Telecommunications Liberalization on Two Sides of the Atlantic

Foreword

vii Foreword T he United States, Canada, and the European Union have embarked on ambitious programs of liberalization of their telecommunications sectors. The United States led this effort by opening its long-distance market to competition in the 1970s, but it was the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that forced open the market for local and intrastate telecommunications . Canada was somewhat slower, liberalizing its long-distance market in 1992 and opening local telecommunications to competition in 1997. Finally, the European Union ordered all member states to begin opening markets to competition on January 1, 1998. It is perhaps a little early for definitive judgments about the success of these efforts, but the authors in this volume offer some tentative conclusions about the directions of reform on both sides of the Atlantic. Robert W. Crandall and Thomas W. Hazlett are mildly sanguine about the results in the United States, although they prefer the less regulatory approach adopted in Canada. Martin Cave and Luigi Prosperetti are less optimistic about the European Union. Chapters 2 and 3 critique individual country policies and suggest reforms that would speed the path to competition. This volume is one in a series commissioned by the AEIBrookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies to contribute to the continuing debate over regulatory reform. The series addresses several fundamental issues in regulation, including the design of effective reforms, the impact of proposed reforms on the public, and the political and institutional forces that affect reform. viii FOREWORD The debates over regulatory policy have often been highly partisan and ill-informed. We hope that this series will help illuminate many of the complex issues involved in designing and implementing regulation and regulatory reforms at all levels of government. ROBERT W. HAHN ROBERT E. LITAN AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies ...