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Download 108 KB Texto completo en español More publications of: Andrés Pereyra More works in Estudios Públicos > Index by Number > Estudios Públicos N° 91-100 > Estudios Públicos N° 92 Estudios Públicos > Index by Subject > Economy > Free Competition

At the end of the nineties, Uruguay began a reform of the telecommunications regulatory system. The aspect of this reform that raised the greatest expectations was the opening of the mobile telephony market. The organized competitive bidding followed the basic scheme used in the United States in 1994 and included recommendations learned from European experience in 2000. However, the bidding was a failure: no new companies entered the market and receipts were virtually the lowest possible. The study concludes that the causes behind that outcome did not lie in the design of the award process but rather in the confluence of the institutional characteristics of the country with the outbreak of a deep economic crisis during the bidding process.