Regulation and Competition in Mobile Telephony in Latin America

This paper addresses three areas of regulatory policy involving mobile telephony in Latin America. These questions are examined in relation to case studies on Colombia, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic, followed by policy recommendations. First, in the area of access regulation, government regulation and the adoption of private-sector agreements on the basis of a model contract are preferable to voluntary negotiations. Second, local fixed-line service providers should ideally be excluded from mobile telephony. When this is not possible, they should only participate in geographic areas where they do not dominate local fixed-line service, and they should be required to maintain strict managerial, accounting, and legal separation of mobile and fixed-line activities. Third, unlimited entry into mobile phone markets is preferable to concessions through exclusive licenses or auctions.

A Critique of Light-Handed Regulation: The Case of British Gas February 1999

Although attractive in theory, the implementation of light-handed regulation in the United Kingdom has faced several problems. First, light-handed regulation has not worked as anticipated to avoid the need for lengthy regulatory proceedings. Second, light-handed regulation has unintentionally created inefficient incentives for regulated companies. Third, light-handed regulation has not successfully constrained the monopoly power of incumbents. We illustrate the problems with light-handed regulation principally by reference to the experience of British Gas. The British government established the Office of Gas Regulation, known as Ofgas, to regulate British Gas after its privatization. However, Ofgas was not able to set reasonable prices without instigating lengthy proceedings before the Monopolies and Mergers Commission that examined the costs of British Gas. We analyze a particular dispute over British Gas prices that took over four years to resolve. The desire to avoid heavy-handed regulation of British Gas also created inefficient incentives for the pipeline to add new customers. Light-handed regulation further left British Gas the scope to abuse its monopoly position over existing customers. We conclude from the British Gas experience that the United Kingdom\u27s privatization policy in the 1980s did not adequately anticipate the complexities of regulating private companies with monopoly power. The United States regulatory experience may have seemed quite unattractive when compared to an optimistic vision of light-handed regulation, but appears less so when compared to the difficulties encountered by British regulation in practice. Other countries now establishing regulatory systems will benefit from a careful comparison of international experience, and would do well to avoid the extremes of either heavy-handed or light-handed regulation

Network Industries, Third Party Access and Competition Law in the European Union

This article addresses a set of issues that arise in the context of market liberalization for a special and important class of industries, the so-called network industries, which include electricity, natural gas, rail transportation and telecommunications. Each of these industries combines activities that are potentially competitive, such as generation of electricity, with ones that are naturally monopolistic, such as transmission of electricity. This combination produces a unique set of challenges to competition law and policy in designing a market structure and regulatory framework which maximize the benefits of liberalization while effectively controlling any tendencies to monopolistic abuse. We analyze Chicago School theories that would support negotiated access as an efficient option. After exploring the apparent contradictions between Chicago School predictions and British Gas\u27s behavior, we analyze the theoretical weaknesses in the Chicago School approach and identify several reasons why voluntary negotiations should not form the basis of government policy. We review the limited experience with negotiated access to electricity transmission in Germany, which confirms our conclusion that negotiated access would deter the development of competition in the European gas and electricity industries. We propose an alternative frame for regulation based on vertical separation of the network and regulated third party access with cost-based pricing. Incumbents may merit compensation for past investments or for continuing obligations such as universal service. However, any such compensation should be provided by transparent and competitively neutral funding mechanisms

A Critique of Light-Handed Regulation: The Case of British Gas February 1999

Although attractive in theory, the implementation of light-handed regulation in the United Kingdom has faced several problems. First, light-handed regulation has not worked as anticipated to avoid the need for lengthy regulatory proceedings. Second, light-handed regulation has unintentionally created inefficient incentives for regulated companies. Third, light-handed regulation has not successfully constrained the monopoly power of incumbents. We illustrate the problems with light-handed regulation principally by reference to the experience of British Gas. The British government established the Office of Gas Regulation, known as Ofgas, to regulate British Gas after its privatization. However, Ofgas was not able to set reasonable prices without instigating lengthy proceedings before the Monopolies and Mergers Commission that examined the costs of British Gas. We analyze a particular dispute over British Gas prices that took over four years to resolve. The desire to avoid heavy-handed regulation of British Gas also created inefficient incentives for the pipeline to add new customers. Light-handed regulation further left British Gas the scope to abuse its monopoly position over existing customers. We conclude from the British Gas experience that the United Kingdom\u27s privatization policy in the 1980s did not adequately anticipate the complexities of regulating private companies with monopoly power. The United States regulatory experience may have seemed quite unattractive when compared to an optimistic vision of light-handed regulation, but appears less so when compared to the difficulties encountered by British regulation in practice. Other countries now establishing regulatory systems will benefit from a careful comparison of international experience, and would do well to avoid the extremes of either heavy-handed or light-handed regulation

The Economics of Pricing Network Interconnection: Theory and Application to the Market for Telecommunications in New Zealand

Deregulation and the successful introduction of competition to the market for telephone services raise the complex issue of interconnection. Incumbent telephone companies have an incentive to maximize profits by charging entrants the highest interconnection price possible. In New Zealand, the debate over the proper terms of interconnection was brought before the courts under the country\u27s antitrust laws. The incumbent attempted to establish the parity principle as the standard for interconnection. As proposed in New Zealand, the parity principle would allow an unregulated monopolist to set access charges at a level sufficient to compensate it for the financial consequences of entry. Justification for this standard lies in claims that any other interconnection rule would be inefficient. Tye and Lapuerta critique these efficiency claims. They argue that the proposed rule would frustrate goals of competition, including: constraining monopoly pricing, enhancing dynamic efficiency and encouraging technological progress. The authors reject the parity principle in favor of a proposal that compensates rival networks for terminating inter-network calls on the basis of long-run incremental cost. They explain how interconnection on these terms can simultaneously promote successful competition and efficiency in the provision of telephone service

Improving the prefetching performance through code region profiling

In this work, we propose a new technique to improve the performance of hardware data prefetching. This technique is based on detecting periods of time and regions of code where the prefetcher is not working properly, thus not providing any speedup or even producing slowdown. Once these periods of time and regions of code are detected, the prefetcher may be switched off and later on, switched on. To efficiently implement such mechanism, we identify three orthogonal issues that must be addressed: the granularity of the code region, when the prefetcher is switched on, and when the prefetcher is switched off

La diversificación industrial y tecnológica aplicada en el sector de la madera y el mueble

En el presente proyecto se ha buscado realizar un proceso de diversificación en el sector de la madera y el mueble.Para ello se han cumplido los siguientes objetivos: Estudiar el contexto sectorial en el que se encuentra el sector de la madera y el mueble en España. Realizar un analisis DAFO del sector y un posterior diagnóstico competitivo. Estudiar los principales procesos de producción en el sector. Realizar un estudio teórico del proceso de diversificación. Aplicar el proceso al sector de la madera y el mueble

La estructura de la pasarela de acceso al Centro Especial de Empleo Aspanias. Polígono G3 de Burgos, 1994.

The paper describes the wooden structure of a pedestrian bridge of a mixed use building with (residential and working) for disabled people.It has been analyzed from the process of design to the structure itself and questions about materials and treatmentsThe building was built 13 years ago, when the wooden construction was really reduced in Spain; something to keep in mind in the analysis of this work.El artículo describe la estructura de una pasarela de madera de acceso a un edificio de uso mixto residencial y laboral para discapacitados.Se recorren los aspectos de proyecto, del diseño de la estructura y otros más técnicos relativos al tipo de materiales y tratamientos.La obra se construyó hace unos 13 años, momento en el que en España la construcción con madera era mínima; algo que sin duda no puede perderse de vista al analizar esta obra

Estimation of trapped mass by in-cylinder pressure resonance in HCCI engines

High pressure gradients at homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engines heavily excite the pressure resonance. The pressure resonant frequency depends on speed of sound in the cylinder, and thus on the bulk gas temperature. Present paper profits this relation estimating the trapped mass inside the cylinder. In contrast to other estimation methods in the literature, the presented method is based on the trace of the in-cylinder pressure during the cycle; therefore, it permits a cycle-to-cycle mass estimation, and avoids errors associated with other assumptions, such as heat transfer during compression or initial temperature of the in-cylinder gases. The proposed strategy only needs the pressure signal, a volume estimation and a composition assumption to obtain several trapped mass estimates during one cycle. These estimates can be later combined for providing an error estimate of the measurement, with the assumption of negligible blow-by. The method is demonstrated in two HCCI engines of different size, showing good performance in steady operation and presenting great potential to control transient operation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Luján, JM.; Guardiola, C.; Pla Moreno, B.; Bares-Moreno, P. (2016). Estimation of trapped mass by in-cylinder pressure resonance in HCCI engines. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing. 66-67:862-874. doi:10.1016/j.ymssp.2015.05.016S86287466-6

La estructura de la cubierta de la pieza de recepción del Centro Especial de Empleo Aspanias. Morales del Vino, Zamora, 1993

The paper describes the wooden structure of a pedestrian bridge of a mixed use building with (residential and working) for disabled people. It has been analyzed from the process of design to the structure itself and questions about materials and treatments. The building was built 13 years ago, when the wooden construction was really reduced in Spain; something to keep in mind in the analysis of this work.El artículo describe el proyecto y la construcción de una estructura de cubierta madera de la pieza de acceso a un edificio de uso mixto residencial y laboral para discapacitados. Se describen algunos aspectos de proyecto, del diseño de la estructura y otros más técnicos relativos al tipo de materiales y tratamientos. La obra se construyó hace unos 13 años, momento en el que en España la construcción con madera era mínima; algo que sin duda no puede perderse de vista al analizar esta obra