Month: August 2010

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 commitment (in months from 1 to 60), and geographic zone (typically three zones).  Differences across states within these rate structures reflect other factors that affect tariff rates.

Rate differences across states are not highly correlated with state characteristics.  Qwest, for example, has the same DS1 and DS3 rates across its 14-state service territory.  AT&T and Verizon, in contrast, have tariffs that differ across state groups in ways that relate to the service territories of historic telephone operating companies.

Consider the highest and lowest DS1, price-cap, month-to-month, zone 1 rates as measured by the composite 10-mile circuit rate.  The highest such rate is $1023 in Indiana and Wisconsin (AT&T).  The lowest such rate is $395 across the whole 14-state Qwest service territory, which includes Minnesota and Iowa. Differences in regulation, competition, service cost, or unmeasured differences in tariff structures could explain this dispersion.  What specifically explains the actual difference isn’t obvious.

Differences between price-cap and pricing-flexibility rates also show considerable ambiguity.  Telephone companies are granted petitions for pricing flexibility based on criteria that the FCC established to measure the development of competition.[*]  The rate data indicate that pricing flexibility rates are consistently higher than price-cap rates. Higher prices typically aren’t associated with greater competition.  However, for most service attribute types, pricing flexibility rates have less dispersion across states than do price-cap rates.  That is consistent with more competition in circumstances in which unpriced differences across states matter little.

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Data: DS1 and DS3 rate statistics based on Ad Hoc Rate Dataset (Excel version); Ad Hoc DS1 and DS3 Rate Dataset

Note:

[*] An FCC order, adopted on Aug. 5, 1999, set out a procedure (“pricing flexibility” petitions) for removing rate elements from existing price-cap regulation.  BellSouth provides an example of the regulatory procedure.  On Dec. 15, 2000, the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau granted a BellSouth petition for pricing flexibility.  The order granting that petition apparently isn’t online, but an affirming review of that order, which includes a list of the metropolitican statistical areas (MSAs) to which it applies, is online. Here’s a better formated version of the MSA list.  On Nov. 22, 2002, the Bureau adopted an order granting another BellSouth petition for pricing flexibility.  On May 16,2008, the Bureau granted a third BellSouth petition for pricing flexibility.

video borrowing from U.S. public libraries

Like most persons around the world and throughout history, public library users like audiovisual materials.  Videos currently accounts for about 6% of U.S. public library items and 30% of U.S. public library item circulation.  From 1985 to 2004, library video circulation grew much faster than commercial video circulation. Library video borrowing currently equals about  20% of commercial video rental.

Libraries’ video circulation has recently gained greater public attention.  On July 29, 2010, Techmeme featured from Yahoo News a story entitled, “Libraries top Netflix, Redbox when it comes to loaning DVDs.”  A day later NPR had the story, “Libraries Top Netflix In DVD Rentals.” The Huffington Post, Gizmodo, the LA Times, the Seattle Weekly, and many other news and information sources ran similar stories that same day. All these stories seem to be ultimately based on a story in the Hartford Courant on July 26, 2010.  That story was entitled, “Study: Libraries Top The Competition In Lending Movies.”

The Hartford Courant’s story led off with this statement:

Red boxes, red envelopes and the blue and yellow Blockbuster stores may dominate the movie rental landscape, but according to a recent survey, when Americans want to watch a DVD, they are most likely to turn to their local library.

Some clarifications and comments:

  1. Public library video borrowing in 2010 equals about 20% of commercial video rentals, or about 17% of total video borrowing/rentals.  Libraries tend to lag commercial video rental services in video media technology.  Hence library video borrowings likely consist of a higher share of VHS tapes and a lower share of Blu-Ray discs and online streamed movies compared to commercial video rental services.  But even if all library video borrowing were DVDs and only half of commercial video rentals were DVDs, library DVD borrowing would not exceed commercial DVD rentals.
  2. The cited OCLC survey shows that public libraries DVD circulation is less than Netflix’s DVD rentals.  This OCLC work is entitled “How Libraries Stack Up: 2010.”  It is actually a two-page presentation of graphics.  The relevant graphic shows “U.S. public libraries 2.1 million DVDs borrowed [every day],” “Netflix 2.2 million DVDs rented [every day].”[1]  All the stories dropped the decimal part of the Netflix figure and instead describe it as “2 million.”  Then they reported that figure as less than public libraries’  “2.1 million” DVDs borrowed.  Thus reporting of the survey figures apparently has been distorted to achieve a sensational headline.[2]
  3. All public libraries considered together have about eleven times as many registered borrowers as Netflix has subscribers in mid-2010.  This difference is highly relevant to the comparison of all public libraries to Netflix. None of the articles mention this highly relevant aspect of that conceptually awkward comparison.
  4. Competition isn’t the most interesting aspect of the relationship between public libraries and commercial video rental services.  Libraries have co-existed for years with commercial book rental businesses and commercial video rental businesses.  Libraries illustrate that diverse organizational forms and operational models can co-exist long-term.
  5. The Hartford Courant’s story, “Study: Libraries Top The Competition In Lending Movies,”  and the stories and posts echoing it, do not encourage studying further the issues reported.  With the exception of a few blog posts, none links to the OCLC presentation.  None links to a major source of U.S. library statistics. None provides enough well-organized data to support non-tendentious analysis and consideration of alternative questions.  Studying and thinking takes effort.  Few persons seem to be interested in doing it.  That’s not surprising.

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Data:  Video borrowing from U.S. public libraries compared to commercial video rentals; U.S. library item formats, 1989-2008; U.S. library use, 1989-2008

Notes:

[1] The OCLC graphic is a pie chart.  It consistes of three slices forming the whole pie.  These slices are: “U.S. public libraries 2.1 million DVDs borrowed [every day],” “Netflix 2.2 million DVDs rented [every day],” and “RedBox vending 1.1 million DVDs rented [every day].”  Many other commercial rental sources for DVDs exist,  but are not included in the pie.  Thus the whole pie isn’t baked from any conceptually meaningful recipe.  Put differently, the size of public libraries’ slice of the pie has no relation to the fact that public libraries account for about 17% of video borrowing and rentals.

[2] Hartford Courant’s story also did not accurately report the OCLC’s figure for Redbox rentals.  The OCLC’s graphic show 1.1 million Redbox rentals per day, while the Hartford Courant’s story reported 1.4 million per day.

informational generosity

Information sources reporting on studies, but not actually citing and linking to those studies, apparently don’t want to help readers to learn more.  Not citing and linking has created well-justified frustration.  Sources that don’t provide relevant citations and links should be judged less credible.  You should be suspicious of their motives.  You should be offended by their lack of respect for your curiosity and your interest in learning.

Formal possibilities for generosity go far beyond citing and linking.  Generosity means presenting information so that it is easier for others to use in their own ways. Presenting a table of data in a pdf file is mean.  Presenting a table so that an application can access its data with understanding of its semantics is generous.  Linking the table to a web-accessible version of the whole dataset from which the table was derived is very generous.

Be generous!