Telecommunications Infrastructure Competition
The Costs of Delay
This paper examines the experience of the United States, the United Kingdom and other OECD countries that introduced infrastructure competition, principally for long-distance telephone service, during the 1980s. The results show that competition has generally brought lower prices, greater variety of service, faster innovation, higher usage and productivity gains, and increased output both in telecommunications and in other sectors of the economy. The evidence is now convincing that the economic benefits from competition outweigh the highly visible costs and disruptions to established organizations and relations. Other countries can learn from the pioneers' experience to reduce the uncertainties and costs resulting from the transition to competition.
Originally published in: Telecommunications Policy, v. 19, no. 5, 1995, pp. 351-363.
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