telcos

Because communication networks were being used in ways that undermined the rate structure established to recover interstate public telephone service costs, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created a special access surcharge.  This charge applied to interstate private lines that could connect with local public telephone service (“leaky PBX“).  Such facilities allowed persons to make … Continue reading inertia in administratively determined prices

Southwestern Bell Telephone’s rate detail files include Self-Healing Transport Network (STN) elements from 1994 to 2009.  A basic STN network consists of nodes and 44.736 Mbit Digital Transmission Links (DTLs) arranged in a ring configuration.  In the event of a link failure, communication service across the nodes is engineered to be restored in 50 millisecond.[1] … Continue reading mysteries of telephone company tariff data

Price-cap regulation often involves extensive discussion of price-cap index formulas.  These formulas usually account for economy-wide price inflation, or, in a more complex scheme, price trends for the regulated-company’s inputs.  Price-cap index formulas typically also account for productivity growth.  Technical issues associated with measuring and interpreting input prices and productivity growth provide fertile ground for … Continue reading the real X-factor in price-cap regulation

Incentives in incentive regulation, as in many other types of regulation, depend on operational details.  Pacific Bell’s public rate detail filings under its FCC interstate communications services price caps illustrate the importance of obscure details for the operation of price caps. Among the thousands of Pacific Bell rate elements filed from 2003 to 2009 are … Continue reading perverse incentives under incentive regulation

A dataset of units sold, rates, and revenues from 1992 to 2009 for BellSouth’s interstate communication services is now available.  BellSouth, now part of the new AT&T, developed as a regional Bell (Telephone) Operating Company (RBOC) serving customers in nine states in the U.S. Southeast.  This dataset has been compiled from price-cap tariff data publicly … Continue reading BellSouth communication services volumes, rates, and revenues, 1992-2009

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has since 1991 used price caps to regulate jurisdictionally interstate rates of large, incumbent telephone local-exchange companies (ILECs).    Since 1994, the amount of revenue subject to this price-cap regulation has fallen an estimated 19%.   Reductions in per-minute rates associated with originating and terminating interstate traffic have decreased … Continue reading economic outlines of FCC price-cap regulation

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has used price caps to regulate large U.S. local telephone companies’ rates for jurisdictionally interstate services.  Data filed publicly at the FCC provides yearly revenue totals for service categories defined under price caps.  Such data for the historic Bell Atlantic service area for filing years from 1990 to 2009 … Continue reading price-cap revenue for a U.S. local telephone company

On June 14, 2007, Verizon unveiled a National Discount Plan (NDP) for its DS1 and DS3 special access customers.  In a press release announcing the new offering, a Verizon Vice President declared: In addition to serving our wholesale customers over one of the most advanced, reliable networks in the country, we’re offering a new discount … Continue reading telecom service innovation

In 2008, somewhere in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., customers were still purchasing a total of 28 telegraph lines at a monthly rate of about $32 per line.   While these twenty-first-century connections to the nineteenth century don’t have any economic significance, other seemingly outdated services generate large amounts of revenue. Consider 56 kpbs service, … Continue reading revenue inertia in communications network services