Re: Wrong?
[ QUOTE ]
Think about it. Today we can perform almost all communication services over fiber. Cable TV, Internet, Telephony, etc. The entire network was built with virtually no regulation, because the content of the fiber was not anticipated. The entire worldwide network was built in a few short years, and is now available as a conduit for all of these competing services.
[/ QUOTE ]
Regulation is absolutely key to telecommunications. You are not going to have multiple companies owning there own physical infrastructure and thus you have a very complex regulatory environment setting up rules to structure the ways in which companies share the infrastructure.
In most countries, deregulation of monopolies in telecom (which was obviously a good thing) involved a lot of intervention to get enough major players into the market. The market system was not going to provide sufficient competition on its own, because the barriers to entry were way too high and entrenched players were too powerful.
The point is not that regulated monopolies are better (obviously not) but that "deregulation" in complex sectors really has just amounted to "reregulation," since the market alone will not provide optimal competition structures.
|