Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Cave, Martin --- "Economic aspects of the new regulatory regime for electronic communications services" [2004] ELECD 48; in Buigues, A. Pierre; Rey, Patrick (eds), "The Economics of Antitrust and Regulation in Telecommunications" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004)

Book Title: The Economics of Antitrust and Regulation in Telecommunications

Editor(s): Buigues, A. Pierre; Rey, Patrick

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843765103

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Economic aspects of the new regulatory regime for electronic communications services

Author(s): Cave, Martin

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

3. Economic aspects of the new regulatory regime
for electronic communications services
Martin Cave

In this chapter I outline and comment on the economic basis of the new regime for regulat-
ing electronic communications services, coming into force in July 2003. I first make some
comments on the current arrangements (the 1998 package) and set out the new regime in
summary form. Then I address two specific issues: the basis for choosing markets subject to
ex ante regulation, and the choice of remedies. Many other major issues, including the
specifics of market definition and analysis, are treated briefly as they are considered else-
where in this volume.


1. LESSONS OF THE 1998 PACKAGE
It is useful to describe briefly the 1998 legislative package, which aimed at liberalizing
telecommunications in the European Union.1 For ten years or more before that, a series of
green papers, directives, recommendations and other interventions has imposed obligations
on Member States with respect to equipment markets, regulatory structures, value-added
services and the regulation of infrastructure and service competition where it existed. But in
1998, the obligation was imposed on governments to liberalize entry into their telecommu-
nications markets (except for those few countries for which extensions were granted).
The 1998 framework was inevitably fragmentary, as it developed over time. It also
embodied rough-hewn remedies, designed to `take on' the incumbents. Overall it repre-
sented a crude but potentially effective toolkit. The problem lay as much with implementation
as with its own conceptual inadequacies. ...