Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Telecommunications Regulation: An Introduction

Contents:

Author Info

  • Economides, Nicholas

Abstract

This paper examines the justifications, history, and practice of regulation in the US telecommunications sector. We examine the impact of technological and regulatory change on market structure and business strategy. Among others, we discuss the emergence and decline of the telecom bubble, the impact on pricing of digitization and the emergence of Internet telephony (VOIP). We also examine the impact of the 1996 Telecommunications Act on market structure and strategy in conjunction with the history of regulation and antitrust intervention in the telecommunications sector. After discussing the impact of wireless technologies, we conclude by venturing into some short term predictions. We express concern about the derailment of the implementation of the 1996 Act by the aggressive legal tactics of the entrenched monopolists (the local exchange carriers), and we point to the real danger that the intent of Congress in passing the 1996 Act to promote competition in telecommunications will never be realized in local telecommunications in the fashion that the 1996 prescribed. The decision of AT&T to stop marketing both long distance and local services to residential customers is a direct result of the derailing of the 1996 Act that has allowed the local service monopolists (1) to enter long distance while the local market was still monopolized; and (2) to leverage their monopoly power in the local market to the long distance market. We also discuss the wave of mergers in the Telecommunications and cable industries, the telecom meltdown of 2000-2003, and issues that arose from the triennial review by the FCC of implementation of the 1996 Act.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://regulation2point0.org/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=222
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Regulation2point0 in its series Working paper with number 222.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Nov 2003
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:reg:wpaper:222

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://regulation2point0.org/

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Nicholas Economides, 1997. "The Economics of Networks," Industrial Organization 9701002, EconWPA.
  2. Nicholas Economides & Giuseppe Lopomo & Glenn Woroch, 1997. "Regulatory Pricing Policies to Neutralize Network Dominance," Industrial Organization 9612003, EconWPA.
  3. Economides, Nicholas, 1998. "The incentive for non-price discrimination by an input monopolist," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 271-284, May.
  4. Economides, Nicholas, 1999. "The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its impact1," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 455-483, December.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:reg:wpaper:222

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Archive Maintainer).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.