The paper at hand entitled Ex ante regulation in the field of electronic communications - promotion of service or infrastructure competition deals with the question of whether the current regulatory framework really allows the development of service competition that would allow the development of infrastructure competition in the electronic communications sector. Based on what I have written in this paper, I can conclude that the development of service competition in the retail markets is a precondition for the development of infrastructure competition, which, however, was not sufficiently encouraged by asymmetric ex ante regulation measures in the current legislative framework. Recognizing the need to encourage the development of infrastructural competition in the field of electronic communications, the European has adopted a new legislative framework. This new legislative framework introduces new regulatory models, the idea for which is taken from competition law. They should encourage more investment in network infrastructure, as national regulatory agencies are bound not to impose asymmetric ex ante regulatory measures to operators with significant market power in relation to new very high-capacity networks in which they just invested. That should enable the development of infrastructure competition. Infrastructure competition should, in the long term, enable the development of long lasting and self-sustaining competition in the field of electronic communications and that is a prerequisite to the elimination of the need for ex ante regulation.
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