Platform regulation: perspectives from a telecom operator

Résumé

Platforms are very large firms the size, financial power and influence are without precedent, developing a two-sided platform business model, generating concentration and sustainable domination. They provide efficient intermediation, always extending their perimeter by integrating innovation. But they also exhibit questionable behavior regarding taxation, personal data, mergers, contracts, leveraging dominant position, …) and may appear stronger than political bodies and above regulation. Against these observations, platform regulation should avoid two dead-ends: creating sui a generis stand-alone regulation of their economic power without sound economic foundations, or extending irrelevant and questionable in itself telecommunications law to platforms. A first thing which needs to be done is to adapt the interpretation and substance of general laws (on taxation, personal data, contacts, responsibility, intermediation functions, mergers, dominance leveraging, …) to make them relevant and enforceable for digital platforms. Beyond this, institutions and academics should also support alternative forms of industrial organization able to conciliate competition and internalization of network effects.