Regulatory reform had its beginnings in the United States in the 1970s, and today it is taking place around the globe. One of the central questions for industrial policy is how to regulate firms with market power. Regulatory Reform tackles this important policy issue in two parts: it describes...

Internet telephony is the integration and convergence of voice and data networks, services, and applications. The rapidly developing technology can convert analog voice input to digital data, send it over available networked channels, and then convert it back to voice output. Traditional...

This book describes the transformation of telecommunications from national network monopolies to a new system, the network of networks, and the glue that holds it together, interconnection. By their very nature, monopoly-owned networks provided a small number of standardized, nationwide...

In 2000 and 2001, several European countries carried out auctions for third generation technologies or universal mobile telephone services (UMTS) communication licenses. These "spectrum auctions" inaugurated yet another era in an industry that has already been transformed by a combination of...

In Competition in Telecommunications, Jean-Jacques Laffont and Jean Tirole analyze regulatory reform and the emergence of competition in network industries using the state-of-the-art theoretical tools of industrial organization, political economy, and the economics of incentives. The book opens...