Research Catalog

Title

Universal service : competition, interconnection, and monopoly in the making of the American telephone system / Milton L. Mueller, Jr.

Author

Mueller, Milton.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press ; Washington, D.C. : AEI Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiii, 213 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

• Universal service is a focal point of telecommunications policy in the 1990s, not only in the United States, but in every other country that has begun to liberalize or deregulate its telecommunications industry. The new policy dialogue revolves around four questions. First, how much do the universal service obligations of incumbent telephone companies cost? Second, how can those costs be financed in a competitive environment?
• Third, what kind of technical and pricing arrangements should be made to interconnect incumbent telephone companies with the new, competing networks? Finally, should the service bundle designated as "universal service" be redefined to take into account new technologies, and if so, how?
• In the United States, debate over those issues reached a milestone when the U.S. Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The new law is the first comprehensive revision of the Communications Act of 1934 and culminates twenty years of legislative struggle over how to adapt federal law to the new realities of telecommunications. In effect, the new law codifies the perceived wisdom about interconnection, competition, and universal service in telecommunications.
• Because one of the chief purposes of Milton Mueller's analysis is to mount a historically grounded challenge to that orthodoxy, the new law provides the perfect foil for a critique that links the historical and contemporary policy debates over universal service.

Series Statement

AEI studies in telecommunications deregulation

Uniform Title

AEI studies in telecommunications deregulation.

Subjects

• Telephone companies > United States > Case studies
• Telecommunication policy > United States > Case studies
• Telephone > Deregulation > United States > Case studies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-202) and indexes.

Contents

1. Introduction -- 2. Universal Service: A Concept in Search of a History -- 3. A Theory of Access Competition -- 4. Prologue: Telephone Development before Competition -- 5. The Legal and Economic Rationales for Not Interconnecting Competitors -- 6. The Dynamics of Access Competition -- 7. Dual Service: The Anatomy of Subscriber Fragmentation -- 8. Universal Service: Vail's Answer to Dual Service -- 9. The Power of Interconnection, 1908-1913 -- 10. Saving Dual Service: The Kingsbury Commitment -- 11. The Subtle Politics and Economics of Unification, 1914-1921 -- 12. The Legacy of Access Competition -- 13. The Reincarnation of Universal Service -- 14. Universal Service in the 1990s -- 15. Why the First-Generation Universal Service Debate Is Relevant Today.

ISBN

026213327X (alk. paper)

LCCN

96035151

OCLC

• 35360570
• ocm35360570

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries