Agenda

1. Sources of market failure in telecommunications:

1.1. Overview of basic economic concepts (marginal cost, marginal utility, supply/demand curves, monopolies/oligopolies).
1.2. Monopoly or significant market power in telecommunications networks associated with economies of scale, density and scope, and the resulting creation of bottlenecks.
1.3. Differences between wireline and wireless networks in the nature of barriers to entry.
1.4. Other possible sources of barriers to entry (numbering, spectrum etc.).
1.5. Demand-side network externalities, such as ‘club effects’.
1.6. End-user information problems.

2. Policy responses for economic regulation:

2.1. Imposing interconnection obligations to achieve network externalities.
2.2. Criteria for deciding whether to mandate access to key network elements (reconciling infrastructure and service competition).
2.3. Differences between wireline and wireless networks, and between current generation and next generation fixed networks.
2.4. Principles for setting access prices.
2.5. Is there a need for retail price controls?
2.6. Use of incentive regulation (price caps) to encourage efficiency.
2.7. Taxes on profits.
2.8. Excise taxes.
2.9. Choosing between ex ante regulatory instruments and ex post competition policy.

3. Instruments of social regulation:

3.1. Defining universal service obligations.
3.2. The implications of wireless networks and technological neutrality for universal service provision.
3.3. Delivering and funding universal service obligations.
3.4. The coming of a universal service obligations for data?