The Telecommunications Act of 1996 invites entry in the local telecommunications networks whereby entrants will lease parts of the network ("unbundled network elements") from incumbents "at cost plus reasonable profit." A crucial question in the implementation of the Act is the appropriate measure of cost. This paper examines the economic principles on which the cost calculation should be based. I conclude that the appropriate measure of cost (maximizing allocative, productive, and dynamic efficiency) is forward-looking economic cost and not the historical, accounting, or embedded cost of the incumbent’s network. In calculating costs, demand and supply uncertainty, as well as the asymmetric position of incumbents and entrants should be taken into account. Close examination of the issue of uncertainty in the local telecommunications network reveals that (i) for most unbundled network elements, there is little demand uncertainty; and (ii) that those elements that face significant uncertainty, do not have sunk value. Thus, the incumbent does not face higher expected cost by investing. Moreover, the rewards of the incumbent can be higher because buyers prefer to buy services from the owner of the network. Finally, strategic considerations in oligopolistic interaction are likely to dominate any uncertainty considerations and will increase the incentive of incumbents to invest.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
99-11.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ste:nystbu:99-11
Contact details of provider: Postal: New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics, 44 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012-1126 Phone: (212) 998-0860 Fax: (212) 995-4218 Web page: http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/economics/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Cecilia H. Aiello).
Find related papers by JEL classification: L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)