Experiences of the Hungarian Office of Economic Competition with the Regulation of Transport, Energy and Telecommunication

Abstract

The most important feature of the transport, energy and telecommunication sectors is that they are primarily based on networks, that is why they are often called “network industries”, and that this kind of sectoral markets are in a process of transition from dominance by monopolies to competition. Transition is, of course, relevant to all sectors of the economies in Central and Eastern European countries, and since the economies of these countries were previously based on central planning, in the past one could rarely fmd free competition — the basic element of a market economy — in the aforementioned sectors. The interesting point is that the issue of opening up the markets in network industries has been put forward all around the world. Without going into the details of the changes in the theoretical approaches to natural monopolies, I would like to emphasize the role of such changes for making obsolete the argument that these sectors could only operate efficiently under monopoly conditions.

The author is an employee of the Office of Economic Competition, Hungary (OEC). Views and opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the OEC.