Digital platforms have acquired increasing importance. This raised academic and institutional awareness about their potentially problematic features. As digital platforms are a relatively new phenomenon, they raise new challenges, which require new solutions. However, it is fruitful to learn from the past where appropriate, to find well-suited solutions and avoid the mistakes already made in similar circumstances. The regulatory framework of telecommunications can thus provide useful insights and teachings. Telecommunications and digital platforms are indeed part of the same ecosystem and have many characteristics in common.
The research is organised as follows:
- The different possible regulatory models are described, including the ideologies and values underlying each of them.
- The characteristics of the digital platforms are analysed, focusing on the market failures and the justifications for regulating them.
- The characteristics of the telecommunications sector and the objectives, principles and main provisions of its regulation are explored. The following provisions are in particular addressed: (i) the provisions aimed at reducing lock-in and network effects (e.g. number portability), (ii) the access regulation, (iii) the implementation, based on a periodic assessment of the definition of relevant markets, of significant market power positions within those markets, and of the remedies aimed at pursuing the higher level of competition, (iv) the legislation recently adopted to incentivize the deployment of new generation networks, and (v) net neutrality.
- Against this background, an assessment of the Digital Markets Act, and more specifically its objectives, its structure, and its main provisions, are carried out.
- Based on this analysis, some indications on how the DMA should be interpreted and enforced is illustrated.
