Broadband Should We Regulate High-Speed Internet Access?

by Crandall, Robert W.; Alleman, James H.

• ISBN13: 9780815715924
• ISBN10: 0815715927
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-22
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Summary

There is widespread concern in the telecommunications industry that public policy may be impeding the continued development of the Internet into a high-speed communications network. In the absence of ubiquitous, high-speed ¡°broadband¡± Internet connections for residential and small-business customers, the demand for IT equipment and new Internet service applications may stagnate.Broadband policy is controversial in large part because of the differences in the regulatory regimes faced by different types of carriers. Cable television companies face neither retail price regulation of their cable modem services nor any requirements to make their facilities available to competitors. Local telephone companies, on the other hand, face both retail price regulation for their DSL service and a requirement imposed by the 1996 Telecommunications Act that they ¡°unbundle¡± their network facilities and lease them to rivals. Finally, new entrants are largely unregulated, but many rely on facilities leased from the incumbent telephone companies at regulated rates to connect to their customers. This asymmetric regulation is the focus of this volume, in which telecommunications scholars address the public policy issues that have arisen over the deployment of new high-speed telecommunications services.Robert W. Crandall is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. His previous books include (with Martin Cave) Telecommunications Liberalization on Two Sides of the Atlantic (2001) and (with Leonard Waverman) Who Pays for Universal Service? (Brookings 2000). James H. Alleman is an associate professor in interdisciplinary telecommunications at the College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Colorado, on leave at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(8)
James H. Alleman
Robert W. Crandall
Broadband Mysteries	9	(30)
Bruce M. Owen
The Demand for Bandwidth: Evidence from the INDEX Project	39	(18)
Hal R. Varian
The Demand for Broadband: Access, Content, and the Value of Time	57	(26)
Paul N. Rappoport
Donald J. Kridel
Lester D. Taylor
Wired High-Speed Access	83	(23)
Charles L. Jackson
From 2G to 3G: Wireless Competition for Internet-Related Services	106	(23)
Jerry Hausman
Internet-Related Services: The Results of Asymmetric Regulation	129	(28)
Jerry Hausman
Competition and Regulation in Broadband Communications	157	(40)
Howard A. Shelanski
Regulation and Vertical Integration in Broadband Access Supply	197	(26)
Thomas W. Hazlett
Broadband Deployment: Is Policy in the Way?	223	(22)
Gerald R. Faulhaber
The Financial Effects of Broadband Regulation	245	(33)
George Bittlingmayer
Thomas W. Hazlett
Subsidies, the Value of Broadband, and the Importance of Fixed Costs	278	(17)
Austan Goolsbee
The Benefits of Broadband and the Effect of Regulation	295	(36)
Robert W. Crandall
Robert W. Hahn
Timothy J. Tardiff
Contributors	331	(2)
Index	333