Abstract
Firms operating in the telecomms and railway industries are often required to comply with social obligations imposed by government. In telecomms, the requirement that an operator should provide a universal service at a geographically uniform price is a social obligation that has been imposed widely around the world. In the case of British Telecom (BT), it is required to provide a universal service throughout the U.K. “save in so far as the provision thereof is impracticable.”2 More recently the U.K. regulator of telecomms, the Office of Telecommunications (Oftel) has defined universal service to be “affordable access to basic voice telephony (or its equivalent) for all those reasonably requesting it regardless of where they live.”3 Other operators in the U.K. telecomms market, however, are not subject to such a universal service obligation.4
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Armstrong, M., Doyle, C. (1998). Social Obligations and Access Pricing: Telecommunications and Railways in the U.K.. In: Gabel, D., Weiman, D.F. (eds) Opening Networks to Competition. Topics in Regulatory Economics and Policy Series, vol 27. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5483-7_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5483-7_8
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