ABSTRACT
After privatization, liberalization, and deregulation the telecommunications service industry has increasingly focused on a competitive mode that could be circumscribed by innovation competition (a term coined by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC)). The features of network industries that apply in this context involve (i) speed of change, (ii) complexity of products, in terms of use of knowledge, patents, and intellectual property rights, (iii) competitive racing with market leaders driving consistently ahead receiving exceptional (long-run) rewards in terms of market share and profit growth. Given the particular dynamics and uncertainty in those markets regulation would be hard to tailor to such markets. Instead it might be more appropriate to properly apply competition law (including anti-trust law) as adjustable mechanisms to cover those markets (Lang, 1996; EC, 1997; Pons, 1998).
