TOWARDS A TECHNICAL APPROACH OF COMPETITI ON IN THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR

The first purpose of this article is to reexamine the old and new less ons of the theory of industrial organization for the sector of the tel ecommunications; its second goal is to analyse how the emergence of ne w technologies modify these findings and how the regulation will have to adapt to this new context. The first part, directed to engineers as well as economists, shows how the theory of imperfect competition, es pecially potential competition and the understanding of incentives iss ues contradict the theory of natural monopoly. The second part aims at being more empirical and more ambitious since, relying on the insight s developped in the first part, it uses the empirical data on the netw ork components costs and the technological evolutions to argue about t he optimal organization of the telecommunications sector.