Why Competition Is Necessary in Telecommunications and How to Achieve It: The Experience of the Advanced Economies

Why Competition Is Necessary in Telecommunications and How to Achieve It: The Experience of the Advanced Economies Francois Bar Michael Borrus Working Paper 102 September 1997 ©Copyright 1997, by the authors This paper was presented to Chinese policy-makers at a meeting organized by the US Information Technology Office (USITO), Beijing, China, September 24-25, 1997. Francois Bar is an Assistant Professor of Communications at Stanford University. Michael Borrus is a Co-Director of BRIE (the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy), and an adjunct Professor of the School of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Research and work on this paper benefited from the generous support of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Table of Contents I. Telecommunications at a Time of Discontinuities II.The Prerequisites of Competition Make Competition Possible Make Competition Work Make Competition Real and Effective Make Competition Enforceable III. Competition as the Means to Economic Growth and Sustained Innovation