One goal of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“ARRA”) is to provide all Americans with access to affordable broadband services, particularly to those Americans living in rural markets where demand and cost conditions do not favor network deployment. At the same time, there...

Countries around the world are increasingly concerned as to whether the adoption of broadband technology by their respective citizens is sufficient to support economic growth and social development. Unfortunately, such concerns are often expressed in terms of where a country ranks among its...

The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) have launched a coordinated campaign to convince both policymakers and stakeholders that their financial woes are attributable to Congressionally-mandated Federal Communications Commission policies necessary to open local telecoms markets to...

An analysis of investment by telecommunications firms before and after the 1996 Telecommunications Act reveals substantial increases in the level of investment and capital stock for this sector following the enactment of this important legislation. There is no evidence that the 1996 Act reduced...

In this paper, we consider the argument that Carterfone-type rules are required in response to mobile operators' use of term contracts, early termination fees, and allegedly restrictive handset certification and support policies. First, we show that such practices by mobile operators are...

The purpose of this POLICY BULLETIN is evaluate the link between the FCC's Triennial Review and the erosion of market cap in the telecommunications industry by applying standard empirical tests to measure the effects of the Triennial Review on the stock returns (and, consequently, the market...

The purpose of patent policy is to balance the incentive to invent against the ability of the economy to utilize and incorporate new inventions and innovations. Substandard patents that upset this balance impose deadweight losses and other costs on the economy. In this Policy Paper, we examine...

In the last year, many advocates have called for the imposition of Carterfone regulation on the wireless industry. The FCC partially heeded this call when it imposed open platform regulations on one substantial block of spectrum (the Upper C block) that was recently part of the record-setting...

This Policy Bulletin makes use of regression analysis to demonstrate that differences in UNE-P prices both across States and within States are due to genuine cost differences and differences in TELRIC, and are not because of regulatory failure by the States. These findings confirm an obvious...

This Paper discusses important economic characteristics of local exchange markets and the firms that participate therein. First, this Paper explains that entry into the local exchange market requires large fixed and sunk costs, making entry risky and necessitating scale economies. Consequently,...