주요 EU 국가의 보편적 서비스 및 상호접속제도에 관한 연구 : 영국과 프랑스를 중심으로 = A Study on the Inter - Connection and Universal Service of the Telecommunication Sector : The Case of UK and France

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Telecommunication services have developed with unprecedented speed in recent years. In a sector dominated until recently by national monopolies, opening-up to competition goes hand in hand with liberalization of the sector. Although liberalization is now widespread, telecommunications activities were the prerogative of governments for morethan a century. The first experiments in opening the sector to competition were conducted in the early 80s by the US and the UK. Other nations, such as New Zealand, Australia, the Scandinavian countries followed suit. Owing to the diverse nature of initial positions and prevailing arrangements in these different countries, much can be learned from the experiments of European Union. In EU, the liberalization of telecommunications was introduced since the 1st January 1998. In the process of liberalization of the sector, the regulation on the interconnection and universal service is crucial because it could influence the behavior of the market participants. In this paper, the interconnection and universal service of the telecommunication sector in the two EU countries are examined: one is the pioneer case of UK, the other is the case of France which has been keeping pace with the European liberalization process over the past decade.