Part I together with Part II launch the process of formulation of the European Union policy on infrastructure. Part II launches a broad discussion with all interested parties of the major issues involved in the future regulation of network infrastructure. This will allow the development of a common approach to infrastructure provision in the European Union. Covers: the major drivers for change; universal service; employment, societal & cultural issues; & much more. Charts & tables.
This book combines a detailed, sector-specific study of comparative telecommunications regimes set in the context of the EC, with an extensive historical and empirical analysis of individual policy management and change as experienced by three diverse regulatory cultures, namely, Britain, the Netherlands and France. By adopting a comprehensive analytical framework based on far-reaching literature, the author explores a wide-range of theories, addressing key issues at the forefront of contemporary political and academic debate as: Do nation states matter in the globalizing telecommunications industry? Does the common challenge of techno-global telecommunications restructuring elicit different national responses? What is the significance of a single-speed or multi-speed Europe in implementing telecommunications governance regimes?
The European Union began in 1957 as a treaty among six nations but today constitutes a supranational polity - one that creates rules that are binding on its 15 member countries and their citizens. This majesterial study confronts some of the most enduring questions posed by the remarkable evolution of the EU: Why does policy-making sometimes migrate from the member states to the European Union? And why has integration proceeded more rapidly in some policy domains than in others? A distinguished team of scholars lead by Wayne Sandholtz and Alec Stone Sweet offers a fresh theory and clear propositions on the development of the EU. Combining broad data and probing case studies, the volume finds solid support for these propositions in a variety of policy domains. The coherent theoretical approach and extensive empirical analyses together constitute a significant challenge to approaches that see the EU as a straightforward product of member-state interests, power, and bargaining. This volume clearly demonstrates that a nascent transnational society and supranational institutions have played decisive roles in constructing the European Union.
Governing European Communications provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the emergence, dynamics, and evolution of European-level communications governance in the post-war era, focusing on telecommunications and television policies and regulation, and their technological convergence. Concentrating on the EU, the book embeds governance within broader economic and political developments in a global context and demonstrates that European governance has been more about the character rather than the level of regulation.
In this probing analysis of the European Union's transnational legal system, Lisa Conant explores the interaction between law and politics. In particular, she challenges the widely held view that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has, through bold judicial activism, brought about profound policy and institutional changes within the EU's member states. She argues convincingly that this court, like its domestic counterparts, depends on the support of powerful organized interests to gain compliance with its rulings. What, Conant asks, are the policy implications of the ECJ's decisions? How are its rulings applied in practice? Drawing on the rich scholarship on the U.S. Supreme Court, Conant depicts the limits that the ECJ and other tribunals have to face. To illuminate these constraints, she traces the impact of ECJ decisions in four instances concerning market competition and national discrimination. She also proposes ways of anticipating which of this court's legal interpretations are likely to inspire major reforms.Justice Contained closes with a comparative analysis of judicial power, identifying the ECJ as an institution with greater similarities to domestic courts than to international organizations. The book advances a deeper understanding both of the court's contributions to European integration and of the political economy of litigation and reform.
This book provides a game theoretic model of interaction among VoIP telecommunications providers regarding their willingness to enter peering agreements with one another. The author shows that the incentive to peer is generally based on savings from otherwise payable long distance fees. At the same time, termination fees can have a countering and dominant effect, resulting in an environment in which VoIP firms decide against peering. Various scenarios of peering and rules for allocation of the savings are considered. The first part covers the relevant aspects of game theory and network theory, trying to give an overview of the concepts required in the subsequent application. The second part of the book introduces first a model of how the savings from peering can be calculated and then turns to the actual formation of peering relationships between VoIP firms. The conditions under which firms are willing to peer are then described, considering the possible influence of a regulatory body.
EU communications policy has massively changed due to both global competition on the ICT market and technological developments that led to the emergence of Internet technology. This book analyzes the structural and procedural transformation processes inside the EU legislative processes and concludes that EU communications policy struggles to reflect today's internet-enabled communications reality. It provides insights in the institutional conditions that maintained specific patterns of EU communications policy since the beginning of telecommunications regulation and concludes with an outlook on the technological and regulatory challenges ahead.
This book offers a good study of the development of telecommunications policy by the EU. . . Great value to those interested in understanding both European telecommunications policy and more generally in how policy-making operates in the EU. Mark Thatcher, West European Politics . . . the book provides an interesting perspective on the evolution of nature of telecommunications policy-making within the EU. As a consequence, the book should be of interest to telecommunications and politics/government researchers alike, Jason Whalley, Communications Booknotes Quarterly This well-written book deals with the emergence and shaping of telecommunications policy in Europe, with a particular focus on the time period of 1987 1998. . . This book fills an important gap reviewing the initial formative years of European telecommunications policy development and liberalization in detail. The book captures the complicated and interdependent policy formation process in Europe in a credible and thoughtful way, without falling into the trap of admiring critical personalities and key actors. . . The author has written an important and useful book, which invites the research community to further explore the evolution of European telecommunications policy. Erik Bohlin, Communications & Strategies Examining the emergence of a European Union telecommunications policy, Joseph Goodman explains how and why the policy developed as it did and why certain reforms in the sector were easier to achieve than others. He provides a history of the key actors in the policy-making process from the first attempts by the national postal, telegraph, and telecommunication administrations to coordinate their telecommunications policies in the 1950s, to the implementation of a comprehensive EU telecommunications regulatory structure in 1998 and the development of a new regulatory structure in 2003. The analytical framework employed by the author draws upon new institutionalism and actor-based approaches, providing an opportunity to evaluate the utility of a synthetic approach for examining and explaining EU policy-making. The focus of his analysis is on the European Commission s two-pronged strategy of liberalisation and harmonisation, which began in the late 1980s and culminated in an important milestone on January 1st 1998, when the EU Member States fully opened their telecommunications markets to competition. He concludes that a synthetic approach, which enables the researcher to apply a number of approaches to multiple settings and various levels of analysis, is useful even necessary in understanding and explaining the many dimensions of EU policy-making. This authoritative study will be of interest to all those in the telecommunications industry including attorneys, consultants, and lobbyists who would like to know how the EU s policy developed. It will appeal, more generally, to political scientists and scholars of European history and politics.
Examining the nature of telecommunication networks and the rationale for the developement of trans-European networks, the study explores the features networks need to exhibit if they are to complement the broad themes of Europe's industrial policy, and demonstrates the economic importance of advanced telecommunications to business. The final chapters of the volume offer an analysis of the technology associated with the three chosen priorities of the EU in the development of advanced telecommunication infrastructure: * the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) * the development of telematic networks * the development of broadband networks.
