ABSTRACT
Traditionally, telecommunications was organised at the national level whereby government, the telecommunications administration and the equipment industry were sovereign in the provision of domestic equipment and services. When confronted with the current far-reaching technological, economic and international challenges, however, policy makers have become aware that telecommunications can no longer be seen as a domestic affair with policies mainly oriented towards home markets and national constituents. The techno-economic rationale for a statecontrolled monopoly has eroded and the iron triangle of PTT, government and equipment manufacturer(s) has begun to lose political control. European states have started to reorganise their established telecommunications administrations and transform monopolistic markets into more open and regulated forms of competition. In this chapter we will compare the strategic responses of France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to the new techno-economic and international conditions of the 1980s and 1990s and see whether there is any evidence of a typically Dutch, French or British approach to telecommunications restructuring.
