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

Speta, James B. --- "Modeling an Antitrust Regulator for Telecoms" [2009] ELECD 566; in Lévêque, François; Shelanski, Howard (eds), "Antitrust and Regulation in the EU and US" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Antitrust and Regulation in the EU and US

Editor(s): Lévêque, François; Shelanski, Howard

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847207616

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Modeling an Antitrust Regulator for Telecoms

Author(s): Speta, James B.

Number of pages: 27

Extract:

4. Modeling an antitrust regulator for
telecoms
James B. Speta

Telecom markets are increasingly, even if imperfectly, competitive. This
is very old news as a matter of prediction; now it is becoming fact. Public
utility law, once dominant, is on the way out; competition law and econom-
ics is on the way in. This too is old news, at least if "old" is measured in
"Internet time." The only interesting question is how far to take the use of
competition law in telecom markets.
The easiest answer is "all the way," which involves both eliminating
substantive law other than antitrust and eliminating the regulatory institu-
tions that once implemented sector-specific telecommunications law. Early
in the Internet era (in 1997!), Peter Huber vigorously argued to "abolish
the FCC" and rely solely on private antitrust enforcement to address
any competition problems in telecommunications (Huber 1997). If one is
confident that fairly vigorous competition will more or less prevail in all
important telecommunications markets ­ and if one is more or less happy
with the results that competitive markets will produce ­ then this answer
is fairly hard to dispute.1 In structurally competitive markets, the need
for consistent legal intervention will be low, and the most likely forms of
anticompetitive activity (collusion) are those that courts are well-equipped
to identify and punish.
But of course the easy answer is not satisfying ­ or at least the easy
route to the easy answer is not ­ because, although markets are clearly
more competitive than they ...