2022 Volume 5 Issue 2 Pages 95-116
The purpose of this study is to summarize the developments of the UK telecommunications law, particularly the regulations for BT as an infrastructure incumbent, and to highlight its characteristics.
In the U.K., Openreach, a wholly owned subsidiary of BT, is engaging telecom infrastructure business. Broadband operators in the U.K. still need to use Openreach's facilities in many geographic areas. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent abuse of a dominant position and preferential treatment of BT by Openreach. The former is an issue of "SMP (Significant Market Power) regulations" and the latter is an issue of "equality of access and operational separation."
Although there have been prior studies on the UK's telecoms law, there are two reasons why we have undertaken this study.
The first reason is to contribute to Japan's telecoms policy by updating the previous studies of UK's initiatives. As a background, the construction of high-capacity communication networks has become a global issue in the context of the demand for digitalization.
The second reason is to summarize the characteristics of the regulation for the British incumbent, with regards to the following factors: Japan's regulation for NTT is in its period of change; and ex-ante regulations for platforms based on the size of companies are being considered worldwide.
With the above in mind, this study focuses on the UK telecoms law since the 1980s. As a result, the following points can be highlighted: regulations for the incumbent operator has shifted its focus from service competition (promoting market entry and hence price competition) to infrastructure competition (encouraging investment by competitors); operational separation is exercised in the UK as "co-regulation" with a focus on organization; and the guiding principles of "competition/investment" and "organization (co-regulation)" can have a more general value, not limited to telecoms market.
