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Telecom Reform and Consumer Prices

The Globe and Mail on why telecom deregulation may actually result in higher, not lower pricing.  As Ivey School of Business professor Guy Holburn notes "It's a fairly concentrated industry.  It's just not obvious rates are going to go down."

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One Comment

  1. Mark Goldberg says:

    Because it’s more like long distance
    It may not be obvious to Holburn, but there is less concentration in telephony than he acknowledges. Perhaps in a battle of the business schools, I see that Mihkel Tombak of Rotman thinks that prices could go down.

    As I am quoted in that same article, “You have all sorts of outsiders who can discipline the pricing from the incumbent phone companies.” Look at all the alternatives: cable-based voice services, cell phone competition, over-the-top VoIP – local phone service is more likely to behave like long distance.

    And one thing is for certain, consumers won’t save money under regulated pricing.