Infrastructure coopetition and the creation of value: an Anglo-Dutch comparison of regulatory regimes for the provision of rail and telephony services

Abstract

The technological, economic and administrative environments of the various infrastructure sectors are changing, making many of the characteristics of infrastructures as they were known in the 1970s, outdated. At the brink of the new millennium 2000, the public sector is giving away, at least in part, its role of planner and financier of energy, transport and telecommunications facilities, to replace it with more liberal regimes of governance. A dominant centralist role has been replaced by a hybrid relationship with private parties in which coopetition - i.e. cooperation or coordination at the level of construction of physical infrastructures and competition at the level of attached services where most added value is captured - seems best to describe how various players are kept together. In this paper, regulatory regimes for the creation of societal value for rail and basic telephony are compared in two countries, Britain and the Netherlands. Evolution in the environment of national policy models is driving countries to converge in their outlook and regulation of infrastructure services, and it is clear that national interpretations in the two countries studied are becoming more similar and must deal partly with the same issues. Yet despite this, different models are still chosen to regulate and realise optimal value creation in the transport and telecommunications sectors.