Can Structural Separation be Imposed Under the UK’s Competition and Telecoms Regulatory Framework?

Abstract

Competition and regulatory authorities’ tool-kit generally includes the power to break up firms. However the evidence that customers benefit from separation is not always clear. In the telecoms industry for example, carving out Australia’s broadband assets into a separate company failed to address issues of broadband reach and availability in the way that had been hoped. The power to separate companies into different entities tends to be used sparingly. In the EU telecoms sector, there has to date been no compulsory separation of network infrastructure from the services that run off it.