ABSTRACT
In both telecommunications and broadcasting, new market structures have emerged which change the context of and rationale for regulation. In both domains governments have lost control over market entry and, consequently, the old method of achieving regulatory goals (including social goals) by attaching conditions to licences no longer works reliably. So what? Some claim that this no longer matters and that competition will spontaneously achieve the goals which once could only be realised through regulation. But this view seems excessively optimistic for the following reasons:
• The future is constrained by the past-competition will not develop spontaneously because part of the legacy of the past is a number of dominant firms-often created by an earlier regulatory regime which controlled entry.
