Network Access Pricing and Deregulation

The paper addresses the question of rising access to the network facilities of an incumbent firm after deregulation. Network access pricing continues to be regulated in such industries as telecommunications, railroads, electric power and natural gas. We emphasize that access prices should be set such that they satisfy an individual rationality condition for the incumbent firm so that access is granted voluntarily. We examine the effects of the voluntary access condition on incentives for entry and show that properly chosen access prices provide incentives for efficient entry using several alternative competition models: Bertrand-Nash, Cournot-Nash and Chamberlin competition with differentiated products.