The opening of telecommunications to competition: technical and economic analysis of network interconnection.

Summary In the face of the vast movement towards liberalization of telecommunications, the thesis studies the extent to which competition implies a more complex regulation of the sector, a complexity that is based on the need to develop a policy of interconnection to the public network. The first part, devoted to the process of market opening, highlights the need for specific regulation of the sector and underlines the essential role played by interconnection to the incumbent's network. On the basis of this observation, the second part of this paper, after stressing the importance of interconnection pricing with respect to the potential for competition, highlights the risks associated with poor interconnection pricing. The third part shows that interconnection is based on an ambiguous form of inter-firm cooperation. We develop a particular example of interconnection between mobile networks (national roaming). Based on a technical and economic analysis of this example and on the theory of cooperative games, this last part shows that the risks of abuse of the dominant position of the incumbent operator may gradually give way to risks of collusive behavior, the instrument of which could be the interconnection charge.