The Endgame of Telecommunications Policy? A Survey

Will telecommunications policy in the form of industry-specific regulation go away? A literature review of the five policy areas (1) termination monopoly, (2) local bottleneck access, (3) net neutrality, (4) spectrum management, and (5) universal service suggests that in some of them a move to competition policy will soon be the efficient state of the art, while regulation will remain efficient in others for some time. In particular, some regulation should persist for net neutrality in the form of transparency requirements, (quasi-) common carrier obligations and minimum quality standards. Also, spectrum management will continue to see regulators provide zoning and other services, in particular for unlicensed spectrum.