IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6453.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Universal Service in the Digital Age: The Commercialization and Geography of U.S. Internet Access

Author

Listed:
  • Shane Greenstein

Abstract

Many analysts anticipate a need to redefine universal service to account for Internet-related services and other combinations of communication and computing. This concern motivates a study of the geographic spread of the commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) market suppliers of Internet access in the United States. The paper argues that two business models presently vie to diffuse commercially-oriented Internet-access across the US. One business model emphasizes a standardized national service, the other a customized local service. The paper then characterizes the location of over 14,000 access points, local phone numbers offered by commercial ISPs in the spring of 1997. Markets differ widely in their structure competitive to unserved. Just under three quarters of the US population has easy access to commercial Internet service providers, while approximately fifteen percent of the US population has costly access. Urban/rural coverage must be understood in the context of the different strategies of national/local providers.

Suggested Citation

  • Shane Greenstein, 1998. "Universal Service in the Digital Age: The Commercialization and Geography of U.S. Internet Access," NBER Working Papers 6453, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6453
    Note: PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6453.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Compaine, Benjamin M & Weinraub, Mitchell J, 1997. "Universal access to online services: An examination of the issue," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 15-33, February.
    2. Shane M. Greenstein & Mercedes M. Lizardo & Pablo T. Spiller, 1997. "The Evolution of Advanced Large Scale Information Infrastructure in the United States," NBER Working Papers 5929, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Avi Goldfarb, 2004. "Concentration in advertising-supported online markets: an empirical approach," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(6), pages 581-594.
    2. Meng Gao & Jiekun Huang & Itay GoldsteinEditor, 2020. "Informing the Market: The Effect of Modern Information Technologies on Information Production," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1367-1411.
    3. Meng Gao & Jiekun Huang & Itay Goldstein, 2020. "Informing the Market: The Effect of Modern Information Technologies on Information Production," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(4), pages 1367-1411.
    4. Austan Goolsbee, 1998. "In a World Without Borders: The Impact of Taxes on Internet Commerce," NBER Working Papers 6863, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Madden, Gary & Savage, Scott J. & Coble-Neal, Grant, 1999. "Subscriber churn in the Australian ISP market," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 195-207, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Downes, Tom & Greenstein, Shane, 2007. "Understanding why universal service obligations may be unnecessary: The private development of local Internet access markets," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 2-26, July.
    2. David Cuberes, 2013. "Are Internet and Face-to-Face Contacts Complements or Substitutes? Evidence from Internet Traffic between Cities," Working Papers 2013010, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    3. Shane Greenstein, 2000. "Building and Delivering the Virtual World: Commercializing Services for Internet Access," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(4), pages 391-411, December.
    4. Barros, Pedro P. & Seabra, M. Carmo, 1999. "Universal service: does competition help or hurt?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 45-60, March.
    5. Downes, Tom & Greenstein, Shane, 2002. "Universal access and local internet markets in the US," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 1035-1052, September.
    6. Eva Jansson, 0. "Deregulation, property rights, and legal system," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-25.
    7. Inoue, Tetsuya, 1998. "Impact of Information Technology and Implications for Monetary Policy," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 16(2), pages 29-60, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6453. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.