Telecommunications: Mergers and More
In this issue:
Competition authorities have been spending a lot of time on telecommunications, especially in the merger area, tackling such questions as: How to balance two key needs—ensuring enough players to maintain sufficient competition while allowing that innovation requires deep pockets? How to define the appropriate market? How much consideration to give local vs. regional needs? This issue first looks at how the U.S. and EU have tackled these, and other, questions and then finishes with economic insights on how to analyze this ever-changing industry.
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The Federal Communications Commission and Lessons of Recent Mergers & Acquisitions Reviews
We looked at theory and we looked at facts and we arrived at a series of important conclusions about the nature of the marketplace and competition. Jonathan Sallet (U.S. Federal Communications Commission)
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The Ad Hoc Approach to Telecommunications Mergers: The Public Interest Compromised?
Guidelines, perhaps jointly issued by the FCC and the Justice Department, could also lessen the propensity of government enforcers to compromise away the public’s strong interest in competition. Warren Grimes (Southwestern Law School)
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The Commission’s Merger Enforcement in Mobile Mergers: Brave New World for Non-coordinated Effects?
The Commission appears to have significantly lowered the intervention threshold for challenging mergers on the basis of non-coordinated effects well beyond what was originally anticipated back in 2004. Nikolaos Peristerakis, Lodewick Prompers, & Mar García (Linklaters)
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Competition in the Spanish Telecommunications Sector: Mergers, Football Rights, and Other Regulatory Issues
It remains to be seen whether this apparently radical shift in industrial policy from the European Commission will cast its shadow on national markets such as Spain and also influence decisions at the local level. Pedro Callol (Callol, Coca & Asociados)
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Magic Numbers and Merger Control in the Telecommunications Sector
The particularities of national markets call for more involvement of national competition authorities, and highlight the limits of the one-stop-shop merger control in Europe. Pranvera Këllezi (KËLLEZI LEGAL)
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Services of General Economic Interest in the Telecommunications Sector
This means that a SGEI cannot be provided at any cost and that competition limitations have to be proportionate. Aleksander Maziarz (Kozminski University)
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The Role of Economic Analysis in the Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger
There is much fodder in this case, including the analysis of two-sided platforms, monopoly bottlenecks, bargaining theory, vertical restraints, and the use of natural experiments to test hypotheses. David S. Evans (Global Economics Group)
Are “Free” Relevant Markets Actually Free?
But citizens deserve the same effectiveness of competition policy, regardless of whether they pay with money, with their time, or with their data. Fernando Herrera González (Telefónica, S.A.)
