Over the past few months there have been calls to impose "wireless net neutrality" rules on the burgeoning United States wireless industry. These critics assert that certain practices by the wireless industry - such as handset "locking" practices, data bandwidth limitations, and control over...

Firms that wish to offer wireline, multichannel video programming services in direct competition with cable incumbents are being faced with calls by those incumbents and policymakers to "build-out" to entire communities as a pre-condition of receiving a franchise. This "build-out" requirement is...

In the last few years, U.S. telecoms policy has shifted from encouraging the sharing of existing networks to facilitating the deployment of advanced communications networks. Given the large capital expenditures required for these networks, there can be only a few of such networks. In light of...

This Perspective argues that the Federal Communications Commission's current "trigger framework" of counting the number of competitors in a market in order to determine whether or not a rival is "impaired" is a model of analytical inconsistency. Specifically, the Commission defines "impairment"...

This Perspective argues that while it is very important for policy makers to take a dynamic approach to telecoms, it unfortunately appears that many policymakers recently have used anecdotal evidence of intermodal competition to blur deliberately the line between "probability" and "ephemeral...

This POLICY PAPER presents an economic model showing how incumbent local exchange carriers may deter efficient facilities-based entry for high capacity loop facilities through the use of quantity-discount contracts for Special Access services. Since efficient entry is deterred, these contracts...

On April 8, 2004, the Heritage Foundation released a Backgrounder entitled Are U.S. Telecom Networks Public Property? by James Gattuso and Norbert Michel. There, the authors claim that the current telephone network was paid for by the shareholders of the incumbent Bell monopolists, and not by...

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,...

This Policy Paper discusses important economic characteristics of local exchange markets and the firms that participate therein. First, this Policy Paper, building on the work in PHOENIX CENTER POLICY PAPER NO. 10, explains that entry into the local exchange market requires large fixed and sunk...