibly’, but in some cases they adopted certain traffic management mechanisms. Co-operation with governments on tracking the infected individuals. The leading European telcos for example offered to share some personal data with governments and the EU authorities already in the early stages of the covid 19 crisis. This issue is naturally sensitive due to privacy. Requesting emergency spectrum. The FCC has provided emergency spectrum to the US telecom industry, Vodafone called for similar steps, some other countries including South Africa have followed. New Zealand even scrapped its spectrum auction entirely and awarded the spectrum directly to the chosen operators. 42