| NOTAS: | "The policy rhetoric of competition that emerged in the early 1980s has been sustained and continues to be enshrined in new legislation. In parallel with the introduction of new policy regimes centred on the tenets of liberalisation, regulation, deregulation, privatisation and competition has been the emergence of new policy questions, in particular the exploration of the consequences of the new policy regimes. Interwoven with this new policy framework has been the transformation of the technical infrastructures, which in itself has created sets of new policy questions not only innovation and the diffusion of the technologies but also about the inter-relationship between new technologies and, for example, questions over privacy. It is in exploring some of these issues that the papers in this volume cohere. The purpose of this volume is to bring together some of these different perspectives and draw out the implications for policy development. In doing so, the papers in this volume focus on four different dimensions of the current policy debate, namely, the local loop, new services innovation, consumer rights, and the issues surrounding liberalisation in the smaller countries in Europe." |
