the U.S. telephone industry has developed like agriculture
While everyone appreciates the importance of family farms, few realize that the U.S. has a lot of small local telephone companies. A specific count of companies depends on distinctions among legal entities, operating companies, and holding companies; incumbent local-exchange companies (ILECs) and competitive local-exchange companies (CLECs), both of which can be part of one holding [...]
Tagged: telephones, universal service
COB-44: monuments of bureaucracy
Many persons mistakenly imagine bureaucrats to be slave-like drones. But drones cannot erect towering monuments of bureaucracy like the Great Pyramid of Giza. New archeological findings prove that the workers who built the Great Pyramid of Giza were not slaves, but workers honored for their work. About 10,000 workers, working three-month shifts, took more than [...]
Sukeyasu Shiba's expansive inspiration
Imagine plucking a lute slowly and deliberately. The impulse could arise from emotions within yourself. But possibilities for inspiration other than the self also exist. Sukeyasu Shiba’s Gagaku Universe, performed this past Wednesday evening by the Reigakusha Gagaku Ensemble at the Freer Gallery, drew inspiration from within and from without, from relations with objects and [...]
Tagged: Japan, review
long-run view of U.S. municipal communications networks
While successful municipal-owned communications networks can scarcely be found in the U.S. today, nearly all sizable U.S. municipalities owned and operated their own communications networks at the beginning of the twentieth century. Municipalities built networks to communicate fire alarms and to communicate with police officers patrolling neighborhood beats. The first such network was a fire-alarm [...]
Tagged: infrastructure
tariff inflation increases regulatory obligations
Publicly filed tariffs have been an important element of federal economic regulation in the U.S. since the formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887. U.S. local exchange telephone companies currently file federal tariffs for their interstate access services. These tariffs are publicly available through the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s Electronic Tariff Filing System (ETFS). [...]
Tagged: price information, telcos
service pricing semantics and ontology
Prices for ongoing services often are much less clear than prices for retail-store products that have a price tag affixed to them. Services do not have a natural physical unit, like an item that you pick up from a shelf. Compared to a one-time purchase of physical products, an ongoing service purchase has much lower [...]
Tagged: price information, telcos
understanding Ovid’s satirical Roman love elegy
Ovid invokes male game to satirize Roman love elegy and to succeed truly in seduction.
Tagged: Ovid