tory authorities and by interested parties participating in the process. To the extent that the standard developed by the government differs from the current network architecture, last-mile broadband providers will also have to incur the costs needed to reconfigure their equipment to make it compatible with the standard. In addition, because a network owner can render a platform access mandate a nullity simply by charging excessive prices to providers of complementary services with which it does not wish to do business, platform access necessarily envisions some oversight and enforcement of the nondiscrimination. The complexity of the interface means that the means of potential discrimination are likely to be myriad, which in turn means that regulatory authorities are likely to have to oversee an extremely large proportion of the dimensions of the business relationship. Imposing platform access can also adversely affect dynamic efficiency. By guar- anteeing content and applications providers access to the existing network, platform access deprives new entrants seeking to construct alternative last-mile platforms of their natural strategic partners. Despite the seriousness of the costs of mandating platform access, it is still conceivable that such regulation might create sufficient benefits to justify its impo- sition. As we noted in Chapter 5, the problem with this argument is that last-mile broadband providers already possess powerful incentives to open their networks to a wide range of content and applications providers. The likelihood that the goals of platform access will be accomplished even in the absence of government intervention undercuts the case for imposing it as a regulatory mandate. The FCC embraced much of this reasoning in its Wireline Broadband Internet Access Services Order. The FCC noted how platform access can adversely affect net- work architecture. The imposition of a standardized interface can create equipment configuration costs. Forcing network owners to reengineer general use equipment 