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US fixed line telecommunications industry review

Page history last edited by Brian D Butler 13 years, 7 months ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

US fixed line telecommunications industry review

 

As we move from the industry age to the information age, a new economy is being shaped led by a number of industry forces. One that distinctly stands out from among them is the Telecom Industry.

 

The attraction and importance of the Telecommunications Industry lies in its ever-evolving attribute of contributing ground-breaking technologies, nouvelle services and coveted revenues, thus leading major changes in our way of life. Telecommunications has facilitated not only economic integration, but also cross cultural communication throughout the world. The U.S. has one of the largest telecommunication networks in the world. Its evolution from a monopolized industry to a competitive market as a result of unprecedented deregulation makes it a compelling case to study.

 

The objective of this study is to define, characterize and analyze the market structure and competitive conditions of the local wire-line telecommunications industry in the USA.

 

table of contents:


 

 

 

Subject of Study

The telecommunications industry can be divided into three segments, namely:

• Mainline, also called Fixed, Wire Line

• Wireless

• Telecommunication equipment

For the purpose of this study, we have narrowed the scope of our study to the local fixed-line (mainline) sector within the U.S. telecommunication industry. The mainline sector includes both residential and business markets, and its revenues are generated from both local and long distance services.

 

Methodology

The particular set of procedures to reach our objective includes the following:

• Research bibliographical data on the subject including case studies, statistical analysis, surveys, books, and databases

• Compile and summarize essential facts and numbers

• Use both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the information gathered

• Draw conclusions for future signification

 

Evolution of the Industry

 

Ma Bell is Born

In 1877, the year after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, The Bell Telephone Company was established with two financial backers. During these infant years of the industry, the mainline telephone industry was characterized by competition among many small service providers. A major dilemma of this market structure was that competing firms were not networked, and clients of one mainline telephone company could not communicate with clients of another. This dilemma became an opportunity to the visionary Bell. One of Bell’s subsidiaries founded in 1885, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (ATT), emerged as the dominant force in the industry as it was the sole company in America networking all the major cities. Eventually, AT&T purchased the parent company. Favorable government regulation and a number of strategic acquisitions, allowed AT&T to position itself as a monopoly. By 1907, the President of AT&T, Theodore Vail, expressed his vision of having one company as a universal service provider, “One System, One Policy, and Universal Service”.

 

This strategy by AT&T to consolidate the market was in the best interest of the firm, as by moving towards a monopoly, the firm could maximize profits by controlling prices. The more AT&T invested in acquisitions and market expansion, the greater their power over the market and the greater the profits.

 

Antitrust

By 1913, AT&T had a completely vertically integrated structure, where they manufactured telephones through its Western Electric Co., provided local telephone service through its Bell System, and long distance service through AT&T. Independent telecommunication companies filed suit against AT&T and as a result, AT&T agreed to the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment, where they divested the telegraph subsidiary, Western Union, and agreed to discontinue further acquisitions of independent companies. The settlement was followed by the U.S. Communications Act of 1934. The Act established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent government agency to regulate interstate and international communication by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covered the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions. While the FCC kept pressure on the Bell System by promoting market liberalization policies, state governments protected the Bell markets by setting up barriers to competition. This allowed the Bell System to continue to benefit from its monopolistic power.

 

AT&T faced its second major antitrust case in 1949. The state attempted to separate the Western Electric Co., which was the manufacturing arm of AT&T, from the parent company. By 1956, AT&T consented to license its manufacturing patents to independent companies. Furthermore, the company was restricted to regulated telecommunication service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Breakup

In 1974, MCI filed an antitrust suit against AT&T. This was the result of AT&T disconnecting MCI’s foreign exchange customers after the latter had approached the U.S. Department of Justice to discuss AT&T. After a long and strenuous suit, in 1984 AT&T was forced to divest its Bell Operating Companies and separate it from the competitive research and development business and manufacturing business. The Bell Operating Companies were broken up into Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) and restricted to local service market.

 

Deregulation

The government’s perception that the RBOCs natural monopoly structure was the most efficient model of business began to drift. As a result, the 1996 Telecommunications Act was established. This deregulated the market forcing RBOCs to share their networks with competitors. The Act attempted to reduce regulatory barriers to entry and competition. It attempted to create a competitive market in order to maximize consumer benefits. As a result, the industry began to consolidate, bundle with complementors, and regional companies gained market strength.

 

Technology Evolution

No other industry touches as many technology-related business sectors as telecommunications, which, by definition, encompasses not only the traditional areas of local and long-distance telephone services, but also advanced technology-based services including wireless communications, the Internet, fiber-optics and satellites. And certainly this industry has experienced one of the most important and richest technology evolutions when compared to other technology-related business sector.

 

In 1876 when Graham Bell invented the telephone, telecommunication services exclusively relied on copper wires to make the interconnection between the different users of the telecommunications network. And this is the way that homes are currently served under the traditional service. But in the last decades, several other access technologies were introduced as an alternative to the copper wires, like coaxial cable (and the use of cable modems), wireless networks (Wi-Fi) and fiber-optic (FTTH). Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) technologies were also introduced as a more efficient way to utilize the copper network.

 

Wi-Fi, short for “wireless fidelity” and sometimes referred to as WLAN (wireless local area network), is sweeping the world. Wi-Fi offers a wireless connection at speeds of up to 54-megabits per second (Mbps), nearly 1,000 times the speed of dial-up and much faster than cellular phones.

 

In traditional services, fiber-optic cable does not come into play at the home level and it is used as trunk lines to connect regions and cities to each other at the switch and network level. But in contrast, Fiber to the Home (FTTH) introduced in the early 2000, delivers fiber-optic cable all the way from the network to the local switch directly to the living room—with this system, Internet delivery speeds and the types of entertainment and data delivered can be astounding (it is projected to deliver up to 100 Mbps).

By using this new broadband access technologies like DSL, cable modems, Wi-Fi and/or FTTH, voice services can now be offered via Internet Protocol (IP), also known as Voice over IP (VoIP), which transforms analog voice phone calls into digital format, which is transmitted across the Internet almost effortlessly and, more tellingly, cheaply.

 

This means that from a technology perspective, currently there are several options to offer voice services to end users, in addition to new value-added services like high-speed Internet connections and enhanced entertainment offerings like video, gaming and music; all these new services were unthinkable at the time Graham Bell invented the telephone and started using the copper wires.

 

While landline use is declining, it remains vital to many customers who are concerned about quality and reliability of phone service. Cellular phones, though incredibly convenient, are notoriously unreliable in terms of service and are therefore not a complete alternative for many customers. And VoIP, though extremely inexpensive, has not yet gained full consumer confidence. Nonetheless, consumers will adopt new telephony technologies at a steady rate over the mid-term, in the same way that they adopted new Internet services as well as shopping via e-commerce over a relatively short time period.

 

Regulation

Regulation has been a major force within the industry throughout its history. The first major regulatory event was the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment. Antitrust policies were enforced in order to prevent an already monopolized firm from increasing its power and control of the market. Economic regulations were imposed in the form of removing barriers to non-competing independent networks. In addition, AT&T agreed to stop further acquisitions of independent telecoms and to divest its interest in its telegraph business, Western Union.

 

As a result of the Kingsbury Commitment, struggling independent companies that wanted to sell out to AT&T were restricted. Competition did not result as AT&T maintained control of major cities while less significant markets where serviced by independent companies that paid AT&T an access fee. Furthermore, AT&T set up its own barriers to competition by allowing outside customers to call Bell subscribers, but negating Bell subscribers from contacting outside subscribers. This reinforced the network effect, where it was in the best interest of the consumer to subscribe to the Bell System as it allowed for greatest access.

 

Following the Kingsbury Commitment, the next major regulation imposed on the industry was the Communications Act of 1934. The Communications Act created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent government institution that would regulate commerce in communication. The sole purpose was to make available access to all the people of the United States without discrimination at reasonable charges.

 

The U.S. Department of Justice initiated in 1949 an antitrust suite against the telephone monopoly and under the terms agreed upon 1982 the following was put into effect dismembering the largest private business enterprise in the world; AT&T’s “registered assets (were) of $150 billion making it bigger than General Motors, IBM, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Eastman Kodak, and Xerox combined. In 1983, a year before the divestiture, annual revenues were nearly $70 billion, representing approximately 2 percent of the U.S. Gross national product. Its net income was nearly $6 billion, slightly smaller than the total budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It employed just under a million people, many of them long-term employees–making it the largest private employer in the country.”

 

The public perceived the AT&T to have too much market power and that bigness was badness. The U.S. Government main interest was to was to “separate the Bell System's competitive operations from those that were in the realm of natural monopoly, that is, the local-exchange businesses”. According to the antitrust lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice, AT&T had secured a fast position within the telephone industry and had alleged illegal business practices using its monopoly to establish an unfair disadvantage, especially in the beginning computer and information industry. AT&T’s case was used to argue that “competition should replace monopoly for the benefit of consumers and the economy as a whole.”

As a result, the local operations split into independent Regional Bell Operating Companies or (RBOC’s). AT&T agreed to diverse three-fourths of its assets and surrender its nationwide partnership of companies providing end-to-end communications service.

 

The finalized terms of the lawsuit included:

• AT&T was reduced by 70%.

• Seven regional companies (RBOC’s) took over business for all local calling, some intrastate long-distance business, customer access to long-distance networks, new customer equipment and directory advertising.

• RBOC’s were restrained from manufacturing telephone equipment and entering the bulk of the long-distance business, information services with permission to enter other un-related business

• AT&T kept is local exchange carriers (LECs) and its business consisted mostly of long-distance services.

• AT&T was allowed to keep its equipment manufacturer Western Electric, its research unit Bell Laboratories and the central service operating company named BELLCORE created provide technical and support services and coordination for national defense purposes.

• AT&T was in competition with every company that chose to enter its markets, and it was free to enter nearly any new markets it desired.

• Staffed with former Bell System employees, the National Exchange Carrier Association, Inc. (NECA) was formed by the FCC and various Bell System companies to perform telephone industry tariff filings and revenue distributions following the 1984 breakup.

 

RBCO’s

BellSouth

Ameritech

US West

Bell Atlantic

Southwestern Bell

NYNEX

Pacific Telesis

 

Until its breakup in 1984, AT&T reined over the telecommunications system of the United States because it owned the long-distance business, most of the local phone companies, the labs that invented the latest telephone technologies and the companies that manufactured much of the industry’s equipment. Telephone service was excellent, but relative to today’s current rates, it was expensive. There was virtually no competition in most sectors of the telecom industry. However, government antitrust rulings brought that era to an end, enabling competition in the long distance sector and forcing AT&T to spin off the majority of its operating units. Following, a series of deregulation enforcement obligated the industry to drastically evolve. Opening the competition in the long distance market was a success. At least 20 companies a year entered the California market. The following graph reflects how this policy reduced AT&T’s market share from 85% in 1984 to about 53% by 1996:

Graph 1

 

Source: Economides, Nicholas. September 1996. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its Impact. New York University. Retrieved on October 20, 2006 from http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/telco96.html

 

The effects of the 1984 AT& T divestiture began to create pressure for a major change in policy. The regional Bell operating companies wanted to enter long-distance markets, and the long-distance companies were eager to enter local markets. The resulting 1996 Telecommunications Act provided both opportunities. All telecommunications markets were opened to competition and incumbent local companies were required to interconnect with entrants by offering to lease portions or unbundled “elements” of their networks to these entrants.

 

The 1996 Telecommunications Act was a major overhaul of the U.S. regulations of the telecommunications industry. This act basically nullified the assumptions made in the 1934 Communications Act. The new regulation intended to allow for a more competitive market by removing barriers to market entry. Companies were allowed to enter and exit the local and long-distance markets with ease. By creating a more competitive market environment, consumers were to benefit from lower costs and better quality of services. The immediate business reaction to the 1996 bill was a bout of consolidation in the telecommunications industry.

 

 In March 1996, two Baby Bells, SBC Communications and Pacific Telesis, announced plans for a $45bn merger,

 While on the US east coast, Nynex and Bell Atlantic made a similar move worth $51bn in April.

 Other firms have approached the deregulatory implications from a different direction and, taking into account the cross-sector implications, with US West becoming involved with Time Warner, while Disney purchased ABC/Capital Cities.

 

Market Structure Analysis

 

Network Market

The local telephone market is, at its most basic level, a good example of a network market. As is typical of any network market, the phone system is only valuable if everyone is using the same network, and if they have access to everyone else on the network. For example, if half of the people in a local area were to use one local network and the other half were to use another network, then it would not hold value if they were not able to talk with each other. Therefore, the more people that join one local phone network, the more useful that the entire system becomes. This is one reason that local telephone markets have traditionally been best served by one local monopoly (see Monopoly section below). According to the theory of “adoption externality” ; each new user added to the existing network, the previous users receive additional value.

 

Another feature of network markets is that they are very stable once they are created, and also very difficult to replace over time. With local telephone markets, what this means is that once the local lines are laid from house to house, it makes very little economic sense to recreate a second, competing network to compete. But what the government has done recently, in an attempt to promote competition, has been to regulate that existing network markets must allow access to their market by new competing networks.

 

 

With the passing of the 1996 Telecom Act, there has been increased pressure for the incumbent local exchange carriers (ILEC’s) to allow access to their network by the competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC’s) . From a network perspective, imagine a network with 1 million users (incumbent) and a situation where a smaller network (competitor) tries to enter the market, but only has 10,000 users (see diagram above) This smaller competitive network would be useless unless they were to have the ability to access the larger pool of users in the incumbent’s network. In an effort to generate competition at the local level, the US Congress has passed rules regulating how the connection should occur and at what price. If the incumbent (ILEC) were allowed to make it difficult, or prohibitively expensive to interconnect, then the new competitor (CLEC) would find it difficult to compete.

 

Monopoly

While long distance telephone service has been open to competition for many years, the local telephone market has traditionally been considered to be a “natural monopoly” and has been closed to competition. It has only been in recent years that there has been an effort in the USA (and in much of the rest of the world) to open up the local telephone market to competition.

 

The original reason that local telephone market was considered a “natural monopoly” was partly based on the network effect (discussed above), but it was also due to a practical concern: it just didn’t make sense to have two different companies lay the wires to each individual home in a network area. From an economic standpoint, it just made more sense to have one company connecting each individual home.

Once all of the wires were laid, and the network was established, the reasoning behind thinking of the local telephone network as a “natural monopoly” changed. The new thinking was that; once the network existed, the incumbents had an enormous “first movers” advantage, and would be near impossible to replace.

In other industries (outside of the realm of network markets), a “natural” monopoly typically exists where there are significant barriers to entry due to very large economies of scale. In those industries, if the long run average cost (and marginal cost) were to continue to fall as it crosses the demand curve, this typically would indicate that the most efficient market structure would be a monopoly . If this were the case in the local telephone market, then it would not make sense for the government to promote competition in this market. But, with the case of a local telephone market, there seems to be a general consensus among the government that if the conditions were right, and if the competitor (CLEC) were given a fair chance to interconnect with the incumbent’s (ILEC’s) existing network at a fair price, then competition could exist (and thrive).

 

In the passing of the 1996 Telecom act, Congress attempted not only to allow competition in the local market, but they also attempted to jump start competition by creating an environment that favored the entrance of new competitors. The results of these efforts have been mixed. Some competition has occurred, although many of the initial CLEC’s that first entered the market have since exited.

The real challenge to the market power of the incumbent ILEC’s will likely come from the powerful mix of new technologies and consumer preferences. The world ten years ago (1996) was different than it is today, at least in terms of telecommunications. No longer are companies falling over themselves trying to get access to the “last mile” of copper wires controlled by the traditional telephone companies. Now, there are new competitors emerging from cellular providers who can reach the individual homes without wires, and also from cable companies (which are now offering internet and voice services).

 

Competition: Substitutes

If we take a snapshot of the local telephone market as it stands today, what we see is that the most important trends are:

 

 Number of households with fixed lines is slowly diminishing

 Number of mobile phones installed is rapidly growing

 Other technologies, such as VOIP, are starting to play a role in the market.

 

Looking at the graph below, we find that a product substitution is starting to take place. Some years ago, wireless providers would charge you for extra monthly minutes or for long distance calling on our cell phone. Being as competitive as the wireless market has been, as defined by the FCC regulations, companies had to continuously offer more services to attract new customers and get the economies of scale that added value to the network. Today you can get wireless service in many cities at a flat rate, without time restraints and with free nationwide long distance.

 

Most of the people choose wireless phone service due to its convenience. This preference is exerting pressure on the fixed lines market as many people are deciding to cancel their fixed line. As seen in the graph below, the number of CLECS wire line subscribers is growing, reaching 16% of the total in 2005. This adds more pressure to the original ILECS defined in the 1984 antitrust ruling. About 5 million wire lines provided by CLECs are over Coaxial cable and represent around 5% of all wire lines to residential households. (Local Telephone Competition: Status as of December 31, 2005. Industry Analysis and Technology Division, Wireline Competition Bureau. July 2006 . Wireline Competition Bureau Statistical Reports. http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/stats)

 

ILECS managed to lobby for more restrictive regulations, and although the Telecommunications Act of 1996 force them to rent the wire line at a regulated rate, a later judicial ruling in 2004, allowed them to restrict the access of CLECS to just the local copper loop, and blocked them from using the ILEC switching space and hardware. This raised the barrier to competition on the wire line market as it increased the investment needed by CLECs to compete.

 

One aspect left out of the new restriction was the access to wire lines over a Coaxial Cable allowing cable companies to continue to offer local telephone to their customers. Based on the report, we see this is a threat to ILCES that continues to grow. For example, one way the ILECS trie to surpass the threat is by trying to get their customers away from Cable providers. Bellsouth is doing just that by offering a bundled service of their Wireline plus satellite TV. This is explicitly explained in their 2005 annual report stating that 44% of their wire line customers have the bundled satellite TV installed. Once they lock a household customer in this bundle, there is no cable telephone threat.

 

All these aspects plus the fact that evolving technology now makes it possible to use fiber optics with very high bandwidths, are contributing to have wire line providers, ILECs, investing to convert their customers to fiber optic and shift the monopoly from providing only voice communication to being the sole provider of multimedia communications to the household customer. In Bellsouth's 2005 Annual Report, it is explained how the company could attract 44% of the customer base to buy the bundle with satellite with no investment. This will allow Bellsouth to switch these customers to new fiber optics technology in the future as it becomes available.

 

Graph 2

 

 

From: Local Telephone Competition: Status as of December 31, 2005

Industry Analysis and Technology Division, Wireline Competition Bureau. July 2006

The report can be downloaded from the Wireline Competition Bureau Statistical Reports Internet site at www.fcc.gov/wcb/stats.

 

Now that substitute products are available now to compete fairly within an open-market industry, we can have several goods competing with each other to win the consumer’s dollar vote. There is now a larger and more varied menu of goods available with different prices and characteristics. Wireless provider Verizon and VOIP provider Vonage are examples of companies that offer wireless and emerging technologies that are considered substitutes of a mainline phone connection .

 

Verizon was originally created as one of the 1984 original RBOCs as Bell Atlantic concentrating in the northeastern region of the country. In 1996, a merger with NYNEX, another former RBOC, and the later in 2000, the acquisition of GTE, an independent telephone company that provided local telephone service, made Verizon have one of the largest mergers know in business history. Most importantly the mergers gave Verizon the resources and opportunity to launch Verizon Wireless in 2004 with tremendous success that was expressed in its dominance over the wireless market.

 

Recently in Februrary of 2005, after news of another merger between SBC Communication and AT&T, Verizon acquiered MCI, formerly WorldCom, that would give the economies of scale need to increase productivity and the ownership over the long-haul lines in the eastern section of the country. This gave the company an added benefit from the fees that regional phone carriers pay to use complete the calls that go that go outside the Verizon “footprint”, fee that MCI originally had to pay. With the acquisition, the need is obviated giving the company an advantage and key in long-term strategy.

 

Verizon, with MCI, is currently the largest telecommunications company in the US with sales over 75.11 billing, profits of 7.4 billing and assets of 168 billion. The services it offers include standard telephone service, Voice over Internet Protocol and optical fiber line service, long distance services and in their efforts to stay innovative in the industy, have recently initiated a joint venture with Microsoft called Verizon Web Calling (a type of VOIP service to be used with Windows Live Messenger).

 

Vongage is a network company that provides a Voice Over Internet Protocol via a broadbacn connention. With its “voice-over-net-age” motto, the company, initiated in 2001, brought this tecnology to the mass market with a so called “internet phone revolution”.

Vonage will hit the $600mn annual revenue milestone by the end of 2006 and with 1500 employees, is growing at a rapid pace.

 

The service has had its criticisms, including reliability, security of the lines, quality of the service but other inherent features of this technology has definitly given it potential to have the service substitute the traditional fixed phone lines, such as its functionality, mobility, low-cost. Although, VOIP is currently a popular alternative, it is still relatively new and is being closely observed by the industry.

 

Wireless service and VOIP technology are current players in the Telecom industry that change the industry’s scenario and challenges its current intergrants to creatively address the incoming competition brought on by advances in technology. With customers already investing in mobile phones with 3G networks, giving up landlines and using wireless networks exclusively, it is thought that demand would grow for cellphones that allow for seamless handover between a cellular network and WiFi. This would benefit an ever-demanding consumer with both wireless and VOIP services simultaneously creating a stronger substitute for the fixed line service to beat.

 

Conclusions

 

Throughout this study several questions arose. One emerging question is how effective anti trust and sector-specific regulations have been in achieving more efficiency in US telephony trying to achieve more efficiency.

 

Unlike other countries, the telephone network in the US wasn’t developed and run by the government, giving birth to a “natural” monopoly as the most cost-effective structure for network based utilities. State regulators contributed to this form of imperfect market with policies which would promote consolidation and oppose “duplication” of network facilities. Even the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), created in 1934, helped to preserve this “relatively regulated monopoly” paradigm.

 

The anti-trust law and an increasing political imperative to subsidize basic residential charges in order to reduce costs per household gave birth to the “deregulation” process that started in the early 1980’s and culminated in the passing of the 1996 Telecom Act. A great part of these costs (long distance calls, local attachment costs) has been significantly reduced over the past decade.

 

In our opinion this effect was the product of the combination of three factors; the competition procured by the deregulation, the still existent regulation on prices at which the dominant ILECs had to sell their services to the incoming CLECs, and the erruption of technologies like cellullar phones, wireless and VoIP with the subsequent creation of a new arena of unfettered competition within the telecommunication industry.

 

Therefore, a first conclusion would be that despite some benefits achieved by complex interactions of both regulation and deregulation, technological change has proved to be a the most effective tool in dismantling a regulated monopoly and rate structures distorted by regulation, several times influenced by lobbies.

 

Another question to ponder on when analyzing this topic would be; where is the telecommunications industry currently headed? The Telecom industry is undergoing a process of explosive expansion thanks to the effect of disruptive technologies with less regulated access. We wondered how to describe this huge industry change.

 

The recent mergers in the sector show some consolidation. However, these mergers also show a migration tendency, like in the case of wired-based companies buying wireless or cellular vendors. Vendors are migrating to bundled communication services in their attempt to either retain consumer expenditure or to capture some of the exploding demand taking place in the mobile communications sector.

 

The borders of the meaning of communications have broaden to include internet access, cable TV, satellite TV and radio, videoconferencing. The nature of communication has evolved too from location-based (fixed), to ubiquitous, convenient, and mobile. The customer’s profile, traditionally divided between households and companies, has become one more marked by the individual’s preferences.

 

We agree with the analysts that foresee further convergence in the communications services as the last step in development of the natural monopoly transforming into a competitive, boundary-free communications industry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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For more information

 

Alden, J. (2002). Competition Policy in Telecommunications: The Case of the United States of America. Geneva, Switzerland

 

Belinfante, Alexander. Federal Communications Commission. Washington, DC.: Best Copy and Printing, Inc 2006. http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/stats (October 18th. 2006)

 

Bell, Trudy. 1999. The Decision to Divest: Incredible or Inevitable?. Bell System Memorial. Retrieved on October 18, 2006 from http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/decisiontodivest.html

Cave, M. (2001). Opening Telecommunications Markets to Competition : Perspectives from North America and Europe. Washington, DC, USA: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.

Crandall, R. W. (2005). Competition and Chaos: U.S. Telecommunications since the 1996 Telecom Act. Washington, DC, USA: Brookings Institution Press

 

Economides, Nicholas. September 1996. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its Impact. New York University. Retrieved on October 20, 2006 from http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/telco96.html

 

Federal Communications Commission. Communications Act of 1934. Retrieved on October 20, 2006 from http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf

 

Federal Communications Commission. November 11, 2005. History of Communications. Retrieved on October 20, 2006 from http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/

 

Federal Communications Commission. March 29, 2004.

Telecommunications Act of 1996. Retrived on October 20, 2006 from http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html

 

History: AT&T Antitrust. Retrieved on October 18, 2006 from http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/att_antitrust.htm

 

Kahn, A. E. (2004). Lessons from Deregulation : Telecommunications and Airlines after the Crunch. Washington, DC, USA: Brookings Institution Press

 

Local Telephone Competition: Status as of December 31, 2005. Industry Analysis and Technology Division, Wireline Competition Bureau. July 2006. http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/stats

 

Telecommunications Act of 1996. Wikipedia. Retrieved on October 18, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

 

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