Forum THE TELECOMMUNICATION MARKETS IN SELECTED OECD COUNTRIES: MARKET CHARACTERISTICS AND REGULATORY INSTITUTIONS

Telecommunications has been one of the mostdynamic economic sectors in recent years. The former public utility sector with natural monopoly characteristics, which was typically under state own-ership, has experienced dramatic changes with regards to technical innovations as well as changing market environments. Most countries have priva-tised their state-owned companies and opened up the market for competition. Due to bottlenecks in the local loop which is the remaining portion of the network with natural monopoly characteristics, access to this infrastructure component has been set under sector-specific regulation in most countries. However, this has been done under differing frame-work conditions in the respective countries.This arti-cle gives a brief introduction to the various new tech