Tuning into the New Economy

Abstract

This article discusses how European competition law has been applied, particularly with regard to merger control, in relation to the converging markets of media and telecommunications. The imperatives of technological reform, cross-sectoral and platform convergence, trade liberalisation, and the globalisation of communications services have served to establish new strategic alliances, acquisitions and most notably corporate marriages and mergers. Telecommunication companies have metamorphosed from domestically rooted monopoly utilities into national champions in international, even global markets. Moreover, actors from the adjacent sectors - media and computing- have sought alliances with one another and with telecommunication corporations as the new communications markets have continued to converge. Within this context, the European Commission's Competition Directorate has been responsible for applying European Union competition policies and making rulings with regard to a growing number of corporate communications 'convergence' alliances and mergers. This article reviews the factors which have driven European competition policy within the communication sectors, discusses how such policy has been administered with regard to three prominent mergers in converging communication markets, and considers the implications of these particularly high profile merger rulings. It relates the EC's policy responses to the wider questions which competition policy raises regarding information and communications as public or private good and concludes by commenting on the ability of EC competition law alone to address issues of the public good as well as purely economic matters (competition).