Pitfalls Our experience in the United States and that in other countries teaches that the road to competition is not always straight or smooth. There are pitfalls that cannot always be avoided. For one thing, the transition to competition generates a large degree of turmoil. Once expectations of competitive bounty have been created, consumers can become impatient waiting for new entrants to generate promised new services. Relationships among the operators, and between the operators and the regulator, need to be thrashed out.
Business plans change constantly as competitors react to the changing marketplace.
For another, laws and regulations may at times prove too inflexible to accommodate the needs of the competitive marketplace. In the United States, we spent many years trying to stretch, bend, and adapt the Communications Act of 1934. This is one area where countries that lack a developed infrastructure and a detailed regulatory regime may have an advantage. They may be able to structure systems and rules that are unencumbered by yesterday's limitations and reflect tomorrow's possibilities. A final lesson we have painfully learned is that competition takes a lot of work and a lot of time.