ABSTRACT
The liberalisation of telecommunications services from 1981 meant that BT no longer had a legally enforceable monopoly in any part of its business except switched international services. Nevertheless, BT could be expected to dominate a large part of the telecommunications market for some considerable period. On 30 March 1982 officials within the Department of Industry concluded that, given the strategic importance of telecommunications it would have to be “an administered market” with continued regulation by the Government for some time.1 A paper to the Official Committee on Telecommunications, E(TP), in June 1982 similarly concluded that “a high degree of market dominance . . . will continue for a long period”, necessitating the creation of an effective regulatory regime.2 Privatisation would go ahead with market liberalisation, but in turn this would require a regulatory structure to protect telephone users from monopoly abuse until competition developed and to protect new entrants from BT’s market power. A paper to the same Committee from the Secretary of State, Patrick Jenkin, warned:
“a comparison with the USA is salutary. After 13 years of liberalisation, AT&T and GTE (General Telephone and Electronics) still dominate some 94 per cent of the US market between them. Telecommunications remain essentially administered markets in all countries and the dominance achieved by the national telecommunication operator over history cannot be unscrambled in a decade, let alone overnight.”3
