Beyond competition: broadening the scope of telecommunications policy

Abstract

The editors of this book have brought together a fine selection of scientific articles centred around the changing nature of (tele)communication policy and written by renowned Belgian and international scholars. Indeed, privatisation and liberalisation in the field of public services at the end of the millennium did prompt a number of new questions and challenges for operators, policy makers and academics alike. In recent years main policy debates were all about the introduction of competition. This book on the other hand focuses mainly on finding ways to reconcile economic and social policy goals. In order to balance these often diverging goals the authors plead for a broadening of telecommunication policy towards other fields of policy such as education, social policy, tax law, etc. To achieve this, one has to look beyond competition and that is precisely what this book aims at