A reconstruction of an ancient Greek trireme, the Olympias, had its first sea trials off the Greek island of Poros in 1987. The emblem above is from the participants’ t-shirt. It shows the three different designs of oars, one for each level of rowers. Given the project leaders’ deep classical learning, the graphic design of the ship is probably based on an ancient pottery decoration.
In 1982, a court order broke up AT&T, then by far the largest U.S. telephone company. The order began:
Plaintiff, United States of America, having filed its complaint herein on January 14, 1949,…the parties, by their attorneys, having severally consented to a Final Judgment which was entered by the Court on January 24, 1956, … [that Final Judgment] is hereby vacated in its entirety and replaced by the following items and provisions…
The 1982 court order is known as the Modified Final Judgment. Final judgments don’t really occur in this world.[1]
The Modified Final Judgment separated AT&T’s long-distance telephone network from its local telephone networks. AT&T become a long-distance telephone service provider. AT&T’s regional Bell operating companies became seven independent local telephone companies (BOCs or “baby Bells”). The BOCs were forbidden to provide long-distance service (technically, interLATA service). Companies could compete in providing long-distance telephone service by interconnecting with the BOCs. The origination and termination of long-distance calls from and to local operating companies’ networks was called access services. Local telephone companies’ provision of access services has been regulated to insure that rates (prices) are reasonable and non-discriminatory.[2]
The separate long-distance telephone service that the MFJ promoted has largely vanished. Most mobile (wireless) service plans no longer distinguish between local and long-distance calls. Under a process set up in the Communications Act of 1996, the BOCs have received authorization to provide long-distance service. BOCs have acquired the largest long-distance telephone companies.[3] Residential long-distance telephone service generated about $26 billion in billed U.S. revenue in 1997.[4] Long-distance telephone service within the U.S. now is hardly promoted and sold as a separate product.
BOC switched access minutes from 1993 to 2008 show major change in the long-distance telephone business. Switched access minutes are a measure of long-distance telephone minutes entering and exiting the BOCs’ local networks. From 1993 to 2000, BOC switched access minutes increased an estimated 48%. From 2000 to 2008, switched access minutes declined 49%. The best explanation for the decline in switched access minutes seems to be the growth of wireless long-distance calls.[5] Wireless long-distance calls do not generate originating wireline access minutes. To the extent that those calls are to other wireless phones, they also do not generate wireline terminating access minutes. Wireless services early on provided long-distance service at the same rate as local service. Assuming that long-distance calling continued to grow from 2000 to 2008 like switched access minutes did from 1993 to 2000 suggests that about two-thirds of long-distance calling minutes have shifted to wireless phones.
Use of BOC network connectivity has also changed greatly. Telephone companies purchase from BOCs circuits to deliver and receive public switched voice traffic to and from BOC networks and to move such traffic between BOC-network access points and BOC-network end offices. That network connectivity is called trunking, which is associated with switched-access services. Telephone companies and other companies also purchase from BOCs circuits to move any type of traffic (data, voice, video) from point to point, with the traffic never being switched through a BOC end office to a public telephone service customer. Such network connectivity is called special access. DS1 and DS3 circuits can be used for either trunking (switched access services) or special access, but they are often named differently depending on their use.[6]
The ratio of BOC special access revenue to switched access revenue for DS1 and DS3 circuits increased more than fourfold from 1993 to 2008. For 1993, Ameritech rate detail suggests that the special access to switched access revenue ratio for DS1 and DS3 connectivity was about 3. In 1999, all the BOCs aggregated had a ratio about 7. By 2008, that ratio had risen to roughly 25. By this measure, switched voice connectivity revenue in 2008 amounted to about 4% of all DS1 and DS3 network connectivity revenue.[7] A more comprehensive account of network connectivity that included higher bandwidth, more advanced circuits than DS1s and DS3s would show an even lower share for switched voice.
Local network access services developed along with competing long-distance telephone service providers. The long-distance telephone business has largely vanished. Local network access services are now primarily used for point-to-point local network connectivity. The largest uses for local network connectivity now are probably Internet connectivity, backhaul from wireless network cell sites, and links in private data and video networks.
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Data: Online spreadsheet showing switched access minutes, DS1 and DS3 switched access and special access revenues, and Section 271 authorizations (Excel version).
Notes:
[1] The Modified Final Judgment (MFJ) is also known as the AT&T Consent Decree.
[2] The court’s MFJ established, in addition to state Public Utility Commission and Federal Communication Commission regulation of telephone service, a court-centric mode of telephone regulation. Section 7 of the MFJ states:
Jurisdiction is retained by this Court for the purpose of enabling any of the parties to this Modification of Final Judgment, or, after the reorganization specified in Section I, a BOC [separated Bell Operating Company] to apply to this Court at any time for such further orders or directions as may be necessary or appropriate for the construction or carrying out of this Modification of Final Judgment, for the modification of any of the provisions hereof, for the enforcement of compliance herewith, and for the punishment of any violation hereof.
Section 8 of the MFJ added:
The Court may act sua sponte to issue orders or directions for the construction or carrying out of this decree, for the enforcement of compliance therewith, and for the punishment of any violation thereof.
Section Section 601(a)(1) of the Communications Act of 1996 explicitly removed any requirements under the MFJ. Federal legislative bodies thus asserted their legislative and regulatory interests.
[3] In the mid-1990s, AT&T and MCI together collected about 70% of long-distance service revenue (see Trends in Telephone Service, 2000, Table 11.3). SBC (a combination of Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell, and BellSouth) purchased AT&T, closing the acquisition on Nov. 18, 2005. SBC then assumed the AT&T name. Verizon (a combination of Bell-Atlantic, Nynex, and GTE Telephone) purchased MCI. That deal closed on July 7, 2006.
[4] Galbi, Douglas (1999), “Regulating Prices for Shifting Between Service Providers,” p. 14. This figure excludes revenue from prepaid calling cards.
[5] From December 1999 through December 2003, the BOCs received authorization to provide long-distance telephone service to their local telephone service customers. However, BOCs were required to report their own use of long-distance switched access minutes in the same way that they report other customers’ use of switched access minutes. See Communications Act of 1996, Section 272; and FCC (2007), Order on BOC Separate Affiliate and Related Requirements, Sec. III.A.4.b(ii). Pricing-flexibility orders removed some special access and trunking services from price cap regulation. Pricing-flexibility orders did not, however, apply to switched access (switch) minutes.
[6] DS1 and DS3 circuits used for switched access are often called entrance facilities and direct-trunked transport, or just trunked transport. The DS1/DS3 circuit called an entrance facility when used for switched access is typically called a channel termination or local distribution channel when used for special access. In its rate detail, Ameritech labels DS1 and DS3 circuits used for switched access as LT-1 and LT-3 circuits.
[7] Pricing flexibility orders removed a large amount of special access and trunking (switched access) revenue from price caps after 1999. To the extent that the ratio of special/switched access DS1 and DS3 revenue removed is different from the ratio of revenue remaining, the price cap revenue ratios do not accurately indicate the over-all network revenue ratios. However, the data show some indication of a raising ratio from 1993 to 1999. Moreover, the geographic circumstances relevant to removing revenue from price caps are similar for special access and switched access. Hence price cap revenue removal probably doesn’t affect significantly the over-all shape of the special access/switched access revenue trend.
Based in Media Arts study, a group from the University of Plymouth put a keyboard and computer in a monkey enclosure. They also set up a webcam so that everyone could see what the monkeys were doing with the keyboard. They thus exploited the popular value of the infinite monkey theorem.
This project provides insight into fruits of a certain type of education. The project’s website explains:
[The project] aims to raise questions in the minds of viewers, as well as those visiting the vivaria website, as to the role of chance in evolution and the creative process.
Raising questions is easy. Contributing to finding answers is more difficult, and more useful.
For instance, the usual argument against the theory of evolution is that complex forms and behaviours could not evolve by random chance alone, and that change is cumulative.
The current best understanding of biological evolution doesn’t imply that biological evolution depends on random chance alone. Evolution arises from reproductive competition in a particular environment. The environment is key to evolution. The environment isn’t random. At least some organism can change their rate of genetic mutation in response to different environments. Genetic mutation doesn’t depend on chance alone.
An orthodox Darwinian view of evolution is that through competition between organisms, only the fittest survive and produce offspring. This not only oversimplifies the issue but also makes an unacceptable political metaphor – where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Putting a keyboard in a monkey enclosure shows praiseworthy political sense for concern about the poor. The project organizers are likely to survive and prosper.
The project is clearly not a scientific experiment, but hopefully does display some sense of integrity. Although it appears to test the truth of the formula, in reality it emphasises [sic] the unreliability of human (scientific) hypotheses. Animals are not simply metaphors for human endeavour. The joke (if indeed there is one) must not be seen to be at the expense of the monkeys but on the popular interest in the idea – especially those in the computer science and mathematics community (interested in chance, randomness, autonomous systems and artificial life).
Humans are much more verbally sophisticated than are other animals. The contrasting predicate, “but hopefully does display some sense of integrity”, acknowledges a sensible, contrasting evaluation. “The joke (if indeed there is one)” points to insecurity. Laughing at monkeys isn’t immoral. Laughing is a natural, healthy response to certain types of behavior.
The creative thinking subject as the site of consciousness, and the subject as a crucial part of a sentence and text – that which the action is determined by – remains a contested and contradictory set of ideas. Creativity is neither random nor entirely predetermined, in other words.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
The project aims to address these ideas, to activate these contradictions, and demonstrate how these contradictions generate new ideas and possibilities, and in turn provide a much more acceptable political metaphor.
I get it. Putting a keyboard in a monkey enclosure provides a much more acceptable political metaphor. Remember that for the final exam.
Wikipedia summarizes some results of the project:
Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it.
I like those monkeys’ spirit. Project participants offered for sale the monkeys’ text, in a limited edition of 100, for £25 each.
Publicly filed interstate rate detail from 1994 to 2009 for Ameritech, a large U.S. local telephone operating company, are now available in a more accessible and useful form. These rate elements are for communications services in U.S. mid-western states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Based on simple price indices, Ameritech’s DS1 and DS3 prices appear to have fallen 2.8% per year and 4.6% per year, respectively, on an inflation-adjusted basis. These price indices are fixed-weight indices for copper-based (electrical) connectivity purchased on a 60-month purchase commitment plan in zone 3 of Ameritech’s pricing zones. The index includes the local distribution channel rate and the rates for interoffice channel mileage and for interoffice channel terminations. I chose the fixed weights for these rates in light of the average revenue distribution across these elements. The calculated DS1 price trend is similar to the 3.3% per year inflation-adjusted decrease in price for Bell Atlantic’s DS1 local distribution channel.[*]
Ameritech’s revenue distribution by zone has shifted toward more rural zones from 1993 to 2008. From (demand years) 1993 to 1999, nearly half or more of Ameritech’s DS1’s revenue was from zone 3. DS3 revenue during that period was somewhat more evenly distributed, but by 1999 about 50% of DS3 revenue was from zone 3. Ameritech’s 2001 filing (demand year 2000) increased the number of pricing zones from 3 to 5. Roughly half of DS1 and DS3 revenue was shifted to zones 4 and 5. Higher number zones have more channel miles per channel termination, i.e. higher numbered zones are more rural. Higher numbered zones also generally have higher DS1 and DS3 prices.
DS1s and DS3s elements purchased on a term plan are typically purchased on 5-year (60-month) purchase commitment plans. Among Ameritech DS1 elements purchased on a multi-month term plan, more than 90% of DS1 revenue from 1993 to 2004 was for elements purchased on a 5-year term plan. That figure subsequently fell to 79% in 2008. The corresponding share of DS3 revenue for elements purchased on a 5-year term plan was about 60% in 1993-1994 and about 80% in 1996-2008. Purchase commitment plans that span multiple years create inertia in purchase prices.
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Data: Online spreadsheet of Ameritech DS1 and DS3 price indices and related data (Excel version); Online spreadsheet with summary statistics for Ameritech rate detail and also showing credit, miscellaneous, and revenue aggregate revenue elements (Excel version); Relevant discussion of aggregate revenue elements in price caps; Full dataset of Ameritech rate elements, quantities sold, and prices, 1994-2009; Additional data on bandwidth price trends in the 1990s.
[*] DS1 and DS3 connectivity is often also called T1 (or T-1) and T3 (or T-3) connectivity. The terms T1 and T3 tend to be used in retail purchases of private line circuits. Ameritech distinguishes names for DS1 and DS3 connectivity by whether they are used for public switched voice transport. Connectivity not used for public switched voice transport is named DS1 and DS3. Connectivity used for public switch voice transport is named LT-1 and LT-3. The price trends discussed above concern DS1 and DS3 connectivity not used for public switched voice transport. These circuits are known as special access circuits.