View Thread > Development and the Internet > Entrepreneurship - Question 2 > OPL (Other Peoples' Laws)

The dimensions that will be most critical to the near-term sucess of BusyInternet and similar enterprises are those that do not yet exist in Ghana, i.e., those that permit (or do not effectively preclude) the use of new/disruptive technologies like VoIP and fixed wireless networking in other countries. The fact that such (telecom regulatory) environments exist elsewhere gives Ghanian service providers a chance to exercise a little regulatory arbitrage to move their own legal environment in the right direction. Arguably, the increasing liberalization of the international voice telecom sector has come about through just this process, as revenues were leached away from public monopoly telcos by new technologies like callback (i.e., international redialers that enable callers in high-cost countries to enjoy some of the savings enjoyed by telco customers in the lowest-cost countries) and refile (a commercial/contractual method of achieving the same kind of savings at the enterprise level). OPL is no substitute for the kind of legal regulatory environment that is necessary for long-term success, but it can provide the critical impetus to get the process of domestic legal/regulatory change started.