IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/telpol/v35y2011i8p737-751.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disconnecting: Understanding decline in universal service

Author

Listed:
  • Gideon, Carolyn
  • Gabel, David

Abstract

At a time when choices for voice service and funding for universal service were growing, the United States experienced an unprecedented drop in household telephone penetration. Universal service in voice telephony is generally taken for granted in the United States. However, recent data from the FCC shows a significant decline in the number of U.S. households that have a telephone of any kind (including mobile), from a peak in telephone penetration of 95.5% in March 2003 down to 92.9% in November 2005. This decline is both statistically significant and meaningful, as approximately 2.6% of U.S. households could not easily reach 911 for emergencies. This study uses regression analysis of state-level data to determine what drove this decline in universal service. The results demonstrate that the recent decline in universal service in the U.S. is driven by an increase in black population, inadequate consumer protection laws, and increases in wireless telephones per capita. Lifeline effectiveness does not appear to mitigate the decline in penetration, while Link-Up effectiveness may have a limited effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Gideon, Carolyn & Gabel, David, 2011. "Disconnecting: Understanding decline in universal service," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 737-751, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:telpol:v:35:y:2011:i:8:p:737-751
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030859611100108X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Gautier Axel & Poudou Jean-Christophe, 2014. "Reforming the Postal Universal Service," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(4), pages 453-477, December.
    2. Oğuz, Fuat, 2013. "Universal service in Turkey: Recent developments and a critical assessment," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 13-23.
    3. Loo, Becky P.Y. & Ngan, Y.L., 2012. "Developing mobile telecommunications to narrow digital divide in developing countries? Some lessons from China," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 888-900.
    4. Gideon, Carolyn, 2012. "The phoneless in the broadband age: A pilot study in Massachusetts," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 704-723.
    5. Holt, Lynne & Galligan, Mary, 2013. "Mapping the field: Retrospective of the federal universal service programs," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 773-793.

    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:eee:telpol:v:35:y:2011:i:8:p:737-751. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/description#description .

    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.