Third party access policies play an important role in Australia's
National Competition Policy, and are applied to "essential infrastructure which cannot be economically duplicated", including gas networks, electricity transmission and distribution grids, water transportation and sewerage networks, telecommunications networks, rail networks, ports, and airports. One complication in Australia is that water is generally retailed at "postage stamp" or statewide prices for social equity reasons, to ensure that rural, regional, and remote customers do not pay more than urban customers for their water. Under these prices, low-volume, high-cost remote customers cross-subsidise high-volume, low-cost urban customers. As the prices are not cost-reflective, except in a system-wide sense, they cannot be considered commercial or competitive. ==United States==