In this book, we have tried to provide answers to the multi-faceted question of how to regulate telecommunications markets. It is our hope that the analysis and guidelines contribute to policy and regulation that aim at stimulating and fostering competition, such that consumers are able to benefit from it.

We have addressed a wide range of different situations of entry and strategic interaction between operators, using models of the theory of industrial organization. These types of models have proved to be very useful for exploring the complex environments characterized by network structures, which are quite different from many product markets.

In our analysis (Chapters 3 to 8), we derived guidelines for policy, applied to different modes of entry (facilities-based, local-loop unbundling, carrier-select, and targeted entry) and modes of price competition (two-part tariffs, linear prices, flat fees, price discrimination, uniform pricing, and termination-based price discrimination).We will not repeat these guidelines here, since they were recapitulated and discussed in the conclusion of each of those chapters. We do, however, wish to point out here that several guidelines appear to be quite general. For instance, the same policy implications for access price regulation in infant markets emerge from different modes of competition. Overall, the complete set of guidelines gives a coherent picture of retail and access price regulation. Also, the guidelines do not crucially depend on the input parameters that were used in the simulations. We are therefore confident that the models deliver robust results.