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/

No comments: