Sunday, January 28, 2007

Historical comparisons - canals and railways

I mentioned a fantastic paper on how networks price access for customers, which you can find here: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/pricing.architecture.pdf

The sections on each part are quite easy, but the conclusion gets sophisticated. We'll revisit this at the end of the course.

Cite it as: A. M. Odlyzko (2004) Pricing and architecture of the Internet: Historical perspectives from telecommunications and transportation, conference paper presented at TPRC 2004.Then add the URL.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Reading for Week 2

As you will know frm Halyley's email, your reading is ready.

Read the Eli Noam and Martin Cave articles (save Faulhaber or a later week).

Which if Noam's explanations convinces you most of the reasons for the 'dot-com' crash?

Cave suggests various changes to the current legal framework - we will analyze in class.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

LW657-G-SP: TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND COMPETITION

Teaching Staff: Chris Marsden
Contact details: ctmarsden@yahoo.co.uk

Course Description
The telecommunications market during the 1990s was characterised by privatisation and deregulation. At the European community level, there was the additional concern to create the internal market. In addition to the operation of the competition provisions to telecommunications companies, the Commission enacted a series of six directives in 2002 to facilitate these objectives in the telecommunications services and equipment markets. In addition to considering these directives (and their current review), the course will consider
1. Articles 81, 82, and EU competition policy as implemented through various telecommunications mergers,
2. the Access Notice, and
3. the impact of competition law and its interrelationship with Article 86.
As telecommunications continues to merge with broadcasting and information technology, the course will build towards a final discussion of the new approach taken by the EC in regulating electronic networks and services through the review of its 2002 Directives, particularly the Access and Framework Directives, and at the multilateral level, the approach of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in introducing competition principles to trade in telecommunication services.
Key issues that occur in telecommunications regulation and which will be considered during the course will include:-
Interconnection, interoperability and network neutrality-
Co-location, Local Loop Unbundling and Next Generation Networks-
Regulatory authority enforcement power under EC treaty and national measures-
Ex-ante (sector-specific) and Ex-post (competition law) approaches to regulating telecommunications compared, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of each-
The competition provisions incorporated into the European Commission's approach to regulating, electronic networks and services (2002 Directives and 2007 proposed revisions); and-
WTO competition policy and telecommunications.

Primary Sources:
1. Legislation
The European Commission website is a mine of useful free information:http://europa.eu.int/information_society/policy/ecomm/implementation_enforcement/index_en.htmIts complemented by that of the
European Regulators Group:http://erg.eu.int/

Background reading for telecoms and competition law

Nick Economides' bibliography on network economics: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/biblio.html