Competition and Regulation Issues in Telecommunications: Synthesis The telecommunications industry has been transformed by increasingly vigorous competitive activity in an environment of rapid technical and regulatory change. As new technologies grow and as competitors enter and expand firms often seek access to the networks of their competitors. The rules for connecting networks can be critical for the success of new and established networks and can have significant effects on investment. In fact the most complex questions facing regulators in a potentially competitive telecommunications market are frequently focused on the conditions of access of one network to another’s network. One reason these problems are severe is that as long as subscribers are only connected to one network that network has a monopoly over calls that terminate with its subscribers even if different networks might have competed to obtain that subscriber...