Competition in Telecommunications

In 1996, at the time of the roundtable, an unprecedented wave of deregulation and liberalisation had started in the telecommunications sector. Participants discussed institutional aspects of antitrust and regulation in the sector. One issue was whether competition authorities should be responsible for injecting competition or whether telecommunications regulators should take the lead. They also discussed how to address structural constraints due to natural monopoly in some parts of the market and how to ensure performance of universal service obligations by newly privatized former monopolists. This document comprises proceedings in the original languages of a roundtable on Competition in Telecommunications which was held by Working Party No. 2 of the Committee on Competition Law and Policy in November 1995. It is published as a general distribution document under the responsibility of the Secretary General of the OECD to bring information on this topic to the attention of a wider audience. This is the sixth compilation published in a new OECD series named “Roundtables on Competition Policy”.