relatively slow reduction in bandwidth prices
Quality-adjusted average U.S. residential broadband service prices have fallen no more than an estimated 10% from 2004 to 2009.[1] The consumer price index for personal computers and peripheral equipment fell 50% across that period.[2] The price-performance frontier for communications technology is advancing as fast or faster than that for personal computers and peripherals. [...]
Tagged: telcos
whither telephone companies?
Telephone companies face serious business problems. Broadband Internet connectivity can support telephone service as just one app among many apps. For example, Google voice is just one feature among the many that Gmail offers. Texting is already competing with telephoning, and video communicating is likely also to do so in the future. Providing network connectivity [...]
Tagged: telcos
online database of DS1 and DS3 special access rates
The DS1 and DS3 rates that the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users filed publicly at the FCC are now accessible as an online, highly capable Needle domain (database). Needle is a data system that makes it easy to look at the data in different ways and to sort and filter it, all from within a web [...]
Tagged: telcos
DS1 & DS3 rate dispersion across U.S. states
Based on data filed by the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, tariff rates in 2009 for DS1 and DS3 special-access circuit elements across U.S. states have a spread equal to about plus and minus a third of the average. Rates differ across bandwidth (DS1 or DS3), regulatory type (price cap or pricing flexibility), purchasing term [...]
Tagged: telcos
Bell System response to automatic telephony
Early in the year 1900, local authorities in Springfield, Massachusetts, held a hearing on Hampden Automatic Telephone Company’s application to provide automatic telephone service in Springfield. The Bell System at that time provided operator-switched telephone service in Springfield. The hearing produced an early battle of experts. It also displayed general argumentative strategies quite common in [...]
Tagged: telcos
"connecting carrier" classification successfully limits regulation
In 1934, the U.S. Communications Act established a class of common carriers subject to only a subset of common-carrier (Title II) regulation. This class of common carriers, called “connecting carriers”, included: any carrier engaged in interstate or foreign communication solely through physical connection with the facilities of another carrier not directly or indirectly controlling or [...]
Tagged: telcos
early U.S. telephone competition
The expiration of Bell telephone patents in 1894 and 1895 unleashed vigorous competition in the early U.S. telephone industry. On Jan. 1, 1894, telephones in the U.S. numbered 266 thousand, and the Bell System operated 89% of them. On Jan. 1, 1908, the number of telephones had increased to 6.1 million, and the Bell System [...]
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U.S. local telephone industry, 1988-2007
From 1988 to 2007, U.S. local wireline telephone companies went from strong growth to rapid decline in the number of telephone subscriber loops. Loop counts peaked about 2000. On both sides of this peak, small telephone companies had greater loop growth than large telephone companies. A constant across these twenty years was telephone company mergers [...]
Tagged: telcos
structural change in the U.S. telephone industry
The break-up of AT&T in 1984 is a well-recognized, major structural change in the U.S. telephone industry. In the 1984 divestiture, AT&T’s local telephone business was separated into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs). By year-end 2006, recombinations of RBOCs had left as AT&T successor companies the new AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest. AT&T, Verizon, [...]
Tagged: telcos