Telecommunications in Transition: Unbundling, Reintegration, and Competition

The world economy is experiencing a technological revolution, fueled by rapid advances in microelectronics, optics, and computer science, that in the 1990s and beyond will dramatically change the way people everywhere communicate, learn, and access information and entertainment. This technological revolution has been underway for about a decade. The emergence of a fully-interactive communications network, sometimes referred to as the Information Superhighway, is now upon us. This highway, made possible by fiber optics and the convergence of several different technologies, is capable of delivering a plethora of new interactive entertainment, informational, and instructional services that are powerful and user-friendly. The transition from analog to digital technologies, the expanding bandwidth of the enabling platform, and the shift from regulated to competitive environments have all served to make the 1990s the decade in which the Information Superhighway will be built and used. A true revolution in the delivery of entertainment, information, transactions, and telecommunications services is at hand. This paper outlines these technological changes and explores their implications for competition policy, industry structure, and business organization. Part I introduces competition as an organizational model and discusses the existing structure of the telecommunications industry in the United States. Part II describes recent technological advances that change the conditions underlying the current regulatory structure of the telecommunications industry and challenges the effectiveness and validity of the current regulatory scheme. Part III discusses how innovation impacts what has been considered the natural monopoly of local exchange. Part IV advances five principles that should guide policy modification. Part V explores how eliminating the line-of-business restrictions created by the Modification of the Final Judgment1 between the government and American Telephone and Telegraph Co. will accelerate competition and stimulate the development of the Information Superhighway. Ameritech\u27s Customer First Plan is presented as a viable means to enhance competition, avoid redundant investment, and increase service innovations and technological advances. Part VI discusses the impact of removing interLATA restrictions

How PR faced the challenge of the “information superhighway”

Before the Internet, social media and search engine optimisation, there was the “information superhighway” and the “Megachip age” in the 1980s. Although PR practitioners were slower than other communicators to recognise the potential of Internet and social media, there was some discussion thirty years ago. Drawing on the archive of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), this paper reviews 21 papers of contemporary discussion over a 15 year period from 1981 to 1996 and draws lessons about the stages of adoption of innovative technology by practitioners. The views of practitioners varied over time. In the initial period from 1981 to 1987 their attitudes ranged from advancing the potential for rapid international outreach (Plank, 1983; Hietpas, 1984) to gloom about deskilling (McPhail 1987) and the future irrelevance of public relations counselling (Pessalano, 1984). From 1989 to 1996, as PR 1.0 (use of email) came in practice, there was less comment but continued concern that the faster information flow was leading to communication “dis-information” (Linning 1995). Only in 1996 was the term “Internet” introduced and lauded as beneficial development (Wilson, 1996). Overall, public relations practitioners are portrayed as slow to understand the benefits of the rapid technical advances in communication and holding doggedly to models of mediated communication. They also failed to foresee that information would be available for more people through IT developments, rather than fewer. The very evident reticence displayed by the IPRA publications sample may indicate why the digital communications sector was able to form outside the purview of the public relations sector and became a competitor to it (Theaker, 2004; Earl & Waddington, 2012)

PR's early response to the "information superhighway": The IPRA narrative

Before the Internet, social media and search engine optimisation, there was the “information superhighway” and the “Megachip age” in the 1980s. This paper, drawing on the archive of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), reviews early discussion and adoption of innovative technology by practitioners through the application of historical method. It finds they were slow to appreciate the benefits of technical advances in communication and held doggedly to print-based models of mediated communication. Practitioners and thought leaders did not foresee that information would be available to more people through ICT developments. Practice responses, developed by reference to Rogers’ Diffusion Theory, were in three categories (in descending order of frequency) of Ignorers, Cautious/Sense-makers and Modernists/Adopters

Computer Mediated Communication and the Connection between Virtual Utopias and Actual Realities

People have generally been very ambivalent about the potential future roles of new technologies (and the internet specifically) and their possible effects on human society. Indeed, there has been a tendency for polarization between attitudes or perceptions of naive enthusiasm and cynical resistance towards the use of computers and computer networks, and for such related concepts as ‘the information superhighway’ and ‘cyberspace’. The projection of such ambivalent perceptions into naively utopian (or even ironically dystopian) images and narratives might be seen as the latest and uniquely global permutation of a basic function of human culture - that is, to imagine ‘a better future’ or represent ‘an ideal past’. This paper will consider the extent to which the kinds of virtual utopias made possible by computer-mediated communications are\ud ‘connected’ to the actual individual and social realities of human participants. In other words, how important might it be to recognise a distinction between the use of virtual utopias (and utopian representations in any culture) as merely escapist, self-indulgent fantasy on one hand, and\ud as a useful, transformative media for reinventing the human condition on the other? Whether we live in a Panoptic or democratic Net ten years from now depends, in no small measure, on what you and I know and do now. Howard Rheingold, Afterword to The Virtual Community (1994, p. 310

Delivery of broadband services to SubSaharan Africa via Nigerian communications satellite

Africa is the least wired continent in the world in terms of robust telecommunications infrastructure and systems to cater for its more than one billion people. African nations are mostly still in the early stages of Information Communications Technology (ICT) development as verified by the relatively low ICT Development Index (IDI) values of all countries in the African region. In developing nations, mobile broadband subscriptions and penetration between 2000-2009 was increasingly more popular than fixed broadband subscriptions. To achieve the goal of universal access, with rapid implementation of ICT infrastructure to complement the sparsely distributed terrestrial networks in the hinterlands and leveraging the adequate submarine cables along the African coastline, African nations and their stakeholders are promoting and implementing Communication Satellite systems, particularly in Nigeria, to help bridge the digital hiatus. This paper examines the effectiveness of communication satellites in delivering broadband-based services

Communications Policy, Media Development, and Convergence

In the deliberations of scholars, policy analysts, and policy makers, television has exceptional power and influence. Yet the historical record shows that television has not changed the economics of attention for large populations in the course of their daily lives. By the mid- 1920s, print media alone were highly successful in creating new consumer visions and aspirations, building national brands, and establishing significant brand equity. The advent of radio and television did not change total advertising spending as a share of total economic output, nor did it change significantly total advertising spending per adult media hour. The contrast between communications policy and the reality of media development is not merely a fluke or just ironic. It points to a major impediment to the development of information societies. State- owned-and-controlled media can be an important policy lever for overcoming this opposition and promoting the growth of more diverse media environments and more diverse ways of interacting with media.media, communications, advertising, time, e-government, regulation, reading, newspapers, television, radio