ABSTRACT
The promised liberalization within the European Economic Community in 1992 is likely to be the most significant economic event of the coming decade. Should this transformation actually occur, it will at last create a market, the world's largest, appropriate to the economic potential of the region. This chapter discusses the role of telecommunications services in defining the scope of the market of services, which after all is what 1992 is all about. The US, the world's largest market, is also its richest. Workers within the market can seek employment anywhere he or she is in demand; highly specialized firms have a very large pool of consumers from which to draw; firms that depend upon scale economies have a market whose scale matches their needs. European telecommunications remains in a traditional public monopoly mode; state-run or state-regulated, focused on its protected monopoly position, unresponsive to market needs.
