s were liber- alized. In the United States, Canada, and Europe, long-distance rates are falling rapidly to a level that will eventually approximate local intercon- nection rates ("access charges") plus the long-run incremental cost of trans- mission and switching. Once the United States allowed the Bell companies to enter long-distance services, there was little difference among regulatory regimes across the three geographic areas, and the results have been rather similar. The major differences are to be found in the market-opening strategies used in local telecommunications As mentioned earlier, none of the regu- latory regimes has been very successful in inducing facilities-based entry into local narrowband (voice) communications. The U.S. attempt to accel- erate entry through liberal resale and unbundling policies cannot be judged a success at this juncture. Canada's more modest unbundling policy has yet to produce dividends, but it has not seen as many failed entrants as has the U.S. regime. The European policy has been the least aggressive in promot- ing local entry. In all three areas, entry has had little effect on local rates. One difficulty in measuring the prices of telecommunications services across countries is that price indexes tend to be inconsistent because call- ing plans vary from carrier to carrier within and across countries. In some countries, the price of local calls varies with the time of day, or local calls may even be free. Subscribers may also have a choice of different mobile and fixed telephony calling plans, and these plans may differ across com- petitors. In addition, subscribers' calling patterns vary considerably within and across national borders. The OECD attempts to solve these problems by calculating telecom- munications price indexes for "baskets" of services for both businesses and Telecom Reform in Other Countries Figure 9-2. Prices for National Calls in Canada, the European Union, and the United States, 1985-2001 Dollars per minute U.S. interstate Canada minutes Source: Un