Competition and Diffusion of Telecommunication Services: The Multimedia Communication Services in Brazil

This paper aims to discuss the recent trends in the regulation of telecom services regarding the diffusion of broadband. To this matter, it compares the recent international competition regulation experiences to the Brazilian scenario. Considering that the telecom sector passed through huge technological and structural transformations in the last decades (from typical voice communications to convergent services based on broadband, and from voice services monopoly to multiple services oligopoly), its regulatory framework has also changed. Lately, several countries - such as the United States, the Netherlands, Korea and Chile - have established inter and intra-platform competition regulations in order to expand the access to the new forms of communications based on broadband. In Brazil, such mechanisms are not fully explored, and the country has lots of areas in which there is no competition in broadband services (known as multimedia communication services). As a result, Brazil has one of the highest prices of broadband services and one of the lowest levels of broadband penetration. In this way and considering international success in expanding services through competition, the paper defends that such mechanisms should be reinforced in the Brazilian broadband market.